Rescoping the narrative of Goodbye Volcano High to find meaning in the apocalypse

gamedeveloper.com:

Goodbye Volcano High, a cinematic narrative adventure about love, change, and the end of an era featuring a cast of anthropomorphic dinosaurs, has undergone something of a metamorphosis since developer Ko_op revealed the project back in 2020.

The beautiful coming-of-age tale, which features a branching narrative and hand-drawn art, wants to ask some big questions about where we–and specifically younger people–fit in a world that seems to have become a ticking political, economic, and ecological time bomb.

In seeking answers, however, Ko_op says the narrative became "unwieldy," resulting in the studio bringing narrative director Jenna Yow into the fold to rescope those story beats without compromising the title's core themes.

"We wanted to tell a story that resonated with people, especially Gen Z," explains Yow, speaking to Game Developer earlier this year. "I'm a member of Gen Z [...] and I basically grew up staring down the barrel of climate change. I graduated school when Trump was inaugurated, and then I graduated college after the first full year of the pandemic.

"I have experience with being a queer teenager with creative ambitions, like our main character Fang, and feeling like that's at odds with the state of the world and what I'll actually be able to accomplish in the time we have left. Of course, in Goodbye Volcano High, it's a bit more literal because there's a meteor coming to end things, but I feel like a lot of media that's made for teens and young adults doesn't really encapsulate that feeling."

Yow suggests that a lot of media portrays younger people as more political, which some might say rings true, but also angry and naïve instead of desperate and hopeless. It was something Goodbye Volcano High lacked