Goodbye Volcano High Review
If a 10 kilometer asteroid was going to hit the earth in a few months, how would you change the way you lived your life?
That’s the question Goodbye Volcano High explores. The game follows Fang, a senior in high school who is also the lead singer in a rock band. Their goal? To make it big at the local Battle of the Bands and then go touring with their bandmates after graduation.
As their luck would have it, however, scientists soon spot a huge asteroid hurtling towards the earth, and there's a good chance of an impact. Predictably, this causes biggest global existential crisis in prehistory. Could life end on Pangea as they know it?
As you follow Fang throughout the year, you guide their interactions with their classmates, teachers, family members, competing bands, and bandmates as they grapple with the reality of a potential doom. Every character in this game is a species of dinosaur -- Fang is a pterodactyl, for example, and their bandmates are Reed, a velociraptor drummer, and Trish, a triceratops guitarist.
Reed, Fang, and Trish -- the three members of the band "Worm Drama"
Gameplay (and music)
This game plays like a fully-animated and almost-fully-voiced visual novel with a side serving of rhythm game goodness. The choices you make are impactful for how others interact with Fang and can help or harm their relationships. There are achievements and special scenes for maxing out relationships with other characters, although I was only able to max out Reed's affinity in my playthrough.
Overall, the game does a good job with describing what is going to happen with each dialog option -- although there were a few times where the words that came out of Fang's mouth did not match up with what my choice had been (I had to reload a handful of times because of this). This is pretty common with visual novels and RPGs; I wish they would all be better about it!
I freaking love rhythm games, so when I heard Volcano High had a rhythm game fully integrated into the story, I knew I had to try it out. The music is original and top notch. Phoebe Bridgers is artist I saw bandied about when reading about this game, and the comparison is pretty accurate. I'd describe most of music as chill indie rock. Don't Call on Me is a great example of this.
You get to participate in Fang's songwriting too. You're given the choice of lyrics to add to several songs, and your decision affects what Fang sings in their performance. This is an extremely nice touch!
Anyway, now for the rhythm game -- I can tell that the developers tried hard to make the rhythm portions as accessible as possible. Unfortunately, this diminishes the viability of Volcano High as a "rhythm game". You don't have to hit many of the notes on the beat: holding a direction on the analog stick is good enough for most of them. However, there are a few precision button presses required.
Hold down stick direction before the white dots hit the center circle; press the button listed (top left) when the circles overlap (super forgiving)
While I was a bit disappointed by the lack of difficulty, it was challenging enough to be interesting while letting me pay some attention to the music videos going on in the background. It also allowed me to get over 90% on all the songs on the first try, but I only know this because I received an achievement for it!
That's another disappointing thing about the rhythm portion. You don't get any feedback about how you did after the song if finished (unless you get an achievement notification), and from what I can tell, your performance doesn't affect the story at all. You also don't ever get an opportunity to go back and replay the rhythm sections.
Whoops, I missed. I guess I'll never be able to go back and hit that note, unless I start a whole new game
I really wish the devs had added an unlockable rhythm mode with some harder difficulty options. The music is so good that I know I would go back and try to 100% them on the most difficult setting. I also wanted many more music sections than there were!
Even with these caveats, the rhythm games do fit well with the narrative, and the animations that play in the background are extremely well done. They are obviously meant to complement the story instead of being the main course, and the narrative is better because of them.
Worldbuilding
The worldbuilding in this game is superb. Although the game is fairly linear in how you can interact with the environment, you can always open Pangea's version of Twitter in the pause menu and see how the rest of the world is reacting to story beats.
The writers threw in parallels to the our reality too. I couldn't help but draw parallels between what happened in Volcano High's society and what we went through during the initial spread of COVID, for example.
hmm, I wonder what real world event the top post is referring to...
There is an analog to D&D called L&L (Legends and Lore), and it plays a big part in the narrative. I thought it was clever how the writers explored the group's reactions to the approaching apocalypse through their L&L sessions.
Reed is a great DM
Finally, you can unlock comic-book style flashbacks with characters by increasing your affinity with them. Each one of these adds significantly to character backstories and gives extra context.
LGBTQ+ Representation
In a reversal from most media, Fang and their friends are, for the most part, LGBTQ+. Fang themself is non-binary and uses the pronouns they/them.
I really enjoyed the way the game handled this. It was simply an aspect of their interactions with others and everyone in the friend group simply accepted each other’s differences in this regard. Some characters face struggles related to this — whether their parents didn’t accept their identities, or they had challenges while transitioning — and these issues were explored compassionately.
I suspect this reversal of norms is one of the main reasons it was nominated for “Games for Impact” at The Game Awards this year — other than the obvious pun about an impending asteroid strike.
Art Style
At first, I was a bit skeptical of the art style in the game, but I grew to love it. The many species of dinosaurs were all uniquely drawn and animated, and just look at those environments!
Bugs
Unfortunately, the game had some noticeable bugs throughout. Some of these were minor, but others were more of a nuisance. Here's a list of the ones I noticed, from most severe to least severe:
- Some settings were lost every time I restarted the game. For example, I needed to turn colored character names on every time I started the game or it would reset to "off".
- Twice, the game stopped detecting button presses on both my PC and steam deck. Restarting the game fixed it for me
- Some dialog was auto-skipped without a button press after a word or so which made me reload my save so I could listen to it
- Every so often, a character's lips wouldn't move when they were talking
- The background glitched out every so often
Writing
The writing in this game was extremely well done. I probably could poke some holes in some character's initial reactions to the end of the world. However, impending doom makes people act in ways that seem irrational -- and the writers portrayed this well.
The characters were written very well. Each one had a believable story and unique personality. This made Fang's interactions with them feel authentic. It also made me want to get to know each one of them more, and I will probably replay this game in the future so I can get all of their extra scenes.
Most of all, this game made me feel things. Existential dread for the future of Pangea, pangs of sympathy when things didn't work out the way Fang envisioned, and jubilation at their triumphs. I will think about this game for a long while.
Steam Deck Performance
Other than the bugs I wrote about above, I had zero issues with performance on Steam Deck OLED. I moved the refresh rate and FPS limit down to 60 to save battery (it was initially running at 90), but I probably didn't need to because I had an estimated 5 hours of battery at 60FPS and medium brightness. This is a great Steam Deck game.
Summary and Conclusion
Goodbye Volcano High is a great game. It explores many difficult topics -- from trying to become a rockstar while everything is falling apart to growing up LGBTQ+. It also examines diverse character's psychological states during times of crisis. The characters are well written and develop uniquely throughout the game. I found the story to be poignant, thought-provoking, and even triumphant at times.
The blend of visual novel and rhythm game added a lot and made the story more impactful. Not to mention the top-tier music that I'll continue to listen to.
My chief complaint about this game is that I want more of it. The game is rather bite-sized with a 7-hour runtime, but I can't help feeling like it should have been at least 10. There were story beats which felt underdeveloped and could have (should have) been explored more thoroughly. The lack of a chapter select, unique save files, and replayable rhythm game sections with customizable difficulty also seem like glaring omissions for a game of this price and caliber.
Overall, I recommend this game!
Rating
3.6/5: Very Good