Volcano Princess (Xbox Game Pass)

I’ve had Volcano Princess on my Steam wishlist for a while now, but I haven’t had the heart to purchase a copy so I can play it. Recently, though, I redeemed my free 3-month Xbox Game Pass that came with my laptop I got about a year or so ago because it was about to expire and the game just recently became available in the Game Pass catalog, so I figured it was a good time to download the game and finally play it.

(Sorry, Cookie Clicker. You’ll be on the back burner for a bit. I’ll be back!!!)

Volcano Princess is an adorable, single-player simulator game from Egg Hatcher where you play the single father in a place called Volcano Kingdom, raising a young girl after her mother dies. It takes RPG and turn-based elements where each turn there’s a variety of different activities you can do, like cooking, horse racing, fighting, working, etc. that can help you improve your stats.

This has so much cute art, and it brought me so much joy to play — just look at her!!! The animation when transitioning to a different screen is just as adorable.

You can interact with a variety of other characters in the game and develop relationships with them each turn, from developing friendships and ultimately inviting some of them as part of your team on adventures to romancing them. There are a lot of different options in the game, and each of the choices affect the ending when your daughter grows up and attends the coming of age ceremony.

Besides the variety of activities and character interactions, you also manage the courses she takes — and there is quite a variety. There’s music, theology, archery, sword fighting, etc. Each course completed can increase the stats and affect the mood of the daughter, but you can increase the mood back up by cooking and eating food that affects that stat.

Occasionally you’ll get the option of addressing your daughter’s concerns — you can either address it, or you can ignore it and be judged accordingly on what kind of father you are at the end of the game, based on what your daughter thinks of you. At the beginning of the game, when your daughter is in early childhood, you select a goal of what you’d like your fathering style to be, and you’re judged on whether you met the goal before she turns twelve.

In the few runs I’ve had so far, I’ve failed my goal; maybe I’m not cut out to be a parent… (but I’ve been improving, so maybe there’s hope for me after all!*) You’ll get a second option to select a fathering style goal when she turns twelve.

*Can’t believe I’m that concerned with my parenting skills over a fictional child.

Some choices you make can affect how much darkness your daughter has, and after a certain point, you can’t speed up learning courses using the fame you’ve earned. There are also a few endings you can unlock doing that, though — for my second run of Volcano Princess, I decided I was going to go ham on the shenanigans just to see what kind of ending(s) I could unlock.

My only issue is the translation is weird sometimes, but I wasn’t too bothered by it* because I mostly understood the original language of the voiceover. I mostly looked over those parts unless I didn’t understand the context and then I used my own knowledge to piece the general idea of what was being said. Your mileage may vary.

*I notice this a lot with Chinese translated novels, too. My mom mentions there are some things in Chinese that can’t be properly translated to English so she has to find an alternative, similar translation, so maybe that’s what’s happening here? Languages are hard, y’all.

Volcano Princess was a lot of fun to play; the storyline had me hooked, and I was constantly curious about what the results of my action choices would lead to (at least for the first run). I fully intended to get a couple hours in and then finish the rest of my first run another time, but the next thing I knew, I finished a whole run and most of the day had passed — whoops (One more choice! One more choice!).

There’s a lot to keep you engaged during your run, but the mechanics and overall gameplay are pretty simple, and yet there’s a bit of strategy involved as well if you like to go achievement hunting. I get bored pretty quickly going through the same storyline over and over even if there are different endings, but I can definitely see myself coming back to this every once in a while after some time passes and I forget the storyline just to see what achievements I can unlock.