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

[RSLUG30]

Memes aside, it's genuinely a good visual novel. The kind you could recommend to others without having to explain the disaster that was GVH.
Well worth the 15 buck price tag if you were to ask me. You WILL hug that gator, you WILL make sure she succeeds.

 

[Serbian Peacekeepers]

Finished my first playthrough and....yeah its good.
It takes all the best part of snoot game and improves on them, and while It still has flaws, I say its well worth a buy or at least a play through.

And for anyone whos curious, I noticed 3 Snoot game references, those being Dino-Moes, including anchovy pizza, the Taxi Driver from Snoot is a character that shows up, and there's a image in the game thats a direct reference to a scene in Snoot game.

Did some digging through the game files, gonna put some findings in the spoiler.

Spoiler: Said Findings

Much Like snoot game its clear Wani Is going too/was meant to have a epilogue for ending 4, assets exist for it already including another animation and character sprites, and I imagine like snoot game it will be added post launch. This does mean Ending 4 is the only ending without a epilogue,

Also the script for the first part of the game is called "Anons Cousin goes to CalArts" which I though was funny.
also the girl on the metro train is called hoe.

 

[Burnt Effigy]

4chan now has 2 games about actual minorities that require real accomodations.

I'm still trying to find a single one from KO_PE or Sweet Baby.

 

[RSLUG30]

Did some digging through the game files, gonna put some findings in the spoiler.

Spoiler: Said Findings

Much Like snoot game its clear Wani Is going too/was meant to have a epilogue for ending 4, assets exist for it already including another animation and character sprites, and I imagine like snoot game it will be added post launch. This does mean Ending 4 is the only ending without a epilogue,

Also the script for the first part of the game is called "Anons Cousin goes to CalArts" which I though was funny.
also the girl on the metro train is called hoe.

Spoiler

The epilogue is reachable by completing every other ending, though that's supposedly buggy and if you miss your opportunity to see it then you're out of luck.
You can reach the epilogue manually by changing the storyline.py file, specifically by adding a # to the start of line 86 and adding "return True" to the line below.

 

[Serbian Peacekeepers]

Spoiler

The epilogue is reachable by completing every other ending, though that's supposedly buggy and if you miss your opportunity to see it then you're out of luck.
You can reach the epilogue manually by changing the storyline.py file, specifically by adding a # to the start of line 86 and adding "return True" to the line below.

Ah I see, yeah It bugged the fuck out for me, actually had a few bugs when playing the game, none major but more than I did with snoot game.

 

[Dave.]

Completed E1 and here are my thoughts:

Spoiler

E1 Inco reminds me of Jack Scalfani. A guy out of touch with people's emotions and feelings and prattles on in narcissism about his own grandiose sense of self that he ends up unintentionally hurting and abusing people around him. Seriously, watching Olivia's interactions with Inco remind of those Jack On The Go shows I'd see with both them together it's fucking cringe and sad at the same time.

 

[Generic Name #37]

I finished Wani with ending 4 yesterday and I feel like it’s been something that I needed in my life that I didn’t even know I was missing. It’s certainly in my top five games of all time for me.

 

[Jhonny Jhon]

Just got all endings, and I have to say... Snoot > Wani.

 

[Blacklight]

It's been a wild 3 1/2 years from the announcement of the original GBVH to the full release of Wani. It's also a little sad to think that this thread has basically reached the end of it's life. I'm sure there are going to be little side stories coming out for Wani, but baring some out of left field news like a sequel to Volcano High this really is the end of the road.

To all my fellow snootbros, I lift a toast to you all and thank you for the fun posts.

 

[Neet Tokusatsu]

It's been a wild 3 1/2 years from the announcement of the original GBVH to the full release of Wani. It's also a little sad to think that this thread has basically reached the end of it's life. I'm sure there are going to be little side stories coming out for Wani, but baring some out of left field news like a sequel to Volcano High this really is the end of the road.

To all my fellow snootbros, I lift a toast to you all and thank you for the fun posts.

One would expect the release of IWHTG would keep this thread alive for a while, but it seems it wasn't the case.

I bought the game like a week ago, once i have the time to play it, i would like to post my impresions at the very least.

 

[Blacklight]

One would expect the release of IWHTG would keep this thread alive for a while, but it seems it wasn't the case.

I bought the game like a week ago, once i have the time to play it, i would like to post my impresions at the very least.

That's kind of the sad part. Wani is just there. It's not horrible, and it's not super amazing or ripping off another horrible product. They took Snoot and sanded away all of the little bits and pieces of remaining 4chan edge and while I had fun with it I wasn't having a great time like I was with Snoot.

 

[Dave.]

That's kind of the sad part. Wani is just there. It's not horrible, and it's not super amazing or ripping off another horrible product. They took Snoot and sanded away all of the little bits and pieces of remaining 4chan edge and while I had fun with it I wasn't having a great time like I was with Snoot.

It's been a wild 3 1/2 years from the announcement of the original GBVH to the full release of Wani. It's also a little sad to think that this thread has basically reached the end of it's life. I'm sure there are going to be little side stories coming out for Wani, but baring some out of left field news like a sequel to Volcano High this really is the end of the road.

To all my fellow snootbros, I lift a toast to you all and thank you for the fun posts.

I disagree. I think what Cavemanon set out to do was make a wholesome story about finding beauty through personal and physical faults. Snoot Game was more of a fuck you to GVH and how cringe it was back in the VGAs and because it was delayed so many times, 4chan set out to basically finish the game for them. Wani is trying more to be a serious story and Snoot was kind of more of a joke that somehow turned out better than the original. That's just me though. As for why I don't post in this thread very often, I don't have much to say about the game. I don't have much criticism for the game other than the pacing gets way too slow in some parts and the music gets way too emotionally manipulative and unfitting in some parts.

 

[There Is Light At The End]

Dunno why, but I find this image very funny

 

[Sunflower Samurai]

I think Wani is a great successor to Snoot game since it does stand up on its own while not necessarily shitting on 4chan or making fun of GBH any further than life already has.
I liked Olivia's arcs but upon a quick replay of Snoot i can see why people warmed up to Lucy/Fang quicker, Anon learns much more quicker to respect her and they give you more scenes of them having their relationship, while a good chunk of Wani has Olivia be a tad bit more abrasive and Inco is less relatable then Anon SPOILER: Inco in ending 1 and maybe even 2 is also much more of an irredeemable bastard compared to Ending 1 and 2 Anon. They dont really have much goofing off scenes like the Hibachi grill or the Aquarium/Dino Moes scene in Snoot
That being said i enjoyed it overall, Iadakhan was a great mentor type and i initially thought his death was sudden when i realized he acted like he did because of his impending demise.

I thought it was neat how you do get to see some other sides of Olivia even in the less positive endings, they're not all outwardly hostile until the very end (and god, E1 is brutal but still not quite as Snoot's, but E2 is also a gutpunch). The OST in Snoot was also somewhat better, Wani has the highlight of Olivia's theme but everything else is stock music or just ok at best, Snoot had Amberlight Brilliance and a bunch of pretty catchy tunes.
Overall, i get the disappointment with some but id hesitate to call it a downgrade over Snoot. Its story is told very well and its animation mogs some 30 buck VNs (i do hope they fix the lack of CGs though)

 

[Spirelord: Downfall]

It's been a wild 3 1/2 years from the announcement of the original GBVH to the full release of Wani. It's also a little sad to think that this thread has basically reached the end of it's life. I'm sure there are going to be little side stories coming out for Wani, but baring some out of left field news like a sequel to Volcano High this really is the end of the road.

To all my fellow snootbros, I lift a toast to you all and thank you for the fun posts.

One would expect the release of IWHTG would keep this thread alive for a while, but it seems it wasn't the case.

It just seems like the natural endpoint for these VN's discussion. Think about it, they're more or less static visual novels where several pages of discussion, even after the snoot devs moved onto another VN, about how pissed KO-OP was even though it's been mostly radio silence since GVH released. What else even IS there to talk about, what the future CGs will be? That lasts until the final update, if there will be any at all. Maybe /trash/ updates? Doesn't seem substantial... I guess there are fanfics of Snoot Game on Ao3? I haven't even seen from that Umbruhh guy about the Bad Apple mod and it seems like most mods have ground to a hault even before Wani.

Anyways, to keep this from being just meta thread talk, I liked how in Snoot Game they specify that Stella's in the special needs area bathroom. It took a second for it to click but it made me stop to laugh a bit that THAT'S how they confirm her being an actual autist to some degree.

 

[Neet Tokusatsu]

I guess there are fanfics of Snoot Game on Ao3? I haven't even seen from that Umbruhh guy about the Bad Apple mod and it seems like most mods have ground to a hault even before Wani.

I wouldn't mind using this thread for mod/fanfic recommendations, there's some fanworks worth a shot if you liked Snoot Game, however like you said...

it seems like most mods have ground to a hault even before Wani

Problem with mods is that they take time to develop, and it seems some people making these mods just flat out give up at some point. As far as i know, there's like 2 or 3 different Naomi mods being developed, who knows if Graden or Rosa is still being worked on, and i'm kind of baffled there's no real Stella mod yet, i guess you can count Bad Apple, but that mod could take months or even years to be finished, if it ever gets finished.


I'm still waiting for the day someone will announce they're working into adapting "Bonds" as a mod, since that's my favorite fanfic, hell i'd do it myself if i could, but i can't draw or code for shit

 

[Noebel]

There also was that South American VN being developed, I think. How is that going?

 

[ThinkThankThunk]

>they think the autism ever ends
lol, lmao
Anyway on a very related note here's a zip containing a billion screencaps of the Cavemanon discord and a 180,000 character essay (a) on their management.

For context: the /snoot/ threads have had this back and forth about artists and devs being at odds behind the scenes for ages now. It was never really worth mentioning since it was hard to tell what was trolling, exaggerations or angry bullshit given that nothing was ever actually dropped until now. Even so, it's meandering and autistic, largely owing to just how many random people were involved at some point or another, but I think it's enough to say that the rumors of the team generally being unhappy are true and that we probably won't see the bonus chapters for Wani unless they've already been finished.

Contained is discourse about how Nerd became project manager for Snoot Game, discussions of payment and lack thereof, various contributors coming and going and their reasons for it, interactions with mod projects and plans for the studio going forward. Do note if you peruse it that it's obvoiusly made by someone upset with Nerd, and I'm pretty sure it was compiled by a troon given some bellyaching about /pol/ and the alt-right in the text file. That said it does shed light on a lot of stuff regarding both Snoot and Wani's development, so I thought it would be worth archiving.

 

[RSLUG30]

>they think the autism ever ends
lol, lmao
Anyway on a very related note here's a zip containing a billion screencaps of the Cavemanon discord and a 180,000 character essay (a) on their management.

For context: the /snoot/ threads have had this back and forth about artists and devs being at odds behind the scenes for ages now. It was never really worth mentioning since it was hard to tell what was trolling, exaggerations or angry bullshit given that nothing was ever actually dropped until now. Even so, it's meandering and autistic, largely owing to just how many random people were involved at some point or another, but I think it's enough to say that the rumors of the team generally being unhappy are true and that we probably won't see the bonus chapters for Wani unless they've already been finished.

Contained is discourse about how Nerd became project manager for Snoot Game, discussions of payment and lack thereof, various contributors coming and going and their reasons for it, interactions with mod projects and plans for the studio going forward. Do note if you peruse it that it's obvoiusly made by someone upset with Nerd, and I'm pretty sure it was compiled by a troon given some bellyaching about /pol/ and the alt-right in the text file. That said it does shed light on a lot of stuff regarding both Snoot and Wani's development, so I thought it would be worth archiving.

It truly never ends.

The essay is a goldmine of Internet slap-fighting and has enough citations and sources to be somewhat safely assumed as real.
Here's some highlights from a quick skimread. Starting with Giant Reed Cock mod.

Several days after the game's release, on the 19th of June, Archiveanon (of Poland) created what would become the community's central archive[22] for hosting fanfiction, for those who did not want to post to Archive Of Our Own (AO3). It was also used to host several early mods, such as General Proton's Giant Reed Cock mod,

Nerd refusing to respond to emails from Kotaku when they were writing their article on the game. (a).

The lead developer, Nerd, has proven multiple times that he does not like gay or trans people (as with the Reedroute drama, the crux of the issue being that it would make both Anon and Reed gay, and the issue with Lunara being a character in Wani, whose creator originally said they were trans, etc), typically using his religion as an excuse for his disposition to these things. This thankfully does not spill into the game's content, as the other writers don't seem to share the same sentiment, and it is never explicitly mentioned or laid out in a way that any of the game's readers appear to have understood. Nerd being the chief figurehead for Cavemanon in public spaces does however mean the intent could be spun that way, and in many conversations, has been (see section 2).

To the author's credit, Nerd did admit in January 2023 that they were originally contacted long in advance of the article's publishing by the writer, but chose not to reply because "we're not stupid."[101]

Additionally, while the developers do have a public email address listed on their site (cavemanongames@gmail.com)[49], the lead developer and de-facto "business owner," Nerd has admitted publicly that they intentionally ignore journalists, as happened with the Kotaku employee mentioned above. One of our team members also attempted to reach out several months prior to this document's release, on October 20th, 2023, though we similarly received no answer. They provably received the email, based on discussions between various developers who are present in public servers, and discussion from their private channels[a15]. Caliber initially reached out to Joybuke via Matrix to ask the questions mentioned in the email, but was told directly to reach out to the email address instead. The person in charge of managing the email account is Joybuke[a16].

While on a tangent about GBVH, they decide to specifically mention how they shortened Fangs snoot and supposedly saved the character from being a super edgelord.

Around early 2020 was when the idea shifted from that to what became Goodbye Volcano High. Most of the characters went through significant design changes, though Fang's were the most drastic and apparent; Fang's snout was shortened significantly, and they went from an almost creepy, goth-type character, reminiscent of the protagonist of Hatred, to one with the punk-rock style that was shipped in the final release[91].

Discussing changes Cavemanon made to Olivia, notably how they made her less fat to be more appealing to visual novel readers.

The game itself, as released, features several changes to the character's original design, most notably making her much thinner and more normally human-proportioned, and the replacement of her claw-like hands with more typical 5-fingered ones[282,283]. This was done after the game was handed over to Cavemanon, with the character going over at least one other iteration, compared to the oldest complete sprite available, from some time in August 2021[281], which was done using nRool's design. Her weight was changed, according to Mono, who was at one point the lead artist for Wani[269], because she was a "Blob", with "Bad proportions", and was "Not romance vn material"[284]

tl;dr - The author of the document assumes that the biggest draw to snoot game was Anon's sperginess, and suspected that wani would fail due to Inco not being a basement dwelling vidya enjoyer. Also attempting to shoot down accusations that the game was being made for Tumblr users.

One of the other draws to the game, for the game's target audience, is the ability to relate to the protagonist- being made by a bunch of maladjusted teenage 4chan users, for such, there is a level of cultural understanding and depth that is typically missed or not bothered with in other media attempting to tell similar stories. This fact is part of why many users, prior to release, suspected Cavemanon's upcoming game, Wani, of being a flop; the game's content revolves around the Tumblr version of Snootgame's Anon y. Mous, named Inco g. Nito, and the story is intended to be a mirror of Snootgame for that group. The issue here, is that none of the developers involved are / were Tumblr users. Certainly not to the degree one must have been immersed in 4chan's /v/ board during the announcement of GVH to create Snootgame.

BANNED 19 TIMES FROM THE SAME SERVER.

One individual from the early Snoot threads, and the Discords soon after, warrants mentioning solely because of his sheer devotion to harassing people and ban evading[154]. A user named cd0m, who was one of the (potentially multiple[a20]) anons on the threads complaining about Discord[151,152]. He was ultimately harmless, and attempted to make friends with many members of the community, occasionally posting passive-aggressive art to the Discords[154], boorus[155] and threads[153] complaining about how many times he was banned. He was ultimately banned 19 times from the public 4chan server, before either giving up, or moderation was unable to find his new alt account[154].

Amazon could learn a thing or two from this.
tl;dr - They were paid between $50 and $100, though some were supposedly offered between $200 to $320. The offered amount from what I can gather was mostly decided based on contributions to the project.

Anyone who joined the project after December 2022 would have known the project was commercial and would make money, as the game already had its Steam page up at that point[329]. At least three users were offered sums of between $50 and $100 USD, with a couple others claiming they were offered between $200 and $320 at different times[104,249,255], though most we spoke with report being captured under the "gratis" contract, meaning they would not be compensated in any way "express or implied"[156] for their work. The developer in charge of getting members to sign contracts and discussing payment info has also used the NDAs themselves as an excuse to not discuss or reveal payment terms for other members of the company[253], even when the contracts did not include any clauses for this, unless they intended to enforce the NDA individually against their developers rather than preventing them from sharing information to the public, which makes absolutely no sense, and is not how NDAs are handled in actual business.

A few days prior, on the 21st of October, 2023, a few developers discussed 'unionizing,' or at least coming together to discuss the payment issues[298]. This was discussed in DMs with other members, and was decided against, as one of the devs who was more familiar with Nerd and Joy mentioned they would likely deny payment altogether if anyone threatened any kind of collective action[297], and nobody wanted to take that risk[349].

There's also a bit more in this section about the contracts they signed. They were made in the same way you would've written a school assignment before the popularisation of the Internet.

The contracts themselves - a combination of NDA and payment terms, appear to have been created by lazily copy-pasting legal text verbatim from other documents and templates[260], and hastily or carelessly edited into what the developers thought or understood to mean what they want, resulting in nonsensical, legally unenforceable walls of text which reference components and information not even present where referenced, or enforce unrealistic or legally unjustifiable requirements (indefinite NDA, NDA for non-business-related info or specifically HIPAA compliance, etc.), and are full of typos (mostly missing spaces, since a majority of the text was stolen from existing forms).

Cavemanon did not get a lawyer to verify their documents and did not understand exactly what they were making their contributors sign up for themselves. Whether or not the contracts are valid and legally enforcable is up to debate.
They did include the contract in the zip, which I'll be attaching for easy access here so someone with more experience in law can tell us how bad it really is.

 

[The tired cat]

While on Twitter, came across a demo fo a project called "Purple Game" from what I got its mostly a "what if..." story with Anon and Trish trying to help Fang, as the two grow closer and can become a couple.