Goodbye Volcano High

Ну что я могу сказать, если бы не было этой игры мы бы не увидели удивительные проекты. Я честно рад что поиграл в игру, сюжет слабый, персонажи мне казались однообразны, часто скипал игру на перерыв, лень было в неё поиграть, но сегодня игру прошёл до конца, и думаю что рад что прошел. Одно радует музыка и я вспомнил себя подростком, тоже бунтарским челом любителя рока. Если бы ЛГБТ не было в этом проекте, было бы приятно играть. Я играл в эту игру ради Музыки и всё. Короче моё мнение, игра между полная хня и ещё полная хня, но музыка спасла игру, так что у всех своё мнение, то что я описал это моё Личное! мнение.

Meant to play this years ago but fell in love with it more than i thought i would There are some issues sure but this game has SO much heart and soul put into it. Loved these characters, the amazing music and artstyle. I'll miss this game <3 You all did amazing [spoiler] also <3 Fang x Naomi <3 [/spoiler] In a way I'm glad i played it this late making it easier to avoid the annoying fans of the *other* game. [spoiler]The straight up transphobic 4chan users "jokes" awful mess of a game that people defend WAY too much which is a major red flag[/spoiler]

A very unique 6-hour or so interactive cartoon about friendship, music and contextualising the future in the face of despair. Top notch presentation and a cast that's hard not to care at least just a little bit about each and every one of them. Easy to recommend if you're into visual novel-adjacent games.

【7.5/10】 体量不大，但是探讨了一些东西，人生规划、自我认同、人际关系……一切都随着末日临近灰飞烟灭，唯一要想的只有在可见的未来要做什么，所以真的做一辈子乐队直到世界尽头了。 整体画面和玩法中规中矩，UI选项随着人物心情变化而变化的巧思让人眼前一亮，音游qte做的还可以，奈何人物大部分时间其实就是几个动作动画来回播，不过小体量也没有办法。优点在于配乐实在太赞了，能打出7.5/10其中很大部分是出于音乐因素，第一首歌其实就奠定了整个游戏的基调，以及主角茫然踌躇的状态，this is ture music。还有一部分因素是[spoiler] Naomi/Fang[/spoiler]这对太好嗑了，我就这样在关掉游戏后几乎每天都会在某个时刻一边听着Miley Cyrus的End of the World、一边内心暗自哭泣、一边想着这对女同性恋（[strike] 即使这部作品里能算得上恋爱情节的片段不超过十分钟 [/strike]），然后在两个月后的今天决定这个游戏值得一个推荐。 以及，我在游玩的某个节点意识到游戏内所有角色是恐龙是有原因的，然后会心一笑，这点真的蛮搞笑的所以也有加分（以及角色设计很棒，绝赞的恐龙们）。 整个游戏很乐队很青春，很适合那种想体验青春期对人生充满焦虑感的人游玩。

I wanted to like Goodbye Volcano High. I really did. It's in the same vein as some of the most artful gaming experiences I've ever had (i.e. Night in the Woods), and it uses the "same" characters that were adapted for the controversial but often excellent Snoot Game. It seems like a game that should be right up my alley - which makes it all the more disappointing. Goodbye Volcano High (or GVH, as I will hereby refer to it as) is a visual novel with high production values but bad to abysmal writing. It's a game that insists on trying to be emotional without developing good characters, that tries to be deep without saying anything meaningful or insightful, and that tries to be funny in the most sanitised, corporate-feeling way possible. When Dragon Age: Veilguard came out, people said that game felt as if HR was in the room for the entire writing process. For this game, it feels as if HR [i]did[/i] the writing. Outside of a few JRPGs and a handful of other disappointing games I've played, I've never seen a game talk so much and say so little. The closest things I can compare GVH's writing style to are modern children's cartoons (I'm not being pedantic - the tone is almost identical to My Little Pony or something off Disney Junior much of the time), Nintendo Direct voiceovers, or advertisements for corporate products. It's obviously trying to be real and relatable and natural, but it does none of those things, feeling stilted, awkward, and sometimes even painfully out of touch as a result. There is a shocking lack of character development. The game has a orrey-like friendship level system displayed prominently in the main menu, where Fang, the main character, is the Sun and all their friends orbit around them in various proximities based on how close they are in the story to them. You'd think that with a system as clearly defined as this that there would be an equally clear level of character growth from the cast. There isn't. Most of the characters in the game are virtually indistinguishable at the end of the game from who they were at the beginning. Most of the conflict (the little of it that exists) is externalised rather than internalised, and the major crux of the entire story revolves around something that is basically resolved without Fang changing their perspective at all. There's nothing significant to overcome, nothing to really learn, and all the characters feel so static and one-note that they become uninteresting very quickly. I challenge anyone to try to explain to me what is significant about the themes in GVH. I think you'll find they are weak at best. There are vague, superficial messages in here about friendship, or pursuing what you want in life, or living the dream even when you don't know what the future holds - but none of this offers any insight apart from restating surface-level themes that have existed in media for decades. Again, I feel the children's cartoon comparison is apt. This is not a game for children, but it thematically feels like one. There is [i]some[/i] interpersonal conflict, but these issues are usually resolved very quickly (almost shrugged off, in fact), and even the handful of minor antagonistic side characters fail to stick to their guns and be aggressive for long. In a game that is largely about being yourself there is a strong lack of real-world conflicting beliefs and motives. Characters constantly fold under zero pressure - which is nice for an HR course, but not an accurate depiction of the real world. Since there's only one ending (and, again, characters don't seem to significantly grow), your choices (which are many, especially for a visual novel of this length) don't seem to particularly matter much. They solely affect which characters you "bond" with, but that amounts to basically getting a couple more scenes rather than significantly changing their attitude towards Fang. A small portion but a significant part of this game is devoted to the rhythm sections. These are not particularly bad from a purely mechanical sense, but failing them does nigh nothing to the story and doesn't even mess up the songs themselves so they feel pointless to an extent. The production value here is solid; I ran into a few bad edits and two crashes over my playthrough which should be unacceptable for a game of this type and this team size, but otherwise everything seems fairly polished. The animations and character designs are, overall, very nice and some of the cutscenes especially (like the band practice montage) stand out as being very crisp, clean, and professional. Menus look good, sound design is pleasant, and the soundtrack is surprisingly filled with quite a few bangers that I can see myself listening to out of game in the future. The voice actors are professional but I feel they must have been subject to poor direction; most of the dialogue sounds even more awkward when said out loud than it reads and characters pause between lines or intonate with little emotion. Or, on the flip side, they squeal and oversell their apparent joy at the most minor things - which feels, again, hammed in and corporate. The most enthusiastic middle-aged women I have met could not outdo some of these (ostensibly teenage) characters with the amount of sickeningly sweet praise they dollop on Fang for their hair or makeup. For a five to six hour game the runtime is pushed way too far and padded out with meaningless content like the DnD (or, in-universe, "LnL") sessions, which add nothing to the story outside of more awkward, canned dialogue and don't feel fun to play through. I rarely complain about game pricing (as I understand that development is a huge cost and takes a ridiculous amount of skill and time), but for a short (and padded) visual novel that was largely funded publicly, I can't imagine that 30 dollars is terribly fair - especially when you have juggernauts of the medium like Outer Wilds out there for noticeably lower. I'd love to recommend Goodbye Volcano High. The talent poured in to making this game look and sound excellent is admirable, even though this game had the benefit of receiving far more investment than most indies ever will. But this is a game that says nothing of value. It's one of the most shockingly shallow experiences I've had in some time, and it makes all that worse with consistently soulless dialogue that makes Marvel writing look like Dostoevsky. Some AAA games have comparative writing but at least combine their poor story with passable gameplay. Goodbye Volcano High does not have this benefit. This is a game that on all levels except visually I cannot recommend for any reason. That is compounded by the fact that its story beats have been done better by other studios - with much smaller teams and budgets. Goodbye, Volcano High. Hate to say it, but I won't miss ya.

i liked it

A great story with great characters, and I always love me a good music / rhythm mini-game