Video Game / Snoot Game

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

Snoot Game is a Visual Novel produced in Ren'Py and initially released on June 4, 2021, with the last major patch released on December 31, 2022. The game is a parody of Goodbye Volcano High, developed and released by Cavemanon Games (an anonymous team of 4chan users) as a Take That! to Volcano High’s reveal trailer in 2020 and the progressive politics of its developers.

Players take the role of Anon, a new student at Volcano High recently transferred from his old school after an unspecified incident. Initially planning on coasting through the remaining six 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 genderqueer protagonist. The player guides Anon through the process of befriending and romancing Fang, with the happiest of the four endings requiring the player to convince Fang to stop identifying as non-binary.

The game was widely interpreted after its release as indirect harassment of Volcano High’s development team (who subsequently banned discussion of it on their social media pages) and received criticism for the anti-LGBTQ+ politics behind many of its plot points. Nonetheless, Cavemanon Games has since announced the development of a Spiritual Successor titled I Wani Hug That Gator, with a demo released on May 16, 2023.

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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.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: The Goodbye Volcano High demo shows an image of Fang's hair being red before the events of the game, with Trish expressing surprise that they dyed their hair silver since she last saw them six weeks ago. In Snoot Game, there's no indication that Fang's silver hair is dyed.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Due to Goodbye Volcano High not being out at the time Snoot Game was written and developed, the characters' personalities are based loosely on what little information was available with the writing team filling in blanks with their own interpretations. Meanwhile, Goodbye Volcano High got an extensive rewrite due to the game's lead writer departing. As such, character motivations and personalities deviated between the two games, some more significant than others.
• Adapted Out: Sage, Stella's best friend in Goodbye Volcano High, is completely absent in Snoot Game due to there not being enough photos or information about him available at the time. Stella is instead paired off with Rosa.
• An Aesop:
  • On one hand you have the lesson learned by Fang, that the only person who can solve your problems is you and that you don't need special labels to identify yourself by in order to be happy or get attention and that dedicating your life to those labels is more harmful than helpful.
  • On the other hand, you have Anon's moral, that being an apathetic shut in hiding from others is unhealthy and the best way to succeed in life and grow as an individual is to be empathetic and supportive to those around you, is an equally powerful message pointed directly at the intended audience of the game, forcing the player to learn the same lessons as Anon in order to get the good ending.
  • Being non-binary is a harmful self-delusion that is the result of mental illness and toxic enablers. Continuing to be non-binary instead of accepting your gender assigned at birth will take a serious toll on your mental health. In the two endings where Fang stays non-binary, she either commits a mass shooting or, years later, ends up a drug addicted wreck.
  • The LGBTQ community are a predatory group who target minors in order to groom them into joining their ranks.
• Alternate History: Set in a world where dinosaurs didn't go extinct and evolved into anthropomorphic dino-people. Also, if Principal Spears is any indication, Neanderthals never went extinct either and still live alongside Homo Sapiens.
• Alternate-History Dinosaur Survival: The dinosaurs survived the meteor impact instead of being wiped out, and they gradually evolved to become sentient and anthropomorphic.
• 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.
• Big Damn Kiss: Fang and Anon during Ending 4.
• 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.
• Bury Your Gays: The two endings where Fang remains non-binary end very poorly for them. They either commit a mass shooting and take their own life or end up a drug-addicted wreck.
• But Thou Must!: Many of the branching options are cosmetic and have zero impact on the story progression, often leading to the same result.
• Call-Forward: In one of the later patches, the devs altered the dialogue in the scene with Reed and Anon talking about video games that linked to the GBVH trailer, altering the link to be a secret trailer for their next game.
• I Can't Hear You: When Fang launches into a massive rant against Anon after he misgenders them, the rant is cut short because they're doing it in the middle of class and no one actually cares about the rant.
• 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.
• Cure Your Gays: The genderqueer Fang is depicted here as a confused teenager who eventually de-transitions with help from Anon.
• Downer Ending: Ending 1, as well as 2 to a lesser degree.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • There's a clear divide between humans 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 a term 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.
• Gratuitous Spanish: Rosa tends to do this a lot, especially when she's angry or upset about something.
• Grey-and-Grey Morality: Options that effect the ending are intended to be morally vague in order to make the player think through their choices.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Around the game's climax Anon trips over the cables at VVURM DRAMA's first concert and mentions it's a hazard to Trish, who ignores him and says Reed knows what he's doing, with the player being given the choice to either fix the cables or leave them as is. Despite some foreshadowing about the building's wiring being unsafe and Reed being a spacey stoner, fixing the cables is considered the "bad" choice. Not helping matters was that in the initial release of the game the scene was bugged, meaning that regardless of the choice you make, the game would only ever play the scene you get for not touching the cables, leading to many players getting the bad endings completely unaware that they made a mistake.
  • Getting Ending 4 can be this blind, as it's fairly easy to make a single mistake without realizing it beforehand.^note 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.
  • The player isn't left completely without a clue, though: Stella's tarot reading to Anon will actually give the player a hint about the ending they're heading towards; if they're headed for Ending 1 or 2, Stella will be concerned but if they're headed for Ending 3 or 4, she will be significantly happier.
• 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.
• Interspecies Friendship: Anon (a human) and the main cast of dino people.
• 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 originally linked you to the trailer for Goodbye Volcano High, but now links to a trailer for the next project by Cavemanon Games.
• Linear Visual Novel: Although the game has multiple endings (see below), each ending branches off from a single point, with the rest of the game following the same sequence of events up to that point. There are a few branching paths offered but they're largely cosmetic and ultimately loop around to the same point the other path would go to.
• Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Humans live alongside anthropomorphic dinosaurs.
• Multiple Endings: Naturally, being a visual novel. Each ending starts with the announcement of the school prom and splits from there. Be aware that every single recap will contain unmarked spoilers:
  • 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.
• Race Lift: In Goodbye Volcano High, Fang and their family are distinctly Arabic in origin, noted in their names and Fang's deadname Fatima. Snoot Game instead gives Fang's family the typically Jewish surname Aaron and their parents have traditionally English names, while Fang has a different deadname (Lucy), which is an English name of Latin origin.
• Raptor Attack: Averted with Reed: while he is indeed a raptor, he's also the most mellow guy out of the main roster and the quickest to warm up to Anon. He does put Anon in a headlock at one point to keep him from interfering in Trish talking to Fang in one of the routes leading to Ending 3.
• 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.
• Relationship Values: The unseen score that determines which of the four endings the player will get doubles as a measurement of Anon and Fang's closeness. While the score can't be seen directly, Stella's tarot readings indicate if the score is currently on the higher end (endings 3-4, making her happy) or the lower end (endings 1-2, making her concerned).
• Running Gag: Anon's many insulting nicknames for Naomi.
• Schmuck Bait: Pulling Fang's tail or not during detention. Subverted, as it doesn't matter what you pick.
• Setting Update: In Goodbye Volcano High, the game takes place in Pangaea, an ancient supercontinent that broke apart before the dawn of humanity. Snoot Game instead takes place in contemporary Earth, where humans live alongside evolved dinosaurs.
• Shout-Out: They come every few lines, both to general pop culture and to 4chan memes, but the major ones are how the characters not lifted from the real game are references to shows that once aired on Adult Swim. The principal 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 mysterious phone roomba seller is Xavier. 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.
• The Stoner: Reed. The guy actually gets high on Carfentanyl, 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.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Naser looks like a younger, leaner version of his father and Fang looks a *lot* like their mother.
• Take That!: The game’s existence as a whole is this towards Goodbye Volcano High. In particular Fang being non-binary being depicted as a bad thing, the two endings where they aren’t “cured” being Downer Endings, and the game’s negative depiction of LGBTQ characters are the most obvious examples.
• 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.
• Wings Do Nothing: Despite being Winged Humanoids, the Pterodactylus in Snoot Game can't fly because their wings are too small and weak compared to their own body weight. It caused Naser to jump off a cliff as a child because he believed that he could fly, only to fall down and nearly dying. They can use them to slightly soften the landing when jumping from a (reasonably) high place, though.