Goodbye Volcano High

I got this game a few years back. I saw cute characters and LGBTQ+ themes. I tried to play it maybe 3 or 4 times, but always got distracted by something else happening in life roughly an hour or two in. I could not have gotten back to this game at a more perfect time and place in life. The cast are all dinosaurs and the main story driver is an asteroid, we all know how this ends, but it's really about how you get there. This game shows a pretty realistic portration of queer friend circles, queer people stick together. The story made me worry, stop and think and question how I would react in these situations, and I found almost every dialogue option to have at least one option I would pick in real life. Right now, I'm faced with the same problem the characters in the game are at the beginning; How do you want to spend the rest of your life? At the time of writing this, I just got accepted into university, putting me squarely in the same age bracket as the characters, with the same queer friend group and problems. If you are a young queer adult, this game is a must play, and don't put it off.

this game is very special, despite the generic high school setting its very distinct from many other narrative story games, Goodbye Volcano High (GVH) is set in the teenage years of Fang's life, they're part of the class of "the end", [spoiler]right before the end of the entire world. The game is set in prehistoric Pangea if modern technology existed and all the dinosaurs were bipedals, which works very well for this game. As you play through the game you choose dialogue choices to hurt or help your friends and play shows with your band, as you keep playing you uncover the truth about Fang and how they treat others, and right before the end of the world, you have to make things up to everyone. [/spoiler] as narrative story games go, GVH is far from perfect as some of the voice acting is sub-par, the animation in some scenes is a little weird too, but in most instances voice acting is good (sometimes, great even) and the art is beautiful. The rhythm sections are fun but not very challenging, and sometimes the game feels a little slow because its often just dialogue and could use more rhythm segments (this is largely a symptom of the genre though), the music in GVH is really, really good. Every character has their own story and personality, and the game kept me engaged in these characters for the 6 straight hours i played it. One thing i would change about GVH is giving more time with Naomi (spoiler) [spoiler]Fang sort of just blows her off after BOTB.[/spoiler] but over all, GVH is very enjoyable. At one point, this game was madly hated largely because of the lackluster state of play that Playstation had in which GVH was announced, and because it's Scalies in a high school setting. Most people who hate on this game have extraordinarily stupid reasons to do so and have never played it, i highly recommend getting it on sale if you like narrative/CYOA games, it often goes for 15 and that's a perfectly reasonable price for it.

Short and sweet story, and the awesome soundtrack is what really shines. Voice acting sounds really good, character art looks great too. (and Sage is adorable) However, pacing feels kinda off and overall the game feels like it's incomplete; but I would be interested to see a sequel or prequel at some point. Also for being a rebel, Fang doesn't do much rebelling. After also playing SG, this one comes out on top; because: -it doesn't try to reward the MC by turning Fang into someone they're not just so the MC becomes more attracted to them, -it doesn't make the weird assumption that being nb will turn you into a miserable drug addict (or school s*****r) -doesn't have weird racist undertones regarding Trish