With the recent launch of Goodbye Volcano High, an unprecedented amount of effort has been put into trying to divert attention from that game into a transphobic parody game known as “Snoot Game.”
Snoot Game is a parody visual novel loosely based on Goodbye Volcano High, made by transphobic 4channers out of spite for the source material and its LGBT representation. Snoot Game promotes the idea that being nonbinary is a harmful self-delusion as a result of mental illness and toxic enablers, and early in the game, the protagonist claims that the use of the pronoun ‘they’ for Fang constitutes “murdering the English language.”
Notably, there are four possible endings to the game, where both of the “bad” outcomes are associated with Fang remaining nonbinary, while both of the “good” outcomes are associated with Fang desisting from being nonbinary and identifying as female. Hint: the ‘coorelation doesn’t equal causation’ argument doesn’t exactly hold water when what you’re defending is a piece of carefully-crafted propaganda.
Of particular note is the fact that Snoot Game is one of only three video games listings on tvtropes.org that has been placed on a designated list for promoting bigotry due to the massive number of propaganda-laden edits — along with the games “Ethnic Cleansing”, and “KZ Manager”, a concentration camp simulator.
[ Update 9 November 2023: It has come to my attention that the page about Snoot Game has been cut from TV Tropes entirely due to the repeated page edits from troll accounts presumably arriving from 4chan in an attempt to defend the game. ]
The tvtropes.org cleanup page for Snoot Game also has a lengthy discussion of this game’s content that is well worth a read.
[ Update 9 November 2023: It has come to my attention that the cleanup page has been locked due to, according to a moderator, being “utterly derailed and inviting personal attacks”, following the doxxing of a TV Tropes forum member.* ]
Snoot Game was created in Ren’Py, a visual novel creation tool, but renpy.org’s extensive official games list does not mention the game at all — apparently because the game engine designers don’t want to be associated with such a hateful piece of work.
If you need more details on the objectionable content, here is an in-depth critique of Snoot Game’s transphobia by tdstr on Backloggd.
Woot_master on Twitter (aka X) also has a detailed critique thread to peruse.
Here is additional news coverage by Kotaku and PinkNews:
The Anti-Fan Game: PlayStation Developer Defies 4chan Harassment Troll Project
A group of anonymous alt-right gamers have stolen the assets of LGBTQ+ game ‘Goodbye Volcano High’ and created a…
In short, Snoot Game is a transphobic game with highly hateful messaging wrapped in a soft shield of plausible deniability. It easily ranks among the most hateful pieces of game software ever created, and its fans continue to try to divert attention away from Goodbye Volcano High — the legitimate queer source material — to their bigoted ends.
Snoot Game’s defenders like to state that the game is well-written, or that it has interesting characters, and while that might be the case, it’s equivalent to saying that Hitler was a good writer — which he was. But it’s not the Nazis’ writing skills that were called into question at the Nuremberg trials, but their agenda, along with their crimes against humanity.
Goodbye Volcano High is among the best visual novel style games ever made, with an engaging storyline, memorable characters, a fantastic original soundtrack, using novel animation technology. What’s more, it’s a celebration of queer identity, and a thought-provoking tale of confronting one’s own mortality. The parody game is best ignored by all right-minded persons, except to expose it for the hateful trash that it is.
* — Regarding the doxxing of Wolf Nanaki: Wolf Nanaki has been an open critic of Snoot Game, and she’s also a key promoter of Goodbye Volcano High. These facts have made her a prime target for harassment and doxxing by Snoot Game’s 4chan fanbase. This is a reprehensible act that needs to be condemned in the harshest possible terms. To wit — I feel the need to point out that I, the authour of this article, am not Wolf Nanaki, and that any harassment directed at her an account of this article is completely misdirected. Those who believe otherwise clearly underestimate the number of people who want to condemn transphobic hate, but who feel unsafe doing to except on an anon account such as this — or even at all.
