I'm extremely disappointed

[Crowley42]

And I want to hear your opinions too.

No aspect of the game met my expectations. The game breaks its own pacing so often and so thoroughly, it was an endurance test for me to play through the game, and this is coming from someone who was excited to get to play it. Conflict is sparse and passively acknowledged, characters meander about, rambling about inane matters with directionless voice acting. Some characters are insufferable, most offer no intrigue whatsoever. Visual and audio issues plague the entirety of the experience, throwing you off with every step, the mistakes are obvious and amateurish. After finishing the game I had planned to revisit certain scenes and explore alternate routes, to my surprise, basic elements of the game are missing, such as a text log, or a save/load function. The fast-forward option also does not exist, you may however skip dialogue, this however breaks character animations, resulting in the characters being strangely contorted. It is clear that no thought went into these vestigial parts of the game whatsoever. The worst segment in the entire game is the one on the beach around the campfire, because it is proof that something special could have been made in the same setting with the same characters - brief and meaningful conversations with captivating visuals, scenes like this are what make a VN, yet GVH is bereft of them, save for the finale.

The charming character designs and the solid voice acting and occasionally interesting visuals do not make up for the directionless and shoddily put-together experience that is GVH. In the 7 hour long runtime of GVH, only a handful of times did I feel a sense of engagement, in essence, I am mortified with the end result of this project and I don't think I will ever be replaying it.

[PoorMan Nate]

honestly this game should have been longer for more character development/ more reason for us to care about the characters or heck add side content "like a prom night every high school story always has a prom night or big party", i haven't bought the game but seen the game play from others i can tell that this game feels like a quarter or like fifteen percent complete, i wouldn't be surprised if people that have been keeping a eye on this game will make a another fan game or mod it to make it better, i honestly would wait to see if the devs will improve the game but i doubt it cause this game took five years to finish its probably done in their eyes after patching the bugs and glitches

[Asdred]

The issues are the killer for me. Especially the settings! I have to reset everything each time I launch the game. It really starts to fall apart at Episode 5. The song that plays is loud as can be and you can't do anything about it, but use your volume mixer just to turn it down.

[Rаndo]

Despite being a fan of (that game that shall not be named), I honestly and sincerely wish this game succeeded.

It has a lot of potential and it's a shame they mishandled it like this, whether due to covid or poor management I was hoping this would be a better game than how it was released.

I think the worst part is that it wasn't either amazing or terrible (in an ironic funny way), it was just sort of a short mediocre experience with a few stand out sections (the soundtrack and visuals mostly).

[Rаndo]

After rereading your opinion, I also noticed that your post looks a lot similar to one I just saw earlier somewhere else.

[Crowley42]

Originally posted by Rando:

I honestly and sincerely wish this game succeeded.

Same, I could write a book about how much went wrong with this game. The original premise, the original artstyle, they could have made something special. The developers dropped the ball so hard that I can't help but be genuinely upset.

Originally posted by PoorMan Nate:

i haven't bought the game but seen the game play from others i can tell that this game feels like a quarter or like fifteen percent complete

I'm afraid you've got it all wrong. The game is 20% complete at best and then filled up with an extra 30% of inane dungeons and dragons quips, three of them in fact. The game is called Goodbye Volcano High, and yet we spend almost the entirety of the runtime in fang's house, the rooftop, the one classroom where they practice music and Reed's garage, the game forgot its namesake.

The final product was scissored together from whatever they had already done, the ending and then a tremendous amount of superfluous, directionless mess. Proof of this is the fact that there's major continuity errors. The game seems to suggest that its runtime lasted the entirety of a school year, with the school year beginning when the game starts, and us being near graduation by the end. However, the actual events that go down in the game appear to be spread across the span of a couple weeks at most.

Fang's parents are apparently abroad for EIGHT months, the total runtime of the game, yet in the beginning we are told that they packed Fang and Naser diner for each day of the week, clearly this scene was from a completely different draft of the story and they simply did not bother to correct the errors. Embarrassing, if I'm being honest!

[Crowley42]

Originally posted by Rando:

After rereading your opinion, I also noticed that your post looks a lot similar to one I just saw earlier somewhere else.

It's hard to find a place to talk about this game seriously, I tell you.

[Rаndo]

Originally posted by Crowley42:

Originally posted by Rando:

After rereading your opinion, I also noticed that your post looks a lot similar to one I just saw earlier somewhere else.

It's hard to find a place to talk about this game seriously, I tell you.

True, most of the discourse pretty much boils down to "the game is terrible and deserved failure for punching down on (that game) and being woke" or "the game was sabotaged by the radical chud fans of (that game) and it's actually good."

100% agree with you that this is one of the few times I'm genuinely upset to see such great potential get squandered, and it makes me wonder what could have been if things went right.

The Rosa meltdowns were pretty funny though I'll admit.

[Crowley42]

Couldn't agree more. Sadly at this point I hardly think we're gonna get a second fan game to recapture the squandered spirit of the original vision.

[PoorMan Nate]

Originally posted by Crowley42:

Couldn't agree more. Sadly at this point I hardly think we're gonna get a second fan game to recapture the squandered spirit of the original vision.

i want my five years of waiting back

[Jospehvan]

i can understand the people who waited 5 years for this to be disappointed for roughly 5 hours
i only really got this due to it showing up on my steam and remembering the showing of it back in like, what, 2020? i still really love it and enjoy it but it's by no means a finished game, far from it
it feels like a part 1 of something bigger and that maybe the devs are working on that, then again that could be copium speaking and pure denial that everyone is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dead
i have hope for the devs that they'll continue the story somehow in whatever way unless they say otherwise that a continuation isn't happening

[Tsar Nicholas III]

Originally posted by Crowley42:

And I want to hear your opinions too.

No aspect of the game met my expectations. The game breaks its own pacing so often and so thoroughly, it was an endurance test for me to play through the game, and this is coming from someone who was excited to get to play it. Conflict is sparse and passively acknowledged, characters meander about, rambling about inane matters with directionless voice acting. Some characters are insufferable, most offer no intrigue whatsoever. Visual and audio issues plague the entirety of the experience, throwing you off with every step, the mistakes are obvious and amateurish. After finishing the game I had planned to revisit certain scenes and explore alternate routes, to my surprise, basic elements of the game are missing, such as a text log, or a save/load function. The fast-forward option also does not exist, you may however skip dialogue, this however breaks character animations, resulting in the characters being strangely contorted. It is clear that no thought went into these vestigial parts of the game whatsoever. The worst segment in the entire game is the one on the beach around the campfire, because it is proof that something special could have been made in the same setting with the same characters - brief and meaningful conversations with captivating visuals, scenes like this are what make a VN, yet GVH is bereft of them, save for the finale.

The charming character designs and the solid voice acting and occasionally interesting visuals do not make up for the directionless and shoddily put-together experience that is GVH. In the 7 hour long runtime of GVH, only a handful of times did I feel a sense of engagement, in essence, I am mortified with the end result of this project and I don't think I will ever be replaying it.
:mustscream:

I quite enjoyed the game, not the greatest I played, but I will say, bit expensive for what it is, and I admittedly kinda sadly now played the fan game and loved it way more, though that does not decrease my love for this game, I hold them both pretty dear despite acknowledging this game's flaws

[Tsar Nicholas III]

Originally posted by Rando:

Despite being a fan of (that game that shall not be named), I honestly and sincerely wish this game succeeded.

It has a lot of potential and it's a shame they mishandled it like this, whether due to covid or poor management I was hoping this would be a better game than how it was released.

I think the worst part is that it wasn't either amazing or terrible (in an ironic funny way), it was just sort of a short mediocre experience with a few stand out sections (the soundtrack and visuals mostly).

same

[Tsar Nicholas III]

Originally posted by Rando:

Originally posted by Crowley42:

It's hard to find a place to talk about this game seriously, I tell you.

True, most of the discourse pretty much boils down to "the game is terrible and deserved failure for punching down on (that game) and being woke" or "the game was sabotaged by the radical chud fans of (that game) and it's actually good."

100% agree with you that this is one of the few times I'm genuinely upset to see such great potential get squandered, and it makes me wonder what could have been if things went right.

The Rosa meltdowns were pretty funny though I'll admit.

Though sadly after enjoying this game I then came to love the unnamed, I love both these games, even if there's now even more issues I now realize and I think that people from both dedicated fanbases ♥♥♥♥ on each other's too much, I just randomly saw this on the steam page one day and was like "hey, that's a pretty fun looking VN with rhythm elements" and tried it

[Fynn Kehlani]

Honestly I agree, the game had so much potential to be a certified banger, but the writing falls flat so often, especially in the pacing. If you want to see these characters in a better written story go play Snoot Game

[Jospehvan]

Originally posted by Fynn:

Honestly I agree, the game had so much potential to be a certified banger, but the writing falls flat so often, especially in the pacing. If you want to see these characters in a better written story go play Snoot Game

"better written"
you mean one with an Anti-LGBTQ narrative? because that's what SG is and the creator isn't subtle about it.