Games get delayed — it's not surprising. But we've been particularly quiet in the development of Goodbye Volcano High since its announcement at last year's PlayStation 5 Digital Showcase. We wanted to take a moment to talk to everyone about our game, about where it's at, where we're going, and some of the challenges developing Goodbye Volcano High has brought us. We’re delaying Goodbye Volcano High until 2022 because the pandemic and last year's narrative reboot have meant our schedule has shifted.
Goodbye Volcano High brings together what we think are the best elements of games, television, film, music, and storytelling. This game is a bit of a hybrid, and because of that we've been able to put together a team of people across a wide range of disciplines. From a background artist known for working on a Makoto Shinkai anime to television animators and storyboard artists to a dev team made up of graphic designers, programmers, and game designers, our team's variety comes together in this unique gaming experience we're creating.
Since our game is a fully 2D animated interactive rhythm game TV show (yes, you read that right), it requires us to write out branching scripts for every beat; storyboard every scene; create bespoke character and background art for every episode; animate every character; and score every conversation, performance, and moment in the game. Not to mention the immense task of pulling it together in-engine to give the player the best experience possible. There’s a lot to dig into: musical performance, songwriting, individual relationships that dictate the avenues that open in the story. Minigames, montages, arguments and tarot. We’ve got a ton of surprises in store.
Making sure we hit the quality bar we want to hit takes an intense attention to detail at every stage and from every member of our team and the results have been extremely gratifying for us — it just takes a long time, especially for a small team spread out across the globe. We hope the final product speaks for itself and that when you finally see it you'll be as excited to play it as we are to make it.
https://twitter.com/KOOPMode/status/1293993098104778754?s=20
A year ago, we brought on the talented narrative development team that is Sweet Baby Inc. to fully reboot and rewrite our story and design our narrative from the ground up. With Kim Belair as our Narrative Director, Sweet Baby has been deeply embedded with our team at KO_OP to bring our characters' voices, their friendships, and their world to life.
Here's the team making our story happen: