Video Game / Snoot Game

The Pre-historic Romance a million years in MS Paint to tell!

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June 11th, 2020: Sony begins a press conference livestream formally announcing the Playstation 5. During the conference, a trailer for a game called Goodbye Volcano High is shown, an interactive narrative game featuring teenage anthropomorphic dinosaurs. Almost immediately and over the next few weeks the game begins to receive mockery and criticism from all corners of the internet, making fun of the the character designs, animation, and overall poor presentation of the game. As the mockery dies down the game is largely forgotten about, except for on 4chan's /v/ board, where their natural contrarianism has kicked in leading to a full 180 on the game, and spurring genuine passion and heated discussion of the game.

Flash forward one year, and unbeknownst to the board at large, a group of anonymous artists and game developers band together to use the jokes and fanon created by the users of the site to craft their *own* version of Goodbye Volcano High, releasing it nearly a year to the day that the actual game was unveiled...

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Snoot Game, developed by Cavemanon Games, is a Visual Novel parody of Goodbye Volcano High, produced in Renpy and released on June 4th, 2021. You play as Anon, a new student at Volcano High recently transferred from his old school after an unspecified incident occurs. Initially planning on coasting through the remaining 6 months of the school year being as forgettable and unremarkable as possible, Anon quickly finds himself drawn into the life of Fang, the real game's protagonist, learning to care for them as a friend and seeking to help them with their own life problems, as well as fix his own in the process...

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This game has examples of the following tropes:

• Arc Words: "You are not the only person in the world."
  • "None of this matters" to a lesser extent.
• Affectionate Parody: Despite the expectation from the game's source, there's a surprising level of genuine love for the cast and setting given here (or at least from what little of GVH was publicly available during the development). While it certainly uses the real game as a source of comedy and frequently pokes fun at it and the themes, the devs took great care to replicate the characters, their personalities, and their relationships as best as they could, including several references to events from the game and its trailer.
• Alternate History: Set in a world where dinosaurs didn't go extinct and evolved into anthropomorphic dino-people.
• All There in the Manual: Fang and Naser's parents are named Ripley and Samantha, borrowed from the real game (and also a reference to Metroid.)
• Amazing Technicolor Population: As is the case with the real game.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Everyone. But it's especially noticeable with Naser, due to the many scars on his wings and the fact that he has one smaller than the other.
• Artistic License – Biology: Minor case, Fang refers to them hurting themselves by tearing out their feathers and scales as "preening", which is actually just the term used for when birds groom and clean their feathers. Can be played off as them using a more sensitive term for it, but not exact.
• Bland-Name Product: Loads, playing off the "alternate history where dinosaurs remained majority species" aspect:
  • Xrox and Pachystation for Xbox and Playstation
  • "Rock Ring" is one for Halo.
• But Thou Must!: Many of the branching options are cosmetic and have zero impact on the story progression, often leading to the same result.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Mild case. The game starts off super comedic and light-hearted, slowly becoming more of a serious drama as it goes on, with the third act being almost entirely dramatic and lacking much in comedy. Comes in full force during Ending 1 however.
• Comically Missing the Point: Reed invokes this when Naomi catches him with drugs in his bag, successfully convincing her that he doesn't know what she's talking about.
• Coming-of-Age Story: It's about a group of teenagers at the end of their senior years trying to finally work and solve the problems of their lives before adulthood.
• Downer Ending: Ending 1, as well as 2 to a lesser degree.
• Fantastic Racism: And how! There's a clear divide between human and dinos with anti-human sentiment seeming to be particularly common. Anon is frequently called "skinnie" or "spear chucker" by others in the cast.
  • "Meteor dodger" is one Anon commonly uses against dinos.
• Foreshadowing: There's plenty of hints to what exactly was the reason Anon left his old school until it's forcibly revealed by Trish during a school assembly
• Flat "What": This is how Anon, Fang, and Naomi react when Naser says that anything Anon did to Fang, his dad would do right back to him.
• Garage Band: VVURM DRAMA, Fang and their friend's band.
• Grey-and-Grey Morality: The options that affect what ending you get are deliberately morally vague, done so the player actually needs to think about the situation before choosing instead of treating it as just another game.
• Guide Dang It!: Getting Ending 4 can be this blind, as it's fairly easy to make a single mistake without realizing it beforehand.^*  The game grades what ending you get by a score of 0-10, with Ending 4 requiring 8 out of 10. The points are gained by choosing dialogue options that allow both Anon and Fang chances to grow as people and overcome their traumas and fears. However, since the points are divided evenly between the two, you're given at most one chance to make a mistake. And the options that affect the score are deliberately morally vague, requiring the player to really think about their choice, but having the side effect of leaving zero room for failure. Not helping matters is that in the initial release some options were bugged and either didn't accurately update the score, or (in the case of the infamous "power cables" scene) led to the exact same outcome regardless of choice, causing the player to lose points regardless.
• Imagine Spot: The game's H-scenes (or scene, on the initial release) take the form of this, having Anon thinking about something sexual involving Fang or others and then cutting to an image of it.
• Indirect Kiss: Happens to Anon and Fang a few times. Anon even mentions this by name when he shares a cigarette with Fang.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Anon pulls this during the route to Ending 2, escaping from Fang's house and their parents by saying he has to "feed his pet Roomba". Surprisingly, this works.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Characters frequently acknowledge and respond to Anon's narration and internal monologues, constantly confusing him. It's later revealed that Anon is actually muttering his monologues out loud for people to hear, embarrassing him to no end.
  • During Reed and Anon's console war debate, Reed tells Anon to look up a video after claiming that all of Pachystation's games are just interactive movies, saying the video's URL out loud to Anon's confusion. The game also gives you the option to watch the video yourself. The video links you to the trailer for Goodbye Volcano High.
• Multiple Endings: Naturally, being a visual novel. Each ending starts with the announcement of the school prom and splits from there:
  • Ending 1: Bowling for Volcano High^recap Fang and their band get ready to play a show at the prom, but at the last second Fang's guitar string breaks, forcing them to swap back to using a bass as they had been at the beginning of the story. Because of this, the show ends up being a disaster and the band is mocked worse than they were at the start, leading a distraught Fang to run from the prom, and Fang and Anon go back to his apartment. An apathetic Anon neglects consoling Fang and decides to play video games instead, and as they talk Anon accidentally reveals that Naomi had manipulated him and Fang into getting together, causing her to have a psychotic breakdown and tears up Anon's apartment. After a heated argument Fang runs off, and an uncaring Anon decides to stay home playing video games until Fang returns the following night. The two spend the night together, only for Anon to wake up late, finding out that Fang had disabled his alarms to keep him from going to school, and Anon rushes to school only to find Fang in the midst of a shooting spree, having killed Naomi, Naser, and several others, before rushing to the roof, ultimately jumping off after accidentally shooting Anon.
  • Ending 2: Anon and the Infinite Sadness^recap  After Fang doubles-down on being non-binary and Anon begrudgingly accepting it after not caring about it the whole game, Fang and Anon decide to skip prom outright, going to a nearby concert and spending the night of prom on the beach getting drunk and setting off fireworks. In his drunken stupor, Anon accidentally reveals Naomi was manipulating the two into a relationship, insulting and demeaning Fang and her identity, leading to her hitting him and running off, an uncaring Anon laying on the beach in sadness. The game skips ahead a few years, Anon having joined the Navy only to be discharged on injury, moving back into his old apartment in Skin Row and sinking further into his pessimism and depression. On complete coincidence, Anon happens to run into Fang playing a gig at a local pizza place, having shaved their head and covered their arms in tattoos, a glassy depressed look in their eyes. Anon contemplates speaking with them, only to remember the argument that ruined their relationship and changes his mind, deciding that he hasn't changed at all since then and that it isn't worth it.
  • Ending 3: Volcano Highschool Musical^recap Fang decides that she no longer needs to label herself as non-binary, asking Anon to refer to her by her real name Lucy. The duo decide to go to prom for real, permanently splitting off from VVURM DRAMA after a disastrous attempt by Trish to get them to come back into the band and finally patching up her relationship with Naser. On the night of the prom Lucy is ambushed by Trish and the others, trying to coerce her into playing a concert for the prom, resulting in an overwhelmed Lucy to run out, where she and Anon return to her house and have their own private prom. The story jumps ahead a few years, Anon having joined the military and finally returning home to reunite with Lucy, who's gotten a job at her local church watching over kids and assisting fundraisers, at the expense of having completely abandoned her aspirations of music and cutting off her old friends. Lucy is outwardly happy in her new life but ultimately admits its a hollow happiness and that none of her problems have really been fixed, largely leaning on Anon and becoming codependent on him the same way she had with Trish in the past, and the two get married.
  • Ending 4: Fast Times At Volcano High^recap After Naser accepts Anon dating Fang and helps be Anon's wingman, Fang decides she doesn't want to be non-binary anymore and the two decide to go to prom together. Naomi confronts Anon about his failure to "fix" Fang, only for Fang to reveal she knew about her scheme the whole time, promptly dope-slapping her for it. At the prom, Fang is asked by Spears to perform at the prom, and while she's preparing Anon is able to bury the hatchet with Trish and convince her to talk with Fang and try to make things better. Fang plays the song she and Anon have been making throughout the game to a massive applause. After a beachside graduation party the game skips to Christmas, with Anon gifting Fang an amber pendant, and Anon reveals he got accepted to a rather prestigious college for a degree in sound engineering. Due to the distance, Anon and Fang decide to split up, but promise to wait for each other. The game then skips ahead 5 years to a reunion party, where Anon catches up with everyone and he and Fang, who's now Volcano High's music teacher, reunite and continue their relationship, eventually getting married.
• Obvious Beta: The initial release of the game was this, as the game was riddled with scripting errors and bugged CGs. Scenes would either fail to trigger despite meeting required conditions or otherwise not properly play, either missing music or art, multiple scenes were unfinished and only shown via rough pencil animatics, as well as a whole slew of other bugs that made finishing it a chore. The developers, however, openly admitted that it was one, stating that they had rushed out a "complete" version of the game to coincide with E3 2021, and released several patches over the next week to bring the game closer to completion.
• Refuge in Audacity: Most of VVURM DRAMA's song titles and lyrics that we see are this. Some highlights include, "I Need Meth Money By Tuesday Night And If I Don’t Get It I Will Stomp On Your Child", as well as a song about Hitler riding a bike at 3AM with a title so long Anon doesn't even bother trying to say or remember it.
• Shout-Out: 'Tons'. Cataloging all of them would require posting basically every other line in the game, so a few major ones are:
  • Pretty much every character not lifted from the real game is a reference to a different show that once aired on Adult Swim.^list The principle is Spear, the math teacher is Carl, the science teacher is Prof. Farnsworth from Futurama, the english teacher is Jin, Fang and Anon's go-to cab driver is The Monarch. The only exceptions are the music teacher, who's Ringo Starr and the hot-dog vendor, who's from a cancelled indie platformer that was popular on 4chan
  • Unsurprisingly, the game references dozens of 4chan memes in its dialogue.
• The Stoner: Reed. The guy actually gets high on a drug that was used by Human soldiers as a chemical weapon during a war against Dinosaurs in the past. Apparently it's only lethal if prepared in a certain way, but the drug itself is still stated to be about a hundred times more potent than horse anesthetics, meaning that even the recreational version would still be absolutely lethal to a Human user.
• Take That!: Several at the expense of the real game. Also plenty towards imageboard/forum moderators.
• Title Drop: Not for this game, but Goodbye Volcano High is a lyric in the song Fang and Anon compose together. Anon also does it unintentionally during Ending 4, much to Fang's annoyance.
• Wham Shot:
  • The shot of a bloody and bruised Fang on the rooftop after their breakdown and Anon's consoling
  • The slideshow at the school's graduation assembly switching from dull and uninteresting slides to the reason why Anon had to leave his old school.
  Anon: There’s me two years ago when I photoshopped myself with an anime girl.
  • The finale of Ending 1 is a long sequence of these, jumping from the blood-soaked hallways of the school littered with the bodies of fellow students, to a bloodied and frenzied Fang holding a gun, to a closeup shot of them in tears with smeared and dirty makeup, to the now-empty roof and the hole in the fencing Fang leaps through, and the subsequent funeral for Fang and Naser.
• What the Hell, Player?: The game tends to let the player know when they've picked a bad option by having a character in the story bluntly tell Anon that he fucked up.