Goodbye Volcano High/Development history

## Early development (2018 – 2020)

### Early concept

Kyle McKernan mentioned the game started as a "joke more than anything". The initial idea of the game that would become Goodbye Volcano High was born during a brainstorming session between Kyle McKernan, Saleem Dabbous, and Samuel Boucher in 2018. As dating sims were growing in popularity at the time, the conversation led to discussing dating sim ideas. Someone in the discussion suggested a dating sim focused on dinosaurs, which lead to the idea of dinosaurs dealing with the end of the world. When asked why the team focused on why they should focus on dinosaurs, the counter-question became "why not dinosaurs?"

In the initial stages of development, the game was called “*Jurassic High*”. It was more ironic and lighthearted in tone, and had three player characters, each with their own backstories, perspectives, and potential romantic partners. The three scenarios interwove because the cast knew each other, however, this resulted in difficulties because all the player choice diluted the focused story the writers wanted to tell, and make it harder for fully realized character growth and arcs.

As development progressed, the team began moving away from the ironic, lighthearted dating sim concept in favor of a more serious and emotional cinematic narrative game.

The game’s name became a source of debate, and after officially naming the school Volcano High, the team began proposing new names for the game. “*Goodbye Volcano High*” was settled on as the game’s title, emblematic of the melancholy coming-of-age narrative.

Kyle McKernan was the game designer and co-directed with Saleem Dabbous. The game’s main artists were Ellen Alsop and Lucie Viatge. The game was initially written by Kate Gray but was later fired after the reveal trailer; the game was rewritten by Kim Belair, Camerin Wild, and Paula Rogers.

At some point prior to the official reveal, Sony acquired the console exclusivity rights.

### Inspirations

In interviews, the developers have cited several inspirations for the game’s story and gameplay. In terms of gameplay, they have cited *Life is Strange* and *Night in the Woods*. For its story and character interactions, they have cited television series *Riverdale*, as well as Japanese anime *Free!* and *Devilman Crybaby*. The developers have said the game’s visual presentation is heavily inspired by anime.

### Characters

A total of nine major characters were envisioned for the game in its early concept. Three characters – Fang, Rosa, and Leo – were selected to be the player characters during the game’s early vision. However, in fleshing out the characters and their stories, the team found that Fang was naturally suited to serve as a leading character. As the game shifted into a cinematic narrative game, Fang took the role of the lead character, Rosa became a secondary character, and Leo was cut.

### Music

Music for the game was composed by KO\_OP’s in-house composer, Dabu, who had also composed for Winding Worlds and Dwarf Fortress. Fang’s singing voice was performed by Brigitte Naggar, known by her stage name Common Holly. “Constellations” was the first song completed for the game.

### 2020 reveal

As the game’s development had not progressed to include demonstrable gameplay footage, a Reveal Trailer was animated by co-director Kyle Mckernan. The trailer depicted scenes from the game’s story at the time that it had been written. This trailer premiered during Sony’s PlayStation 5 “Future of Gaming” event, which revealed the game to the public and gave the release window of 2021.

## Post-reveal development (2020 – 2023)

### Narrative reboot

Shortly after the game’s reveal, negative commentary came in about past articles writer Kate Gray had written for the video game news publication Kotaku. Due to this, she was removed from the game and let go from KO\_OP. Kate also wrote an apology, saying she never intended to hurt anyone.

Shortly after, KO\_OP collaborated with collaborating with Sweet Baby Inc. to rewrite the game’s story, with Kim Belair as the narrative director, Paula Rogers as lead writer, and writer Camerin Wild. The collaboration was announced on August 13, 2020. According to a 2021 interview, the rewrite of the game’s story and narrative took two passes before the changes were settled on. Many character motivations and personalities were changed in the process.

### Harassment

The game’s visual style, use of anthropomorphic characters, heavy LGBT+ themes, and being funded by Canadian taxpayers, resulted in backlash and harassment towards the developers.

### *Snoot Game*

(**NOTE**: This Wiki also has **strict** rules regarding *Snoot Game*, please see the Rules Page This section is an exception for understanding context surrounding *Snoot Game* and the nature of the harassment.)

Users of the online imageboard 4chan developed a parody visual novel released in June 2021 called *Snoot Game*. Developed by "Cavemanon Studios", it developed its own online fanbase. While there is some crossover of *GVH* and *SG* fans, with some *SG* fans being appreciative of *GVH* for inspiring *SG*, many *SG* fans still chose to harass KO\_OP with Discord raids and replying to social media posts with images from the game.

*SG* was developed about two years before *GVH* was finished. It worked off of concept art and material available at the time, resulting in discrepancies with *GVH* such as Naser being in senior year and a jock, Trish being the passionate leader of the band, Reed being a drug using savant, Stella is effectively a new character and Sage doesn't appear outside of a brief mention. Outside of Anon Mouse, the human protagonist, some new original characters were added. The character art intentionally closely resembles the concept art.

While fangames are often seen as positive things, *SG* has a far more negative nature and is often called an anti-fangame. This includes black-coding Trish with characters using of both forms of the N-word (with a triceratops 'twist'), having a Japanese stereotype as one of the teachers (Mr. Tsuki), Rosa being a Latina stereotype (she is also cis-gender, though Rosa being trans wasn't known at time), Trish commits a horrid act of doxxing against the protagonist, a rather off-key reference used to title the school shooting ending (the RenPy file of which is also called the "KO\_OP ending" as added insult), and rather liberal use of racist and ableist slurs, mostly specifically invented ones. Furthermore, the game features optional sexualized content of Fang and Trish, despite them being high schoolers.

*SG* is often cited as being 'anti-LGBT'. This is true of the early drafts, and even the final game can still be problematic. A point of contention is that *SG*'s Fang (who will be referred to as "Lucy", as this is her ultimately preferred name, and to distance her from Fang) is only pretending to be nonbinary because of Trish's encouragement and her own confusion/need for attention. It is entirely possible for someone to end up nudged into an LGBT mindset, akin to how LGBT people may be 'in the closet' (pretending to be cis/straight) for safety or acceptance. However, within contemporary society *SG*'s sentiment can be very harmful, as it validates the idea that LGBT people are just doing it for attention or out of confusion. *SG* also attempts to make Lucy more feminine, having her wear a long yellow dress in ending 3 which greatly contrasts her grunge rocker aesthetic.

The game's website mentions it is supposed to be a parody and *"This game was developed as a critique of Goodbye Volcano High's characters"* despite the fact that little was known about them at the time. Moreover, the finished game has a wholly original story and interpretation of the characters, making the end result less of a parody or critique and more of an alternative interpretation.*SG* includes a link to the *GVH* reveal trailer, with the protagonist calling it 'a shitty cartoon knockoff.'

Looking past these jabs, *SG* may be seen as being occasionally mature about its subject matter with a valuable moral at its core about how no one is the only one in the world, and other people are often struggling with their own issues. The 'school shooting' ending could be viewed as treating the tragedy with weight (outside of the previously mentioned title.) The cast could be seen as acting the way they do for understandable reasons. While Anon acts terribly sometimes, the point of the story is about him growing up and out of his ways, with most of the cast scolding him for his bad behavior. While Naomi and Trish are manipulative, they have their reasons, and Naser's physical violence is more out of emotion more than personal evil.

Ultimately, however, KO\_OP did not appreciate the portrayals of their characters they felt were shown as violent, psychotic and manipulative people, nor did they appreciate them being sexualized. They felt *SG* was not created in good faith and were disheartened people would go to such lengths to mock their work which was not released at the time, especially for a piece of LGBT media trying to help vulnerable LGBT teens navigate a rough world. KO\_OP has banned discussion of the game in their Discord. KO\_OP denies that *SG* had impact over the narrative reboot of *GVH*, attributing it mainly to Kate Gray's removal and wanting to mirror real world COVID-19 reactions.

Despite all of these aspects, Cavemanon never apologized to KO\_OP for their fanbase (or seemed to communicate to their fanbase to back off the KO\_OP trolling), or seemed to ever address the debatable problematic content in their game despite that they released multiple updates for *SG*. In November 2022, KO\_OP collaborated with Kotaku to write an article detailing the harassment. This furthermore drew the ire of some *SG* fans who felt KO\_OP portrayed *SG* in a too negative light, while some *GVH* fans felt the article was neutral and justified by this point.

In a livestream, the developers of Cavemanon played *GVH*. While they were not satisfied with the final product, the lead developer of Cavemanon still complimented KO\_OP for committing to releasing *GVH*. He commented *GVH* releasing was a "genuine good thing to happen" due to it being an indie piece of media actually being released, as committing and succeeding to the arduous task of releasing an indie game can be daunting. In comparison, other indie projects often end up stalling or not being released. He also said *GVH* has decent music, but also erroneously claimed *GVH* was made with "millions" of dollars, when it was just around one million.

### Delays

While the game had originally been announced to release sometime in 2021, many compounding factors, including the narrative reboot, struggles with remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic, trying to avoid developer crunch, and ongoing anti-LGBT harassment hindered the game’s development.

On August 19, 2021, KO\_OP announced that the game was delayed to 2022. On November 30, KO\_OP announced a second delay, this time to a release window of Summer 2023. This announcement came along with the reveal of the Teaser Trailer and a new song, “Don't Call”.
On February 23, 2023, the game’s Story Trailer premiered during Sony’s State of Play presentation with a new song “Reunion” and a new release date of June 15, 2023. On May 11, 35 days before the release date, KO\_OP announced one final delay to August 29, 2023, to avoid crunch while maintaining the level of quality they wanted for the game.

### Demos

In late 2022, two demos were branched from the main game to be showcased, and the development of both demos were finalized in March 2023. “Demo 1” was created to showcase the gameplay, while “Demo 2” showcased the game’s narrative and character interactions. Both demos lacked the polish present in the final game, including audio mixing, lighting, and animation. Both were made to be demoed on PlayStation 5 consoles and therefore required a controller to play, despite the final game supporting keyboard and mouse input. The demos also only displayed PlayStation controller inputs regardless of what controller was used and could only be played with English subtitles and UI.

Demo 1 was showcased first at the Game Developers Conference’s “Day of the Devs” curated game selection from March 20 – 24, 2023. It was showcased again the same weekend at PAX East 2023. Demo 1 was available to download via Steam for LudoNarraCon, which ran from May 4 – 8.

Demo 2 was showcased at Tribeca Festival as part of its curated selection of narrative-focused games. The demo was available to play from June 9 – 17. It was later made available to download on Steam for Steam Next Fest, which ran from June 19 – 26. Despite the event ending, the demo remained up on Steam, and KO\_OP announced on July 5 that they would keep the demo on Steam for the time being. The demo was showcased a second time at Steam’s Visual Novel Fest, which ran from August 7 – 14.

## Release

On August 21, KO\_OP announced that the game had gone gold and would be released on its target date.

## Reception

### Awards

The game was awarded the Tribeca Games Award on June 15, 2023, during Demo 2's premier at the Tribeca Festival. The jury's comments were: "For how much this game felt of the moment and questions whether you should still care about anything when everything sucks — complete with doom scrolling, dinosaurs and high school band drama."

It was also nominated for The Game Awards for "Games for Impact" (games which talk about relevant themes and social issues), but did not win the award.

## References

1. ↑ KO\_OP Twitch stream
2. ↑ https://kotaku.com/goodbye-volcano-high-ko\_op-snoot-game-4chan-ps4-ps5-1849731598