Goodbye Volcano High (2023)

Fang is a typical 18-year-old dinosaur: they’re more concerned about their band going viral than they are about what happens after graduation. But they’re about to have much bigger problems. Will they find time to figure themselves out? Can they balance a potential apocalypse and a budding romance? During hard times, what do we owe each other? Goodbye Volcano High is a cinematic narrative adventure about the beginning of a love story... and the end of an era.

Music Adventure Indie Drama Romance dinosaurs hand-drawn choices matter voice acting lgbtq+dating simulationPlayStation 4, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5

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Character

Contemporary, character-led, grave and effortless.

contemporarynostalgic
character-ledplot-driven
gravecomic
effortlessdemanding
classical in formformally daring

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From the critics

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EurogamerAlexis OngSep 20235/5
Part visual novel, part rhythm game, part interactive animated movie, Goodbye Volcano High taps into the sacred relationship between music and coming-of-age in ways that would be impossible in any other media format.
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RPG FanNick MangiaracinaSep 202395/100
Goodbye Volcano High tells the tale of eight high school students living out what's possibly the end of their existence and determining what is important to them as they face the end.
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God is a GeekLyle CarrSep 20239/10
Goodbye Volcano High is a charming visual novel packed full of great ideas, with a really interesting way of handling narrative choice.
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TheGamerTessa KaurSep 20232.5/5 stars
There are parts of this game that are highly relatable. You can scroll through social media and see what are essentially Tweets (or Posts, thanks Elon), mostly about the impending meteor impact, that capture Twitter (sure, X) culture with hilarious accuracy. The third act also shines, with tensions between characters finally bubbling over and leading to huge blowouts that feel very true to the nature of teenage friendships. Fang’s relationship to their parents and brother Naser also feel very complex, more than any other relationship they have with the other characters. But none of this is enough to carry the weight of the game’s slow first acts or make up for the game’s unrealised thematic potential, and that’s a shame. What could’ve been a meaningful meditation on the importance of community turned out half-baked. The seeds of something great were there, but it never quite had the payoff it deserved.
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KakuchopureiJonathan LeoSep 202340/100
Goodbye Volcano High just feels like a very tryhard Life Is Strange with furries and full of hodge-podge maudlin writing. I'm very sure this game will satiate its niche audience, but I can't say this is going to change anybody else's mind about visual novels made by Western developers.
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