Fang is coming off the school holidays with a new haircut and a passion for music like never before. They want to put as much time in this year to make it into Battle of the Bands and, hopefully, send their band ‘Worm Drama’ on a tour of success. Fang is the lead singer and guitar player of Worm Drama, while Reed is on the drums and Trish is on another guitar. Reed is big into L&L (this universe version of Dungeons & Dragons) and is pretty happy to be doing whatever, while Trish has grown close to Rosa, a new friend, over break, as well as gaining a passion for looking after and studying bugs. These things, along with general school drama and tensions with their brother Naser and parents who aren’t at home, add to Fang’s ongoing pressure to make Worm Drama a success.
Fang is coming off the school holidays with a new haircut and a passion for music like never before. They want to put as much time in this year to make it into Battle of the Bands and, hopefully, send their band ‘Worm Drama’ on a tour of success. Fang is the lead singer and guitar player of Worm Drama, while Reed is on the drums and Trish is on another guitar. Reed is big into L&L (this universe version of Dungeons & Dragons) and is pretty happy to be doing whatever, while Trish has grown close to Rosa, a new friend, over break, as well as gaining a passion for looking after and studying bugs. These things, along with general school drama and tensions with their brother Naser and parents who aren’t at home, add to Fang’s ongoing pressure to make Worm Drama a success.
Goodbye Volcano High is a cinematic visual novel, a fully voice-acted narrative adventure where you’ll make dialogue choices and then perform a mini-game during the song sequences. Unlike most visual novels, Goodbye Volcano High looks and sounds like you’re watching a vibrant Saturday afternoon cartoon rather than reading a book. The art design here is stellar, with a cast of eight core characters that are all memorable in their own ways.
If Goodbye Volcano High was an anime, it would fall into the ‘slice of life’ category, even with the world-ending asteroid looming. Most of the game is inconsequential chatter between teens. The characters’ relaxed nature regarding the meteorite is brought on by “experts who say it won’t even hit Earth.” And so Fang strums new songs together on their guitar, Trish sneaks her pet slug into school, Naser plans a corny school speech, Rosa creates a hybrid plant, and Reed puts together a killer L&L campaign.
The L&L stuff in Goodbye Volcano High is deceivingly good, with the game having all our characters talk to each other only in text on-screen, but when they break the game and speak to each other as their usual selves, it breaks away from the very rough character art and looped fantasy backgrounds back to the real world. These sections of Goodbye Volcano High are some of the best in-game Dungeons & Dragons story-telling implementations I’ve played, and there have been a few over the recent years.
The music of Goodbye Volcano High is as essential to the game as it is to Fang. You’ll have some control over a couple of songs as you pick from key phrases when Fang writes a song. As you perform the music on a stage with Worm Drama or while Fang practices in their bedroom, you’ll be strumming along using a mini-game that is much easier to play with a game controller than a mouse and keyboard. These sections aren’t super-challenging, and your success only slightly changed the story’s outcome. Ultimately, if you play Fang as a mediocre musician with a passion or a true prodigy, it remains that music is where their passions lie.
The music isn’t a selection of freeuse tracks or licensed material either. Dabu (Audio Director for Goodbye Volcano High, Omar Dabbous) creates the album of songs used in the game, along with Brigitte Naggar filling in the vocals of Fang. It’s a mix of soft melo-acoustic works to more indie-pop that matches the pop-colour-infused world of Goodbye Volcano High.
This ultra-queer game has a whole cast of characters that feel like a modern teenage group of friends. There’s drama in Goodbye Volcano High, but I was glad none was caused by hate from characters for a sexual or gender identity. There is, however, some deadnaming from Fangs’ parents, which is an unfortunate yet realistic way of showing how in some people’s lives, it’s still the older generations, parents included, as the only ones not living them live their lives as their true selves. The deadnaming may shock some, but it’s not played for shock value or shown as a torturous moment for Fang and instead a common and unfortunate thing they have been putting up with in their life for some time.
I caught a vibe from Goodbye Volcano High. Fang’s passion is understandable to me, even if I played their dialogue choices with friends, a lot more understanding than I know I have been in the past. The cast of characters here is super-likable and is the most I’ve enjoyed a High School cast in a video game since Life is Strange: Beyond the Storm. KO_OP may have taken a long time to get Goodbye Volcano High out the door, but it’s been more than worth the wait for this final product, which is one of my favourite games of the year.
