Goodbye volcano high | Review – Bittersweet Farewells
The narrative adventures they experience a kind of second youth. In a time when video games are increasingly socially and politically involved, this genre has become a real reference point for those who want to put the story at the center of the experience and make the player think about the message conveyed. can be experienced first hand thanks to the uniqueness of this medium.
Goodbye volcano highdeveloped by KO_OP and available on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4 And PCcertainly falls into this category of titles.
The premise may seem bizarre at first: a group of anthropomorphic dinosaurs face the dangers of their senior year of high school, knowing that life as they know it will end due to a… meteorite. However, the story hides much more and touches on very current issues. Let’s find out together in the test report.
Our last year together
As we expected, Goodbye volcano high features a group of children, anthropomorphized dinosaurs, struggling with their final year of high school.
The protagonist of the story is Fang. We note that we use the masculine because in the Italian language there is no official and common alternative for those who identify with it themwhat Fang actually does.
Anyway, Fang struggles with some problems typical of puberty and the end of this age: The final school year is approaching, with all its doubts and uncertainties about the future. On top of that, his friends and co-founders of the band VVorm Drama don’t really seem to believe in their musical future – at least not as much as Fang, who can only imagine the band’s future when he thinks about his future concerts.
Everything seems to change when The band is selected to take part in a prestigious competition, Battle of the Bands, after a local music producer heard Fang’s latest song and liked it. So far everything seems normal: a classic story grow upwith its clichés and its typical themes.
Goodbye volcano highbut also treats more sensitive topicsthat deepen the story and its characters.
“Goodbye Volcano High” manages to deal with very current topics with great intelligence without trivializing them.
On the one hand, Fang’s gender identity He is rejected by his parents, who continue to call him by his dead name and a gender in which he does not recognize himself.
On the other side, what appeared to be a break in the internet line was revealed the arrival of a meteorite that threatens to wipe out all life on Pangea.
That is why we said that it is a story that touches on sensitive and extremely topical issues. The Difficulties faced by the LGBTQIA+ communitybut also the feeling of today’s youth Live on an earth that has no certain tomorrowdue to the level of pollution our planet has reached.
Civil rights and environmental disasters are covered Goodbye volcano high through a parallelism that distances us from our reality, but not too much, because the comparison with what we experience is obvious.
We appreciated the developers’ willingness to tell this story, especially because they didn’t make the mistake of settling for sending a message, no matter how important; It’s actually history too well writtenas well as the characters, each with a unique personality and background.
An accomplice to this result is certainly this excellent synchronizationwhich helped make each cast member instantly recognizable, as if they were truly an old friend.
Paradoxically, this is one of the few comments we would like to make about the game We would have liked a few more hours. At a time when gaming is expanding beyond measure to meet the needs of the market, Goodbye volcano high It’s one of those cases where we felt like we needed a few more hours to delve deeper into some subplots and characters.
From an aesthetic point of view Goodbye volcano high Sports one Cartoon style which gives the impression of watching an animated film. The character design may not suit everyone’s taste, but we appreciated it here too inclusive effortbecause the cast includes characters with all sorts of physical characteristics.
On the layer technician However, we must point out some recurring issues, particularly with loading the background and some animations. These are not problems that have a profound impact on the gaming experience, but for such an undemanding game we would not have expected such difficulties even on the PlayStation 5 (which you will find). on Amazon).
However, this one is excellent Soundtrack. As we’ll see shortly, music is part of it central of this adventure, and both the ambient tracks and the songs played by Fang and his band are truly outstanding. Especially if you like indie rock, you’ll find some songs that will stay with you for a long time.
School, survival and music
From the perspective of Play style, Goodbye volcano high (which you can purchase thanks to gift cards from Amazon) is an extremely classic narrative adventure. In the game, most of the time you just have to read the dialogue, make a decision when the opportunity arises, and little else.
The gameplay is structured like that of an adventure based on narrative crossroads, with some hints of a rhythm game.
The presence of multiple choices allows access to numerous crossroads in historyas well as a different endings. The game warns you when a decision you make will impact your relationship with another character or the story, allowing you to understand when you’ve just crossed a crossroads.
That admits Goodbye volcano high A good replayability ratealso because the game only lasts about six hours. All in all, a longevity that befits the genre (although we would have liked a handful more hours to delve deeper into some characters and subplots) and that keeps us excited for further adventures run to discover alternative scenes and endings.
A dynamic we appreciated was the representation of Fang’s thoughts. Sometimes when faced with a choice, choosing an option will suddenly make you find it disappearing and being replaced by Fang’s feelings about it.
This is a small relief, but it really helps us identify with Fang’s inner life and shows how the developers have managed to play with even small details in a way that really immerses us in the story.
Among the shortcomings that we discovered we must definitely mention Lack of transcription of the dialogues. Considering how easy it is to accidentally skip dialogue, the lack of a dedicated menu for reading up on conversations is surprising, a feature that’s now inevitable in every game of this genre.
However, as we expected, Goodbye volcano high It is also a music game. There are actually some short and occasional rhythm game sectionswhere we are asked to play the songs written by Fang and his band.
These are very simple sections, but we still appreciated them The songs written for the game are really good. The only comment we would like to make, in addition to the excessive simplicity, is that in some situations it seemed to us that the game did not receive the command inputs with such precision, that we had to learn to easily anticipate the command inputs by inserting some notes; However, since it’s not a points-based game, this bug didn’t have much of an impact on the overall experience.
Summarize, Goodbye volcano high It is a game that has remained in our hearts because of its story and the sensitivity with which it addresses very current issues, from the LGBTQIA+ community to the threat of a future environmental catastrophe. This is not a game that rewrites the canon of the genre – and there are some flaws that hold it back from the higher ratings that it was nevertheless aiming for – but it’s still a title that shouldn’t go unnoticed, which unfortunately probably will be the case.
