Goodbye Volcano High from indie studio KO_OP is a charming story-driven cinematic adventure that you have to check out on PS5. Find out why in our Goodbye Volcano Hight review!
Goodbye Volcano High from indie studio KO_OP is a charming story-driven cinematic adventure that you have to check out on PS5. The team at KO_OP previously gave us the quirky and colorful puzzle game GNOG, which is certainly a very different type of experience than Goodbye Volcano High. For this journey, you’ll be taking on the role of Fang, a senior student at the titular Volcano High, who’s also in a band. They play bass and are the lead singer of Worm Drama, alongside Reed on drums and Trish on guitar and backup vocals.
As the game mentions, as soon as you decide to start a new game, the choices you make during your time with Goodbye Volcano High will matter since they will influence the many relationships you’ll have with other characters. This means that new content may become available depending on what decisions you’ve made along the way. When you make a choice that might have affected your relationship with a character, you’ll notice an icon pop in the corner of the screen.
As you can see from the trailer and screens in this Goodbye Volcano High review, the game’s cast consists of various anthropomorphic individuals living in a colorful world. Fang is a blue-gray pterodactyl. Reed is a pinkish velociraptor. Trish, as expected, is a violet triceratops – oh, and her real name’s Patricia. There are many more characters to meet, but I’ll let you get a better sense of their personalities and traits when you play the game!
Speaking of which, to play the game, you’ll be using the left analog stick and the Square, Triangle, Circle, X, L2, and R2 buttons to make choices along the way, picking this or that action or deciding what your next set of words should be during some specific scenarios. You’ll also take on musical mini-games as you use the left analog stick to move in the direction of beats that come from the top and sides of the screen so that you can hit them at the right time.
You will notice some larger notes pop up around the screen, for which you’ll have to press the indicated action button in time with the music when the outer circle is touching the inner circle. There will also be some arrows to consider, for which you’ll need to place the indicated direction on the left or right analog stick as the arrows overlap. You might also need to quickly press a button so that you can move an icon toward the choice you want to make.
Some of the characters in Goodbye Volcano High are into playing L&L – that would be Legends and Lore. As you can imagine, it is a play on Dungeons and Dragons. Fang doesn’t really play, but since Reed and Trish are going to play over the weekend, she decides to join them, along with Rosa and Naomi, whom Reed got closer with over the summer due to their love of L&L. Fang is not a fantasy dork, but everyone is so hyped about it, she figures it wouldn’t hurt to give L&L a chance. Will she travel with the group to the Crystal Caverns? Or will she go on a journey through the Desert Ruins?
Trophy-wise, Goodbye Volcano High has a full trophy list with a Platinum trophy for you to work on. The list includes 17 Bronze trophies, 17 Silver trophies, and 3 Gold trophies for you to try to unlock. The first trophy to pop will be for writing a new song, which happens early in the game. Along with trophies for completing every story chapter, there are trophies for unlocking all photos, all flashbacks, and seeing all extra content for all characters in Goodbye Volcano High. Oh, and there are also trophies tied to L&L.
You can customize your experience by visiting the settings menu. Along with being able to choose if dialogue should autoplay or not, changing the language of the game text, enabling or disabling subtitles, changing their colors, and choosing the backdrop opacity for the text box, there are also some options for accessibility purposes. You can activate generous timing so that you have more time for completing timed mini-games, musical performances, and dialogue choices, slow dialogue so more time passes between lines of voiced character dialogue, enable or disable resistant choices, and activate or deactivate the DualSense haptic feedback.
Goodbye Volcano High is a charming story-driven cinematic experience that you have to check out on PlayStation 5. Fang and the rest of the characters you’ll meet make for a very charming cast. As you take on the different musical mini-games and other stuff here and there and get to meet all of the characters, you’ll quickly start to feel a solid connection to what they’re going through as you reminisce about your time in school back in the day… or right about now! Goodbye Volcano High is out on PlayStation 5 with a $29.99 asking price. There’s also a PlayStation 4 version of the game available as a separate purchase for the same price.
Disclaimer
This Goodbye Volcano High review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by KO_OP.
