#homosexuality...in the KT Extinction

[rivvytrick]



well. i got to play goodbye volcano high, in full. one ending, anyway.

i liked its dialogue system carrying forward disco elysium's ideas of having all three options be representative of your characters thoughts, with static, button prompts you have to hold to work up the courage to say some, some that'll lock themselves out as you hover over them or change into something else. its very fun and its utilized in a good way to sell your character. thats probably the one thing i enjoy.

spoilers below.

goodbye volcano high is a cartoon network show. something so incestuous about what it is, and what its obviously cribbing from and what it wants to be, despite no real way of knowing what that Glue is that holds things together. conversations are speeches thrown at each other to faint melancholic guitar chords from start to finish, words that trail off in ways that only allude to themselves and feel as if they hold no greater meaning outside of their immediate conclusion. things are made to be screencapped, but it doesnt come to you with any sort of wisdom meant to be passed on, with characters who have obvious arcs of plans being torn apart by way of the cataclysm that will end their lives, but for who many never learned to find stability with life to begin with to earn that upheaval.

the main character, fang, is someone who begins the game in transparent reminiscence to get the audience all pumped up and sentimental for that good old Senior Year feels, and is afraid of growing up and what that entails before the news of the apocalypse hits. they have one dream, and its a knowing fault that gets confronted eventually enough: to win the battle of the bands and Make It Big, playing a hit song for crowds with their best friends. its a dream thats intentionally immature, and i can't tell if its meant to be charming in how it can be irritating that even in their moments of connecting with the world around them, things are framed around said dream, a dream that isn't fleshed out. the sheer mention of college throws anxiety at them, with a family thats less than accepting of their identity, and friends moving away or drifting into interests of their own and becoming more whole people as they reach adulthood. these are the classic coming-of-age knots that take more than what the games approach to character writing can untangle as is, but the meteor plot point... makes it not matter. high school never ends for Fang. but worse is it never even really began.

Most characters are here to reinforce that "life comes at you fast, and the futures not set in stone" theme, but with not enough to truly make it worth it. Fang's brother learns to live his own life outside of parental expectations with one big Blowing Up scene from Fang over their band posters around school he took down, but with not enough to show him even beginning such. his role remains the dependable one, and the one who tells Fang to slow down. Trish's is a story about your passions leading you to a double life between friendship rituals and togetherness and individual pursuits and identity, with the game spent with her feeling meekly distant and flighty, landing only at the eleventh hour with a "im still going to be me, and we're still going to be us" speech with Fang. it wants to be touching but this character has not gone anywhere, a character arc as complete as the sentence "I am." you sure are. what now?

Reed I...genuinely dont even remember what his deal was. His worry over the meteor seeps into everything in his life down to his dnd sessions. sad!

Naomi is probably the one with the most going on, but this might be biased because I think she's very cute in a way that the rest of the cast tries to nail but fails to outside of Rosa. I'm a sucker for student presidents who Try Their Best, and works the most well with the greater plot as she realizes shes spent her life waiting and plotting for a perfect life that will never come. theres good ideas, not fully captured here but still, about the pressure of highschool, society, and her wants of a life where she has control over her destiny, with the moments (or well moment, with her texting Fang of her longstanding crush under an alias near the beginning of the game) she's most rewarded for involving her seizing the moment and accepting her anxiety. She has swings and roundabouts! It's not just an immediate fixing! She loses her shit at the cast during the final chapters, after years of repressing her desire to have her way with the world and her life, with chapters of her almost being pushed to the side and barely being present for the sake of everyone elses internal struggles, calling out Fang for their wishy-washiness in a good ironic turnaround, confronting the fact that she won't get the life she wants and still feeling cheated over it. It rushes itself to the end afterwards, but its idea is solid, and its a decently interesting concept to put this character archetype through, after the common conception of these characters being spiteful and shallow to have them turn out to be just someone nice. Plus the dinosaur thing comes together for her design in a way where its both recognizable shes a dinosaur and also still has character in a way that is appealing, rather than the rudimentary feeling the others have, with boxy silhouettes that dont work well for their personalities that don't animate well and generally carry nothing unique outside of big design Gimmicks like horns or frills. big fan, id kiss her snout and pet her horn...thing.

either way, like i said it doesnt matter. its a game about time and a lack of it, with a meteor that cuts off every character arc right before theyre able to become the people they want to be, without us getting the time to see the people they were before, for a game that crawled out from under development hell, and yet without the time to finish so many of the scenes it clearly had planned. but it doesn't matter. that's its moral. high school is something that sucks, in a world that sucks, and you wont find the closure you'll want but when its over, thank god, it'll be over. with that, this game is too.

best of luck to KO_OP, for finding a way to spite the god that clearly didnt want this to exist, and i hope theyre able to laugh and look back at this as the awkward chapter itll end up being in their history that haunts them no longer.

#goodbye volcano high #homosexuality...in the KT Extinction #dinosaurs #indie games #video games #game review #rivvythoughts #visual novel #rhythm games #dont ask about the rhythm game part its the undyne boss fight mechanic with osu circles sprinkled here #to elevator music ethel cain