Scarlet Hollow News

Hey folks! It's another between-episodes interlude, so it's time for another balance patch.



There's quite a few changes here, so we'll leave you with the high level ones:

• More flirting. The romance in Scarlet Hollow remains at a slow burn, but we figured it could maybe burn a little faster. Players with the Hot trait have even more flirt options in the first three Episodes, and everyone now gets a little something to move things along a bit faster.
  
• More trait-specific dialogue options and passive narration. Every trait's gotten a little something extra, with an emphasis on providing more unique social benefits to Powerful Build (which remains the least picked trait in the game) and providing additional context to Mystical. One of our original design ideas was to use the existence of special dialogue options as a means to convey additional information to our players, but from watching streams and recordings of Scarlet Hollow, it was clear that this wasn't how players interacted with those options. This was particularly a challenge with Mystical, where a lot of options fell a little flat, so wherever possible, we've provided players with that extra information in advance, and we're leaving it up to them to decide whether or not to share it.
  
• We've overhauled and/or replaced a few pieces of art from earlier episodes that we felt were either lacking, or that needed changes to better reflect established canon. This includes the hill overlooking the town at the beginning of Episode 1's cryptid hunt, as well as several of Kaneeka's earlier sprites — she now has a proper set of sprites when you first meet her in Episode 1, and we've changed the head of her library sprites in Episode 2 to better reflect the final character design we landed on.
  Old Kaneeka library sprite on the left, new sprite on the right!
• We've added a special friend to several backgrounds throughout the first 3 episodes. I think you know who we're talking about ;)
  
• There's a brand new line of inquiry at the mines in Episode 2.
• A long list of other small changes we've made over the course of the past few months, which I have since lost track of.

How does this update affect your saves? It doesn't! But it'll make the first three episodes feel just a little richer, and it's a perfect excuse to take a summer vacation and make your way back to the Holler.

This is, definitively, going to be the last major patch for the first three episodes. I'm sure we'll still make plenty of small tweaks and additions as we go, but we're pretty happy with how things are right now and want to focus the rest of our attention on the future! These patches were also a lot more manageable back when we had less content to go through, but the longer the game becomes, the more of an undertaking it's been to expand our pre-existing content.

Speaking of the game becoming longer, Episode 4 continues to come along well, and, unsurprisingly, it's going to be a big one (the script is currently 400 pages long, meaning it'll contain more content than Episode 3). It'll be finished and released at some point before the end of the year (ideally looking at Halloween, but we're a little too far out to settle on a final release date.)

On another note, we have a second (much smaller) game in the works that we've been developing in our off hours — we'll be announcing it soon, so keep your eyes peeled! We're approaching this new game so it has a minimal impact on our workflow for Scarlet Hollow — it's being written in parallel to Episode 4 (since only one person can really be actively working on the script at any given time) and is using a different (but still gorgeous IMO) art style that ONLY uses pencils, meaning the amount of time it takes to create a given sprite or background is magnitudes quicker than its equivalent in Scarlet Hollow. Check out a preview of that style below:



There'll be a demo available for this new game later this year, and we're expecting it'll be fully released some time early in 2023, in between the releases of Episodes 4 and 5 for Scarlet Hollow.

If you haven't had the chance and want to be plugged in to the Scarlet Hollow community, don't forget to join our Discord, follow us on Twitter, or join /r/scarlethollow. Or do all three! Likewise, if you like the work we do and want extra early previews of what's to come (as well as occasional alpha builds for work-in-progress episodes or new games), consider supporting us on Patreon!

Thanks so much for your continued support, and we can't wait to share more of what we've been working on!

~Tony and Abby

Our analysis of Episode 3 survey data is live for you to read! Check it out here: https://blacktabbygames.medium.com/analyzing-player-choices-in-episode-3-of-scarlet-hollow-a09783ef2f31

Next thing on the roadmap is our Summer content patch, which'll coincide with the start of the Steam Summer Sale, so keep your eyes peeled!

Hey folks!

As of the time of this posting, there's a little under 24 hours left to pick up your limited edition, "I Want to Yeah" t-shirt or tank top, as worn by everyone's favorite character, Bus Guy Scarlet Hollow.

It's available over on Topatoco, and we're a little under 20 shirts away from our stretch goal, where everyone who orders a shirt gets a sticker thrown in for free :D We have some other neat crowdfunded merch on the horizon, too, so keep your eyes peeled for future updates! (Or follow us on Twitter and/or join the Scarlet Hollow Discord)

Pick up your very cool shirt. Sales close at 5pm Eastern time on June 10th, so get 'em in now!

We'll be dropping the June content patch whenever the Steam summer sale starts, but if you want to alpha test it and check it out early, we've got a special Patreon tier just for that purpose (as well as another tier that gets early access to devlogs, including the Episode 3 Player Choices Breakdown, and other art previews.)

Can't wait to share the patch with everyone, and thank you so much to everyone who's grabbed a shirt, or bought the game, or even if you've just followed this page and wishlisted!

Hey folks! Quickly popping in to give an update about our timeline for a few things, and to highlight some of the changes/new content we've recently made available on our studio's Patreon page. We won't be talking about our Patreon here often, but since we just added a bunch of new content, and are soft-relaunching our alpha testing tier, we wanted to take the chance to let people know that it exists!

Also, before we get started, here's an obligatory extra plug to join our Discord, /r/scarlethollow, and/or to follow us on Twitter if you haven't already!

First thing's first, the summer content patch is finished, and has entered alpha. This build is available to Patrons in our alpha tier, who'll also get extra early access to work-in-progress builds of Episode 4, as well as work in progress builds for our yet to be announced second game. Generally speaking, we're planning to make alpha builds available up to the big event in a given Episode (the mines in Episode 2, the haunting in Episode 3, etc) with that final stretch being fully-closed testing only so everyone is on the same page for the full release of an Episode.

The summer content patch will be released to the rest of the player-base in about two weeks! Among other things, this patch contains buffs/tweaks to a number of traits, with Powerful Build, Mystical, and Hot seeing the biggest changes. We've also reworked some art assets to be more on-model with how the game's developed over time, and we've added all sorts of little goodies and easter eggs for y'all to find!

A taste of some of the new art.

Patrons also get access to an HD wallpaper pack. When we first scan backgrounds into photoshop, they're natively in 8k, so there's a lot of extra detail to find in these bigger backgrounds! There's about 25 backgrounds right now, and we plan to add a couple more every month. The link to these backgrounds, as well as some extra early previews on what else we've been working on, can be found at this link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/67259562

Finally, we're a little over halfway through our crowdfund for limited edition Bus Guy shirts, and a little over 2/3 of the way to our stretch goal, which'll see every order get a bonus "I Want to Yeah' sticker thrown in.

Shirts!!!!

As for the second game we mentioned earlier in this post, we'll be announcing it at some point in the next month or so, so keep your eyes peeled for that, too!

As always, thank you all for you continued support as we strive to make Scarlet Hollow the best game it can be!

~Tony and Abby

Hey folks!

Popping in to share a few quick updates.

We just launched a mini-crowdfunding campaign for the "I Want to Yeah" shirt worn by bus stranger! It's available over on Topatoco, and if we double our initial goal, everyone who gets a shirt is going to get a sticker thrown in for free :D We have some other neat crowdfunded merch on the horizon, too, so keep your eyes peeled for future updates! (Or follow us on Twitter and/or join the Scarlet Hollow Discord)

Pick up your very cool shirt. 15 days left!

• Episode 4 is coming along well, and unsurprisingly, it's huge. We're still working on the script, but so far it's already at 400 pages (which is significantly more content than Episode 3!) — this is the Episode where a lot of your decisions in the first three episodes are really going to start to be felt, so there should be a lot of interesting branching. We're shooting for a fall release, ideally around Halloween, though as always, we're not going to release it until it's ready, even if it takes some extra time.
  
• We've got a small second game in the works, too, and it'll probably release between Episodes 4 and 5. We've deliberately designed in such a way that it should have minimal impact on Scarlet Hollow's release schedule. The writing hasn't slowed down Scarlet Hollow's script work whatsoever, and we're trying out a pencils-only art style that both looks great and takes a fraction of the time it takes to do full inks and colors. We'll be announcing at some point this summer, so once again, keep your eyes peeled!
  
• We've got an upcoming balance patch we'll be releasing in June that adds a bit of new art to the first three episodes as well as some new dialogue. It's probably going to be similar in scale to the last balance patch we did — a few traits are going to feel a lot better.
  

Can't wait until we can share more of what we're working on!