Volcano Princess () is a social simulation game, developed by the Chinese studio Egg Catcher and published by the Chinese publisher , where players play the role of the single father to a young girl. It was released for Microsoft Windows on April 21, 2023. By July 2023, it had sold over 600,000 copies.
Story
The story of the game takes place in the Volcano Kingdom where chivalry, magic and alchemy are prevalent. The player plays the role of father who takes care of his daughter alone after his wife passed away.
Gameplay
In Volcano Princess, the players will be spending time with the daughter and managing what daily activities she will participate in. The daughter has several stats, such as strength, intelligence, emotion and imagination, which can be increased enrolling her in classes and managing her schedule. The daughters are able to learn learn from more than a dozen courses such as music, painting and fighting. They can also participate in work, adventures, garden dances, dice games, horse capture, raising and others. As time passes, the characters will grow older and go through different stages in life, reflected by the various changes of their appearance. The player and the daughter will also have contact with the NPC in the game. The NPC will be affected by the actions of the player and the daughter, and will respond to the changes of the player and even affect the ending of the game.
The game features 330 illustrations, with more than 50 endings to explore.
Development and release
The game was developed by the team Egg Hatcher, which consists of two students who graduated from the Communication University of China in 2019. This work was adapted from their previous graduation project, which took 4 years of development to complete.
On July 9, 2021, the game released the Steam store page, and announced that the game trial would be available at Shanghai from July 15 to 18. On 15 September 2022, the game published its first trailer, and announced that a trial version will be launched on Steam in October.
On 3 October 2022, the game launched a trial version on Steam, and simultaneously launched crowdfunding on Modian. The crowdfunding ended on November 13, and a total of ¥320,000 was raised. On November 22, the game officially announced that the game will be officially released on Steam on 2 February 2023. However, on December 30, the game announced that due to the need for additional quality improvements and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the release date has been postponed to April 2023. On 20 March 2023, Gamera Games announced that the game will be released on 21 April 2023.
On 21 June 2023, Egg Hatcher released a new version of the game, which added support of the Japanese language, introducing 3 new endings and modifying some plots. The character "daughter" is voiced by Mai Nakahara.
Reception
Amanda Yeo of Mashable stated the game to be "as wholesome as parenting can get". He compared the game with Princess Maker 2, saying that since both of the games are "raising simulators", this game is "the experience nostalgic players remember Princess Maker 2 to be". However, he also mentioned that it "has a fairly robust social system", with multiple routes to be chosen from. Despite that, he pointed out that numerous errors exist in the English language localisation of the game, alongside a few bugs upon release. In all, he compared the game to "a handmade gift", since it "isn't perfect, but is beautiful and made with heart".
Jenni Lada of Siliconera also compared the game with the Princess Maker series. In her view, the game "lets you be more involved in your child’s life", since the player character can take part in activities together, forming the scene of "a father-daughter outing". In general, she claimed the game to be "both more interactive and approachable".
Mr. Katoh of Game*Spark gave a positive comment on the game, stating the game to be "easy to play, with a relatively orthodox upbringing system", and the atmosphere of the game that "focuses on the bond between parents and children" to be "attractive". He also pointed out that the text and graphics are "good overall".
Kashiwamata of Dengeki Online said that the feature that the conditions for the ending are not determined by status alone left him with a good impression. He also described the story to be "very gentle" that "his heart was healed when he read the lines".