Goodbye Volcano High - "The Future of Gaming", The Parody Game of the Beloved Snoot Game Franchise

KO_OP probably doesn't want to admit it but, as a whole, without Snoot Game making the characters/designs as popular as they are now? No one would remember or really care about GVH. It was just a niche game from the get go due to the audience it appealed for
Snoot, in many ways, kept GVH relevant.
I mean, there was a mention in the leak, how some of the KO_OP devss liked Snoot game and how it got across the message they originally wanted to have, before GVH was getting slashed and rebooted multiple times.
 
Snoot, in many ways, kept GVH relevant.
We're way beyond "in many ways", snoot is the only reason GVH has any relevancy in the first place.

The story is the result of throwing away half the work of the previous pedo-goonerette, then trying to patchwork a story out of what's left, and, unless you piece it back together yourself, it makes absolutely no sense, has no events, has no character growth, and the end of the game tries to pretend that it does have all of that.

Like, seriously, would anyone seriously listen to a band of Literally Whos in the middle of the street while the planet is getting fucking obliterated by a meteor?

And on the technical side it's a game abusing unity's animation framework to try to be a VN, with mediocre rigs that regularly fail to line up, missing/popping in environments because the devs have never heard of pre-loading assets, and a shitty rhythm game slapped in there for no reason (why did dustborn have the same thing? I wonder).

The only good thing about GVH was the concept art, and even then, snoot improved on that.
 
Like, seriously, would anyone seriously listen to a band of Literally Whos in the middle of the street while the planet is getting fucking obliterated by a meteor?
It's been over a year at this point but the fact the game ends with every character fucking dying by meteor (in a game that really doesn't have the tone nor build up to make that land) is so fucking funny.
It feels like what the parody game would've had as an ending.
 
I still maintain that someone could pick up the pieces that GVH left strewn all over the place. Rehash GVH's concept with elements of Snoot Game as a mod and actually make a really good visual novel about teenagers coping with the end of the world. Think about it, three of the four characters all have excellent arcs right there just waiting to be written. Fang has to accept who she is and stop running away from the inalienable aspects of her femininity. Naser has a totally fucked up work/life balance what with their parents' expectations for both him and Fang being dumped entirely on him and Naomi being the control freak she is. Trish has separated herself from her family and is suffering because of it, coming to repair her relationship with her family as you progress towards the good endings. And Reed could be... Maybe a hedonistic laissez-faire nihilist having to learn to appreciate his life and understanding how his nihilism was negatively affecting those around him? Cavemanon played through GVH during an 7 hour behemoth of a stream and offered a lot of interesting ideas. For example, midway through GVH there is a scene where Fang and Reed are hanging out on the school roof, after the school system has been closed down by the government. Ominously, Reed is sitting facing outwards, with his legs dangling off the side of the building, while Fang is sitting the opposite way, her feet firmly on the surface of the roof. Imagine how it would be to start off ending 1 with something as catastrophic as Reed suddenly slipping himself off the edge of the school roof and committing suicide mid-conversation with Fang. Especially if it was actually pulled off and didn't feel forced or embellished. Or what if part-ways through the game- as the geopolitical situation is collapsing- Fang and Naser totally stop hearing from their parents who started the game most of the way across Pangea on a business trip, and are now having to cross the entire continent by car to see their children again in time because air travel has been relegated to government and military usage. And they just never hear from them again, their fate left totally ambiguous and Fang and Naser are suddenly left to fend entirely for themselves, forced to repair their brother/sister relationship or to bitterly die with much unneeded animosity towards each other. Or if all of the stress of the entire events of the game leading to a bad ending causes a nasty breakup with Naomi that pushes Naser over the edge and causes him to snap, brutally attacking Naomi. Maybe even killing her? The bad endings depicting Fang's deteriorating mental state as her entire life and loved ones absolutely fall apart around her in a downward spiral as the world comes to an end.
 
I still maintain that someone could pick up the pieces that GVH left strewn all over the place.
I'm curious how much of the original story would be good without the "do the writing for the authors" sparked by the shattered storyline the game ended with, that kind of shittily written characters with a bunch of random ideas is a perfect opportunity to selectively ignore things to write a real character with what's left.

If I remember correctly, it would just have been a shitty uwu trans dating game. Maybe the game being shit was better for the art/universe of snoot.

Fang has to accept who she is and stop running away from the inalienable aspects of her femininity.
Naser has a totally fucked up work/life balance what with their parents' expectations for both him and Fang being dumped entirely on him and Naomi being the control freak she is.
Trish has separated herself from her family and is suffering because of it, coming to repair her relationship with her family as you progress towards the good endings.
And Reed could be... Maybe a hedonistic laissez-faire nihilist having to learn to appreciate his life and understanding how his nihilism was negatively affecting those around him?

Reading this again, now I'm thinking that these are the consequences of actually using character traits that GVH would treat like fashion accessories instead (fang is a tranny, but not really, she just has ~Tranny Aesthetics~ , Naser is just that good and perfect, Trish is a stronk independent Wxmyn, and Reed is not blasé, he's just that cool.)

The meteor itself is also just a fashion accessory, it has almost zero impact on the game, it's supposed to be an allegory for the end of the last year of school, but it's done in such a horrible way that you could replace all references to it to "the end of school" and you would have absolutely zero change to the game, besides the EMF interference.

It's like they're completely incapable of seeing story beats and characters deeper than their summary, is this what media illiteracy is?
 
I still maintain that someone could pick up the pieces that GVH left strewn all over the place. Rehash GVH's concept with elements of Snoot Game as a mod and actually make a really good visual novel about teenagers coping with the end of the world.
I think even for all it's faults in a hypothetnical GVH Encore I'd want them to try and follow the leaked original script, it may turn out to not be great but I'd be far more interested in seeing GVH being what it could've been than trying to rewrite it into being a good game.
 
To put another stone in the "literally any other story would have been a better story" pile, I remembered that Don't Look Up, a shitty allegory/strawman about climate change, is a much better application of the "Meteor Armageddon" premise.

Because if you put a femtosecond of thought in GVH's world, the government is an absolute, abject failure, and the last chapter of the game should never have happened.

Realistically, if a meteor is going to hit the planet, and, as stated in the game, there's over 60% chance of it happening in three months, governments would enforce martial law and command literally everyone to build underground bunkers/fortify underground rail infrastructure.

Within a few days of the impact, while the surface would be fucked up due to high CO2 and extreme dust particulates, it would mostly just be fairly dark and very cold, and it would be available for raids and reclamation. Energy would be trivial if you use geothermal electricity, so underground farms would really not be hard to build.

Within about 2-5 years (I'm finding different figures online), solar photosynthesis becomes possible again, and within the next 10-50 years or so, you can recolonize the surface, global temps would stay low for a while. (Nowhere near FrostPunk levels, think -10°F or around -25°c on average, most of Pangea was closer to the Equator line).



There is definitely space for a VN describing the life of teenagers whose life gets thrown upside down because of a major cataclysmic event (which is not a fucking zombie apocalype/societal collapse scenario, we have too many of those, but more of a cooperative/martial law thing), and how they find their identity amongst the chaos, but again, that'd be actually spending more time worldbuilding than GVH ever spent designing Fang's snoot.
 
To put another stone in the "literally any other story would have been a better story" pile, I remembered that Don't Look Up, a shitty allegory/strawman about climate change, is a much better application of the "Meteor Armageddon" premise.

Because if you put a femtosecond of thought in GVH's world, the government is an absolute, abject failure, and the last chapter of the game should never have happened.

Realistically, if a meteor is going to hit the planet, and, as stated in the game, there's over 60% chance of it happening in three months, governments would enforce martial law and command literally everyone to build underground bunkers/fortify underground rail infrastructure.

Within a few days of the impact, while the surface would be fucked up due to high CO2 and extreme dust particulates, it would mostly just be fairly dark and very cold, and it would be available for raids and reclamation. Energy would be trivial if you use geothermal electricity, so underground farms would really not be hard to build.

Within about 2-5 years (I'm finding different figures online), solar photosynthesis becomes possible again, and within the next 10-50 years or so, you can recolonize the surface, global temps would stay low for a while. (Nowhere near FrostPunk levels, think -10°F or around -25°c on average, most of Pangea was closer to the Equator line).



There is definitely space for a VN describing the life of teenagers whose life gets thrown upside down because of a major cataclysmic event (which is not a fucking zombie apocalype/societal collapse scenario, we have too many of those, but more of a cooperative/martial law thing), and how they find their identity amongst the chaos, but again, that'd be actually spending more time worldbuilding than GVH ever spent designing Fang's snoot.

I was also under the impression that the K-T extinction event involved slow starvation as the food chain gets disrupted by a lack of sunlight. Rather than the instantaneous death from explosion or suffocation that GVH implied would happen, justifying one last concert for some reason.
 
the K-T extinction event involved slow starvation as the food chain gets disrupted by a lack of sunlight. Rather than the instantaneous death from explosion or suffocation that GVH implied would happen
I'm seeing a bit of both, there was a huge IR flare because of the disruption of the ozone layer and kinetic energy exploding parts of the atmosphere, pretty much cooking most of the directly exposed planet on sight, most of what survived died because of a lack of active photosynthesis, ruining the food chain.

So, you know, the worst place to be on impact would be under direct sky, open air, in (relative) proximity to the crash site.

AKA the place where the last concert takes place.

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...this has to be intentional.
 
I'm seeing a bit of both, there was a huge IR flare because of the disruption of the ozone layer and kinetic energy exploding parts of the atmosphere, pretty much cooking most of the directly exposed planet on sight, most of what survived died because of a lack of active photosynthesis, ruining the food chain.
Narratively, it should be an easy fix. Nothing is stopping the writers from making the meteor absurdly massive to the point that any hopes of survival are silly to hold onto. What could start as an astrological event of pop culture significance, this enormous exo-body coming remarkably close to Earth, could slowly unfold and unfurl into a collapsing geopolitical situation as the truth slowly comes out that the governments have known much longer than the people ever did that this 'near miss' was actually a direct collision course the whole time. Otherwise you lean into a post Apocalypse, life-in-the-vault story with survival bunkers and shelters like others have mentioned in the thread. And while that does sound actually very cool, it's obviously not what GVH was going for in the slightest.
(Though a mix of the two could work, the protagonists being left to die knowing they weren't some of the "lucky" few condemned to hide away for years to come so they can fulfill their duty of continuing dino-humanity. Could be interesting?)
 
Narratively, it should be an easy fix. Nothing is stopping the writers from making the meteor absurdly massive to the point that any hopes of survival are silly to hold onto. What could start as an astrological event of pop culture significance, this enormous exo-body coming remarkably close to Earth, could slowly unfold and unfurl into a collapsing geopolitical situation as the truth slowly comes out that the governments have known much longer than the people ever did that this 'near miss' was actually a direct collision course the whole time. Otherwise you lean into a post Apocalypse, life-in-the-vault story with survival bunkers and shelters like others have mentioned in the thread. And while that does sound actually very cool, it's obviously not what GVH was going for in the slightest.
(Though a mix of the two could work, the protagonists being left to die knowing they weren't some of the "lucky" few condemned to hide away for years to come so they can fulfill their duty of continuing dino-humanity. Could be interesting?)
Man, how is it that any permutation of the premise is so interesting, and yet GVH went with the only one that makes zero fucking sense.
The only way I can think of changing the premise but keeping the intent would be to just delete the meteor.

I've been wasting a bunch of time watching stories made by stereotypical zoomers (especially Hazbin Hotel, but also a bunch of books) and I'm slowly being convinced that millenial/zoomer publishers/script hunters in the entertainment industry have forgotten what stories are like. Not even good or bad stories, just stories at all.
It's always the same problem: If you spend a second thinking about the implications, the premise never fits, or the story only happens because the characters are dumb.

The premise is that sinners should be redeemed so they don't get slaughtered by invincible angels.
The setting is a Hell that, honestly, is not... that bad a place? You can't die (unless killed w/ an angel weapon), there are clearly laws and regulations (you can't build large scale cities, have businesses, and have enforced social classes without those), what's differentiating Hell from just being a shitty place in California?
But... We learn early on that angels can be killed.
Vaggie could have opened her fucking mouth and the entire premise would fall before the story happens.
Actually, scratch that, she's been in Hell for at least one year at the start of the show. With how frequent shootings and massacres appear to be, wouldn't anybody have noticed that she just does not take damage?!
Charlie could have visited heaven (which she kinda does) and realized it's probably the same shit, just less violent.
Also, scratch all that about angel weapons, apparently angels can be killed with regular weapons. Somehow.
What about hellspawn? Do they deserve to be redeemed? Can they be redeemed? Do they even have sins to atone for? (I'm thinking about the cardboard stand called Millie)
 
You can't die
Oh, it's actually more convoluted and stupid. I've happened to see a video on youtube on this topic. So, a demon can die, but will reappear after some time, and I am led to believe that this process is painfull. But you also can be "lucky" enough to be born there. In that case you only have one life. Why is it even like this? No Idea, you should ask Viv. But I am willing to bet actual money that the reason is very gay. Speaking of which, will that Charlie chick die if killed, since she seems to be born there?
From the perspective of someone who did not watch it, the stupidest thing in my oppinion is that deal with angel weapons. More precisely, the whole "discovery" that these can be used to end angels for good and how everyone seems extremly surprised by the fact. Like, let's follow the logic. Demons were initially angels who rebelled against god and for doing so they were felled in hell. And in this particular interpretation, sinners also become demons and work by the same rules. These demons(former fallen angels) can not truly die without being killed by an angelic weapon(it disintegrates soul or something). And now audience is supposed to believe that for all that time from the relocating all the former angels in hell, nobody who witnessed a complete death of a seemingly unkillable demon(former angel or a postdiluvian equivalent) and did not put 2 and 2 together? I can't imagine a suitable explanation of why demons are this stupid.
In GVH meteor might be interpreted as the end of the current world. "You are adult now" and all that.Metaphors of this kind only work if you don't think about them too much, and you are not supposed to. Or, since we are supposed to see the world through Fang, maybe she's the only one who sees and hears about that meteor. Like, a set of audiovisual hallucinations which add a layer of meteor onto objective reality through her perception. And when she speaks about the meteor nobody is confronting her on the fact that she's a bit in the head because either they don't want to offend or don't give a damn. Explains why nobody else acts like there's a meteor.
On the other hand, Hazbin and its derivatives are agressively stupid and the story only matters as far as giving an impression that something is happening, while audience is busy with parings and all that shit.
 
the reason is because viv is retarded and didn't realise until the last minute that making your characters de-facto invincible kills literally any and all tension, so she janked in some weird revival system & got rid of it for the hellspawn.
The Daedra from Elder Scrolls is actually a good example of a society of people who can't die and know they can't die, a society whose dynamics actually had thought put into them by the writers.
 
some weird revival system
Honestly, that's the part I have the least problem with. They are in hell for their wrongdoings, they are supposed to be tortured there up to the second coming. Being unexpireable through the conventional physical trauma is extremly beneficial to that end. Thing is, they are not being tortured. They just live in a place that seems nicer than New York from Escape from New York. I bet we don't see God because He left after seeing how gay his creation ended up.
God saw all that he had made, and it was very cringe. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all this cringe.
Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that cringe he had done.


The key part is: HH will be remembered, despite all the problems, despite Vivs personal issues that became unseparable from the production, despite the fact that majority of humor consists of saying "fuck" and "sex". GVH will allways be remembered by the derivative work it spawned. That would be kinda sad, but from what I've gained developers don't care that much and moved on. The only people who still care is the likes of Nanaki.
 
A bit late, but Wani made a surprise appeared on the Top Rated Steam Releases of 2024. I Wani Hug That Gator is the 21st best rated game in Steam on 2024.
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In comparison, GVH was number 875 in 2023
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There is definitely space for a VN describing the life of teenagers whose life gets thrown upside down because of a major cataclysmic event (which is not a fucking zombie apocalype/societal collapse scenario, we have too many of those, but more of a cooperative/martial law thing), and how they find their identity amongst the chaos, but again, that'd be actually spending more time worldbuilding than GVH ever spent designing Fang's snoot.
Out of these devs, we would just get Last of Us 2 again, bigot sandwiches and lesbian drama and all that.
A bit late, but Wani made a surprise appeared on the Top Rated Steam Releases of 2024. I Wani Hug That Gator is the 21st best rated game in Steam on 2024.
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In comparison, GVH was number 875 in 2023
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Now that the dust has settled, is Wani actually good? It doesn't have a crutch of GVH to stand on and you are expected to buy it this time, so I would expect Cavemanon's writing chops were actually put to the test here, to be rated so high.
 
Now that the dust has settled, is Wani actually good? It doesn't have a crutch of GVH to stand on and you are expected to buy it this time, so I would expect Cavemanon's writing chops were actually put to the test here, to be rated so high.
Well, if you compared to Snoot it does have a few hitches here and there and def will feel like it falls shorter in some spots. If compared on it's own, I'd say it's a fairly decent VN story with some nice additions and story that can pull on a few heart strings, plus the added bonus of having a crippled character who doesn't want special treatment, but instead wants to be treated like everyone else.
 
Now that the dust has settled, is Wani actually good? It doesn't have a crutch of GVH to stand on and you are expected to buy it this time, so I would expect Cavemanon's writing chops were actually put to the test here, to be rated so high.
It's a solid first attempt at a longform standalone story (they have a bunch of shorts on their website, and exit665 has nothing released yet), they can't fall back to 4chan humor anymore, and they're aiming for a more serious tone, which means that the game overall feels less like an elaborate shitpost and more like an actual game from a competent studio.

As far as the entire game goes, using the Cavemanon© Rating Scale™ (-10 for horrendous but rememberable, 0 for completely and utterly forgettable, 10 for amazing), it's probably a solid 7 (snoot would be an 8, maybe 8.5), It still has the decisions well incorporated and will definitely filter out NiceGuy Incels to ending 1, but it could probably have used a few more exciting/intense moments.
The intense moments that are there, though, they're great. On par or better than snoot.

Strongly recommended. Go hug the gator.
 
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