Scarlet Hollow News

[p]Dearest Cousins,[/p][p][/p][p]We just got back from PAX, where we had a wonderful time meeting some of you and catching up with other devs.[/p][p]It's been a pretty scattered month between traveling and some cool behind the scenes stuff we can't talk about for a while, but we still made further progress with art and coding. Abby's finished another six backgrounds (now up to 20 total for the episode) and I finished the final touches on three script files.[/p][p]But most importantly, we also figured out a much better way to tackle the middle arc of the Episode, and have had to dedicate a couple of weeks to reworking those sections of the script. We usually find ourselves doing edits to this extent at some point during development, so this isn't too unusual for our process.[/p][p]And thankfully, we're already most of the way through this draft, so taking that extra time shouldn't throw development too far off schedule. But hitting our original target release date in early December was already going to be a tight deadline, and at this point, it no longer feels like a reasonable goal. We can very comfortably commit to two things, though:[/p]

1. [p]Episode 5 will release in Q1 of 2026.[/p]
2. [p]We'll announce a firm release date before the end of the year. I will say that we have a specific date in mind, but a short-form announcement on Steam isn't the place to share that information. We care a lot about Scarlet Hollow and want to make sure it has the opportunity to participate in showcases and reach an even larger audience.[/p]

[p]We know that this is disappointing news, and that you've all been incredibly patient while we've plugged away at this, but it's important to us to communicate clearly and honestly with you all, rather than stringing you (and ourselves) along until the scope of the remaining work forced us to delay last minute.

We strongly believe that this new draft elevates the episode to new heights and is worth the extra time. We can't wait to devastate all of you >:]

Best,
Tony and Abby[/p]

[p]Hello cousins!

Now that the script for Episode 5 is finished, it's a lot easier for us to give you all quantifiable progress updates, so we're switching over to a monthly cadence!

We'll include some art previews this time around, but the deeper we get into development, the more spoiler-heavy sharing art would be, so as we get closer to release, previews will stop being part of these posts.

With that out of the way, it's been three weeks since the script was finally finished, and in that time we've:[/p]

• [p]The final draft of 10 out of 45 script files have been finished. This includes any edits and extensions to script that needed to be done with those files, adding game logic and variables, and general formatting. These files don't have any assets added to them yet (backgrounds, sprites, SFX, music.)[/p]
  • [p]It's worth noting that script files are not all equal in length. Some script files are several thousand lines of code (significantly longer than a given route in Slay the Princess) while others are just a few hundred lines. In general, the files that have been finished so far are on the longer side.[/p]
• [p]The recap for Episode 4 has been finished, and the recap in general has been refactored so it's easier to edit.[/p]
• [p]14 backgrounds have been fully finished (pencils, inks, colors) and another 3 are partially finished (pencils and inks.)[/p]
• [p]Two tracks of music have been finished and mastered.[/p]

[p]The opening sequences in Episode 5 will have roughly 27 backgrounds, 140 sprites, and 4 or 5 tracks of new music. Once all of those assets are finished, that segment will be going out as an alpha build to our Patrons, who play a huge part in helping us make sure that our releases are polished and bug free by the time they hit Steam.[/p][p]The upper bounds for these assets are subject to change as development goes on. Sometimes script files get scrapped entirely. Sometimes one giant file is broken down into several smaller files. Often, we wind up needing a little more art than we anticipated. BUT, sharing our estimates now seems like the best way to give you all a benchmark to see how things are coming.[/p][p]And now what you've really been waiting for! Art previews...[/p][p]We're really happy with how the art in Episode 5 has turned out so far — Abby's really leveled up over the years![/p][p]A desk... but whose?
[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Process images for another background, so you can see what the game's art looks like at different stages.[/p][p]That's all we've got for you right now! If you want more ways to stay up to date and chat with other fans, don't forget to join our mailing list or visit our Discord![/p][p]All the best, and see you all next month!
Tony and Abby[/p]

[p]Hey everyone!

The script for Episode 5 of Scarlet Hollow is finally finished, bringing the total word count for the game up to 884,000 words. This is the longest and most complicated chapter of the game to-date, coming in at 250,000 words, or 31% larger than the entirety of Slay the Princess, including its expansion. This won't be the final word count, either, since the script usually grows in length by a fair bit while I make edits and additions during implementation. For reference, Episode 4 was ~185k words in total, and for broader cultural context, the entirety of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and The Silmarillion altogether comes in at 700,000 words.
[/p][p]Finally. We're here, but at what cost?[/p][p]
So! What's next? When Episode 5? Give it to me now?

There's still a lot of work to be done before it's ready, but we're confident it will be finished before the end of the year. Walking you all through what we have so far, and what we still need to do:[/p]

• [p]Art! Episode 4 had 129 new full page background illustrations and 1,424 new sprites. I would assume a roughly similar number of assets for Episode 5. This is what Abby will be focusing on in the coming months, though I (Tony) also get to draw a few this time around >:][/p]
• [p]Episode 5 (plus the new ending for Episode 4) is split across 46 script files. On top of adding audio and visual assets to these files, we also need to format them and add in variables and checks against relationship and prior systems. That part of the work is finished for 8 of those files at the time of this writing.[/p]
• [p]Music and audio design! Brandon has already finished a few tracks, and the music and SFX have always been finished ahead of everything else (thank you Brandon and Phil!)[/p]

[p]Now that the script is finished, we'll be able to start providing more regular content updates — before we had hard numbers on us, the best we could say was "more writing was done," which doesn't feel like saying much of anything, but now we can let you all know as individual scenes get finished finished. We'll be posting monthly progress updates on Steam, as well as our newsletter, which I'd recommend subscribing to! (We don't get spammy with it.)

Thank you all so much for your patience while we've pushed ourselves this far. Scarlet Hollow is a beast of a game in scope and the deeper we've gotten into its narrative, the more demanding it's become, both in terms of the quantity of writing we have to do, and also the care we have to take in balancing the game and making sure that player choices feel like they actually matter.

Scoping out the rest of the game, I believe that Episode 5 will ultimately be the longest individual chapter of the story, so the wait shouldn't be quite as long after its release until we reach our conclusion.

All the best,
Tony and Abby[/p]

Nothing major to report — fixed a number of small issues reported in various bug channels, mostly typos + another layer of fix applied to broken logic around texting the episode 2 bootprint to Stella.

Barring anything gamebreaking, we're locking in this build until Episode 5 is finished.

Caught up on reported issues on the Discord — mostly typos.

Only notable issue was a forced return to main menu if you didn't have Stella's number by day 2 and took a photo of the bootprint in the garden.