This review contains spoilers
This is a bit of a peculiar thing, it's a parody VN that's trying to do commentary on social matters that the original source material was going along with, so it's going to be a bit hard to quantify my thoughts on it.
Snoot Game is a Dating Sim VN parodying the at the time only announced game "Goodbye Volcano High" mainly over the scoffing of "a queer furry game, how dull!"
From it's hook, it's already hard to get into it all, and the first hour feels like it was written in an angry blur of "god this character looks like they'd just be an annoying [GOTH/TUMBLR USER/POT SMOKER/PREP]" but with the small bits of writing that open up as it goes on, it starts to unfurl into something more like a trope-y high school romance by way of 4chan humor.
Unfortunately, it never really goes any farther than that, it tries to talk big on saying everyone has their own problems, but it chooses to act on that line of thinking by trying to make all the characters that were mean to you "normal" and trying to write any character that could be perceived as normal as actually a manipulative asshole.
Most of the actual endings revolve around you not growing as a person but just not being the typical fish out of water loner protagonist that doesn't get along with anyone, Anon as a character doesn't grow and there's no better show of this than the crappy 4chan culture stuff continuing into the "best" ending, in pursuit of a straight white male trying to write about what pain points someone's personal (shortsighted, admittedly) experimentation with queerness it just comes off as a "I can fix her into a cute tradwife" thing.
There's no better show to this than the endings, which I'll go into here.
The first 2 endings are both rubbish, they're both a result of not doing enough or whatever and they're written with some shitty shock value.
In these Snoot Game is trying REALLY hard to be Katawa Shoujo (if you liked Snoot, try this out!) with big sudden powerful scenes, but they just come off as edgy for the sake of it.
You've got the first ending where for one reason or another things fall apart and then you get a spooky ol' text and... she shot up the school, yup, it went there, and it's written with as many tropes as you'd think it would, it sucks and I was never really getting any emotions over it, just irritated that it would go for such a low hanging fruit.
Second one is a similar story, but instead she becomes a fucked up crackhead who shaved her hair, moving on.
Third ending is where you start getting into the good endings but this is particularly where I realized the game doesn't want everyone to grow from their experiences, it just wants everyone BUT Anon to grow, you know, the character that the writer is obviously relating to the most, in-fact most of the characters just grow around Anon to fit someone so toxic into their relationships, with most of the justification for him breaching social groups is one person saying "he's chill" and everyone else going along with it with minimal hesitation.
So, what happens is Anon serves in the military for some shit for a few years, as Fang patiently awaits your return, and would you look at that! She's a tradwife now, wow, subtle writing there guys.
Ending 4 is just kind of nothing in my memory, but admittedly this is probably because I was a bit checked out after seeing the other 3.
Something something everyone gets along and goes out on a little bit of fun, yada yada time passes and it's jumping back into shitty romance tropes of "well i havent seen you in years... but want to rekindle the old flame with a dinner date"
To sum up a major problem, there was never any chemistry between the two, Fang's personality changes from a "this world doesn't understand me" emo girl to a close friend of pretty much just Anon and are now thick as thieves, and there's little care about any problems Anon's character has, no conversation on "hey is it too much to ask if you'd not be so abrasive to not just random people but your friends as well over their life choices" it just feels incredibly out of character.
The problem with the game boils down to this, it's a game about wanting to grow and change, but it's played from the perspective of someone who never ever changes past the most basic aspect of "don't be obnoxiously awful to everyone"
Why a 6/10 then? It boils down to this one thing.
This is art, this is personal expression, and done through parody it's effectively a strong example of a "punk" video game, minus the whole being against social norms than the system part.
The game isn't about "what if Goodbye Volcano High was AWESOME" it's about someone as socially distant as a channer being left behind by the world as the online community separates farther and farther away from the culture they were raised around, leaving them a fish out of water for the realities of the world where everyone has their own problem, but express that in more ways than just taking shitty toxic behavior into their day-to-day life.
Anon is the author, in this pretty obvious allegory for not understanding other people, particularly girls and queer folk, and it's taken out by just lashing out at everyone and then breaking it all down and wishing they could understand them by way of adapting them into their own worldview, wishing they could get as close as a relationship to break down their walls and see what's really going in on the inside.
Okay, that's a bit of hyperbole, to better put it, it's the written down version of that one time you thought for a few minutes on what it'd be like to date the girl who always bullies you, maybe because you want to fix her, maybe because you subconsciously just want to understand, or maybe despite all your dislike for her as a person, you just think she's hot.
I think this is worth going through for anyone who ever has felt like they're a bit of a loner, it's not going to be a great experience but it's one worth having, what is art if not thought-provoking.
Snoot Game is a Dating Sim VN parodying the at the time only announced game "Goodbye Volcano High" mainly over the scoffing of "a queer furry game, how dull!"
From it's hook, it's already hard to get into it all, and the first hour feels like it was written in an angry blur of "god this character looks like they'd just be an annoying [GOTH/TUMBLR USER/POT SMOKER/PREP]" but with the small bits of writing that open up as it goes on, it starts to unfurl into something more like a trope-y high school romance by way of 4chan humor.
Unfortunately, it never really goes any farther than that, it tries to talk big on saying everyone has their own problems, but it chooses to act on that line of thinking by trying to make all the characters that were mean to you "normal" and trying to write any character that could be perceived as normal as actually a manipulative asshole.
Most of the actual endings revolve around you not growing as a person but just not being the typical fish out of water loner protagonist that doesn't get along with anyone, Anon as a character doesn't grow and there's no better show of this than the crappy 4chan culture stuff continuing into the "best" ending, in pursuit of a straight white male trying to write about what pain points someone's personal (shortsighted, admittedly) experimentation with queerness it just comes off as a "I can fix her into a cute tradwife" thing.
There's no better show to this than the endings, which I'll go into here.
The first 2 endings are both rubbish, they're both a result of not doing enough or whatever and they're written with some shitty shock value.
In these Snoot Game is trying REALLY hard to be Katawa Shoujo (if you liked Snoot, try this out!) with big sudden powerful scenes, but they just come off as edgy for the sake of it.
You've got the first ending where for one reason or another things fall apart and then you get a spooky ol' text and... she shot up the school, yup, it went there, and it's written with as many tropes as you'd think it would, it sucks and I was never really getting any emotions over it, just irritated that it would go for such a low hanging fruit.
Second one is a similar story, but instead she becomes a fucked up crackhead who shaved her hair, moving on.
Third ending is where you start getting into the good endings but this is particularly where I realized the game doesn't want everyone to grow from their experiences, it just wants everyone BUT Anon to grow, you know, the character that the writer is obviously relating to the most, in-fact most of the characters just grow around Anon to fit someone so toxic into their relationships, with most of the justification for him breaching social groups is one person saying "he's chill" and everyone else going along with it with minimal hesitation.
So, what happens is Anon serves in the military for some shit for a few years, as Fang patiently awaits your return, and would you look at that! She's a tradwife now, wow, subtle writing there guys.
Ending 4 is just kind of nothing in my memory, but admittedly this is probably because I was a bit checked out after seeing the other 3.
Something something everyone gets along and goes out on a little bit of fun, yada yada time passes and it's jumping back into shitty romance tropes of "well i havent seen you in years... but want to rekindle the old flame with a dinner date"
To sum up a major problem, there was never any chemistry between the two, Fang's personality changes from a "this world doesn't understand me" emo girl to a close friend of pretty much just Anon and are now thick as thieves, and there's little care about any problems Anon's character has, no conversation on "hey is it too much to ask if you'd not be so abrasive to not just random people but your friends as well over their life choices" it just feels incredibly out of character.
The problem with the game boils down to this, it's a game about wanting to grow and change, but it's played from the perspective of someone who never ever changes past the most basic aspect of "don't be obnoxiously awful to everyone"
Why a 6/10 then? It boils down to this one thing.
This is art, this is personal expression, and done through parody it's effectively a strong example of a "punk" video game, minus the whole being against social norms than the system part.
The game isn't about "what if Goodbye Volcano High was AWESOME" it's about someone as socially distant as a channer being left behind by the world as the online community separates farther and farther away from the culture they were raised around, leaving them a fish out of water for the realities of the world where everyone has their own problem, but express that in more ways than just taking shitty toxic behavior into their day-to-day life.
Anon is the author, in this pretty obvious allegory for not understanding other people, particularly girls and queer folk, and it's taken out by just lashing out at everyone and then breaking it all down and wishing they could understand them by way of adapting them into their own worldview, wishing they could get as close as a relationship to break down their walls and see what's really going in on the inside.
Okay, that's a bit of hyperbole, to better put it, it's the written down version of that one time you thought for a few minutes on what it'd be like to date the girl who always bullies you, maybe because you want to fix her, maybe because you subconsciously just want to understand, or maybe despite all your dislike for her as a person, you just think she's hot.
I think this is worth going through for anyone who ever has felt like they're a bit of a loner, it's not going to be a great experience but it's one worth having, what is art if not thought-provoking.