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This game is unplayable! Volcano Girl is a terrible mobile port of an awesome game

2K View2024-02-08

Volcano Girl

6.0

CasualSimulationStory Rich

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SHOULD I PLAY VOLCANO GIRL?

Skip it. Volcano Girl is apparently the mobile version of Volcano Princess, a management sim about raising a young daughter to adulthood. I’ve spent a lot of time with the PC version, and the concept behind it is a lot of fun, but unfortunately, Volcano Girl is barely playable on mobile devices. The touch controls are frequently unresponsive, and some in-game commands can’t actually be completed without a mouse and keyboard. Even worse, the game doesn’t seem to be able to load an event that takes place near the end of the childhood stage, which brings all progress to halt.

TIME PLAYED

I spent a little over an hour playing Volcano Girl. During that time, I played through the early segments of the game more than once in the hopes I could get the game to continue. Unfortunately, the game got stuck on the same screen every time. It feels more like a short demo than an actual game. That would be fine if the demo actually ended, but the game just freezes up, which is confusing and frustrating.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT VOLCANO GIRL?

• It’s a fun, entertaining concept. Volcano Girl is a raising sim in the vein of the Princess Maker series. Raising stats, building relationships, and raising a child to adulthood is a lot of fun, or at least it would be if the game actually worked. Like I said before, I’ve had a ton of fun playing this title on Steam, so the core gameplay isn’t the problem here. I love these types of games, so I would be thrilled if Volcano Girl ran smoothly on mobile. If it was less of a chore to play, I’d probably sink hours into it.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT VOLCANO GIRL?

• It’s extremely buggy. Volcano Girl clearly isn’t ready to be released. Not only is it filled with bugs, but many parts of the game simply don’t work. For example, during an in-game festival, I was invited to participate in a math competition with your daughter. The game prompted me to choose answers by right-clicking my mouse, which is impossible on mobile devices. Shortly after, things froze up, so I wasn’t able to play any further.

Even when Volcano Girl did run, it didn’t run well. The touch screen controls barely work, and I often had to click on something multiple times before the game registered my actions. The story sequences didn’t load in fully, so I had to skip past them to make any progress. It’s just not ready for public consumption, and it’s hard to understand why the devs would release it in this state.

• There are tons of grammatical errors. It’s clear that Volcano Girl’s script wasn’t translated or edited by a native English speaker. Everything is understandable, but the writing is littered with bad grammar and oddly structured sentences. This is an issue in the Steam version too, but it’s a lot easier to look past the messy translation when the game actually works.

• It’s slow. There are parts of Volcano Girl that move forward at a glacial pace. Walking around and talking to people takes much longer than it should, and some tasks take so long to complete that it feels like something’s wrong. When I tried playing a prize wheel minigame, it took more than a minute for the wheel to finish spinning, which is ridiculous. I tested the same minigame on the Steam version, and while it still felt a little sluggish there, it was notably faster.