Goodbye Volcano High launches in 2022
Games get delayed — it's not surprising. But we've been particularly quiet in the development of
Goodbye Volcano High since its announcement at last year's PlayStation 5 Digital Showcase. We wanted to take a moment to talk to everyone about our game, about where it's at, where we're going, and some of the challenges developing
Goodbye Volcano High has brought us.
We’re delaying Goodbye Volcano High until 2022 because the pandemic and last year's narrative reboot have meant our schedule has shifted.
What we've been up to
Goodbye Volcano High brings together what we think are the best elements of games, television, film, music, and storytelling. This game is a bit of a hybrid, and because of that we've been able to put together a team of people across a wide range of disciplines. From a background artist known for working on a Makoto Shinkai anime to television animators and storyboard artists to a dev team made up of graphic designers, programmers, and game designers, our team's variety comes together in this unique gaming experience we're creating.
Since our game is a fully 2D animated interactive rhythm game TV show (yes, you read that right), it requires us to write out branching scripts for every beat; storyboard every scene; create bespoke character and background art for every episode; animate every character; and score every conversation, performance, and moment in the game. Not to mention the immense task of pulling it together in-engine to give the player the best experience possible. There’s a lot to dig into: musical performance, songwriting, individual relationships that dictate the avenues that open in the story. Minigames, montages, arguments and tarot. We’ve got a ton of surprises in store.
Making sure we hit the quality bar we want to hit takes an intense attention to detail at every stage and from every member of our team and the results have been extremely gratifying for us — it just takes a long time, especially for a small team spread out across the globe. We hope the final product speaks for itself and that when you finally see it you'll be as excited to play it as we are to make it.
https://twitter.com/KOOPMode/status/1293993098104778754?s=20
A narrative reboot
A year ago, we brought on the talented narrative development team that is
Sweet Baby Inc. to fully reboot and rewrite our story and design our narrative from the ground up. With Kim Belair as our Narrative Director, Sweet Baby has been deeply embedded with our team at KO_OP to bring our characters' voices, their friendships, and their world to life.
Here's the team making our story happen:
- Kim Belair, Narrative Director
- David Bedard, Narrative Designer
- Paula Rogers, Lead Writer
- Camerin Wild, Writer
A note on keeping on
Since we announced
Goodbye Volcano High, we've seen the whole spectrum of possible responses to the game. We are so thankful for everyone who supports us and is patiently awaiting our game, from our Discord to Twitter to gaming websites and beyond.
Unfortunately, the other end of that spectrum has also come out of the woodwork to harass, mock, and direct hate speech at the members of our team and our company as a whole.
Of course, we know that is par for the course for many game developers—queer, BIPOC, marginalized creators in particular. But we consider that reality completely unacceptable, and we believe it is important for us to continue to speak out about the toxicity in our industry and the behavior we allow and — in the worst cases — encourage.
In that spirit, we've decided to make our space on Discord as safe as it can be for our community members, our moderators and ourselves by implementing a sign-up process. Our philosophy is that this is our space and not only does the conduct we allow potentially harm us and our community but it reflects what we're willing to put up with in a place we control. You wouldn't let people barge into your house and start disparaging you, your work, and the people who support it. We treat our Discord server the same way.
We've also decided to step back from Twitter and disable replies on the KO_OP account while we finish making our game. Our team's mental health and well-being while working on this project is our focus and frankly, we just want to make the best damn game that we can.
We are still thrilled to bring you a game that represents a part of ourselves: a story about identity, love, friendship and loss. Nothing will stop us from making this game.
Goodbye Volcano High: an animated cinematic narrative rhythm game
The world's ending for the dinosaurs — time to write the soundtrack.
— Kyle & Saleem