Hey folks!

We're still in the thick of development for Episode 5, but we wanted to give y'all some updates on how it's going! Moving forward, we're going to be sharing more regular progress updates on our Discord server, where we've just started a running thread. If you want to find this thread, it's under the #the-corkboard forum in the Scarlet Hollow section of the server, and it's titled "Progress Update Thread." I'll also be sharing those updates as follow-up comments on this Steam post moving forward as well. You can join the server here: discord.gg/blacktabbygames

And here's a direct link to the progress thread: https://discord.com/channels/745361420106858607/1196853604238250196

Here's Abby's first post there on how it's going:

"I've been back to work on the script for quite some time now, and things are progressing very well!

I feel so solid about what's been done so far. I'm working on one of the toughest parts of any episode, the part where you go around and talk to people, where the variations in individual storylines really come into play. Some characters have just a few variations requiring different versions of the same scene to be written three or four times, while others have more than ten, and of course we want to make sure that we aren't just showing variation for variation's sake-- we also want to make sure that the scenes all have their own points of interest, which requires a little extra care and attention. But I'm most of the way done with all of them at this point! Just a few more scenes to go :zombiethumbsup:

This is also the part of working on Scarlet Hollow where Tony doesn't have much to do, so he's working on the script for the Pristine Cut and I've been doing Slay the Princess art (and sometimes editing) as a cool down in the evenings!

I'll be sure to keep everyone updated with some regularity so we can all keep track of how things are going!"

To give some extra details here, the script for Episode 5 was about half-way finished by the time Abby had to shift into full-time art work for Slay the Princess. Like pretty much all of our studio's major content launches (i.e. finished episodes and full games), we had to take some time off following StP's release to deal with burnout, and Abby also had to deal with the sudden death of her father.

We're fully back into the swing of things now. One of our top priorities with Scarlet Hollow has always been to go the extra mile when it comes to giving weight to your decisions, and we're at the point in the narrative where there are a *lot* of intersecting variations.

It's also generally been the case that the beginnings of episodes demand more time and effort relative to their lengths than their middles and ends, so the rest of the script should be much smoother sailing from here!

Still feeling great about releasing Episode 5 this year, and in the meantime, a huge thanks to everyone for your patience and support!

Best,
Tony

Hey there!

It's October, and we wanted to celebrate with not one, but two new sets of limited edition Scarlet Hollow merch, both of which are crowdfunding right now on our online store.

The first is the final (for now) in our set of AU posters, this time taking place in a coffeeshop AU. We might have a couple of extra ideas for posters kicking around for before the release of Episode 5 though!



And the second is yet another set of charms this time it's Kaneeka and [REDACTED].



In other news, we're rocketing towards Slay the Princess' release on October 20th. It's shaping up into something we're extremely proud of, and we can't wait until we can finally share it with you. If you haven't had the chance to do so, you can wishlist it on Steam to get notified as soon as it's out there'll be an extra launch discount available to owners of Scarlet Hollow (and to folks who want to buy both games at once)

After that release, we'll spend a couple of weeks polishing out any bugs, then another couple of weeks taking a well-earned rest, and then we'll get right into working on what's left of Episode 5, which is also shaping up into something we're extremely proud of, and unsurprisingly, into something ~even bigger~ than Episode 4. We're taking the choices you've made in your playthroughs very seriously, and we can't wait to show you some really cool branching.

As always, thank you so much for your support for both of our games! We wouldn't have been able to come this far without you.

Best,
Abby and Tony

Finally, a way for you to keep your good friends Wayne and Avery with you at all times. Avery brought you a cutting, and Wayne left his horrendous odor at home. instead smelling of delightful seasoned cherry wood! This unlikely pair is eager to grace your keychain with their particular kind of charm, in charm form, no less.

Just like last time, these charms are going as a pair, and we've got 285 of them before they're gone forever! The last campaign we did sold out in just a couple of days, so if you want 'em it's probably best to act fast! You can check out the campaign here: https://go.topatoco.com/products/ah-sh-charms02


Look at em! So small! So cute!

We don't have any new development updates since last time we're in the home stretch for Slay the Princess right now (wishlist and play the demo if you haven't already!) And we're about half-way done with the script for Episode 5.

If you want all the latest updates for both of our titles, the best places to get them are our discord and newsletter. Links for those:

Discord: discord.gg/blacktabbygames
Newsletter: bit.ly/blacktabbynews

Note: our discord server has an automatic filter that will auto-kick accounts that are under 5 hours old so if you're making your first account to join, bear with it and check back then.

As always, thanks so much for your patience and support. Both of our games mean a lot to us, and we're so happy you're all along for the ride.

Best,
Tony and Abby

Made the character creation flow accessible to players who require screenreaders. Self-voicing will now describe the flow for each screen, as well as tell the player what traits they've hovered.

A couple of minor bug fixes for menu logic as well

Heya folks!

It's been a little while since our last update, so we're here to share a couple of exciting little things and to give you a general progress report on how things are going with Scarlet Hollow Episode 5 and Slay the Princess.

First thing's first! We're doing a limited run of wooden character charms/keychains, and the page to order them is live right now. We're starting out with Tabitha and Stella, but if they sell well, we've actually got designs mapped out for most of the main cast.


A preview of some of our other charm designs!

Next up, today is also the start of the Steam Summer Sale, and Scarlet Hollow is 25% off. We're going to do something a little special for this sale, where for every 10 copies sold over the next two weeks, we'll be making a free copy of the game available to claim on itch.io, starting with 5 copies available at the time of this post going out. And as a reminder, until at least one or two sale cycles after the full release, 25% is going to be the discount we run Scarlet Hollow at. There's no steeper cut around the horizon to hold off for, but also if you're planning out your spending, you don't need to feel like you'll be missing out if you want to hold off until the next discount cycle.

STILL if you're looking for an opportunity to buy Scarlet Hollow or to gift it to a friend, there's no better time than the present.

Work on both games is continuing to go well. The first draft of Episode 5 is nearing halfway done, and Slay the Princess' script is also well past that point, with the Tower, Adversary and Stranger routes fully written as well as a ton of other never-before-seen content. We've locked in an internal release date for Slay the Princess, and are confident about hitting it there'll be an announcement in the coming months so keep your eyes peeled!

In terms of release schedule, anticipate Slay the Princess later this year, and Episode 5 some time in the first half of next year it's going to be our biggest chapter yetwith much more content than Episode 4and now that we're a little more stable as a studio, we're making sure we're prioritizing our health instead of burning the candle at both ends for years straight.

Both games'll be well worth the wait!

Thank you as always for your support and patience! It means a lot to be able to make our games the way we want to make them :)

Best,
Tony and Abby

You can now toggle auto-advancing text and set that text's speed in the game's preferences.

Hey folks!

Everyone really seemed to like the beach poster (it funded in ~an hour~), so we're doing another! And this time, it's everyone going to the State Fair.

The crowdfund is live now and will run for 15 days, so it should end on the 19th, and the first 50 backers get an enamel Ditchling pin thrown in for free ^^

You can back the campaign here: https://go.topatoco.com/products/ah-sh-ncstafefair-pr

We've got quite a few more AU prints planned, though we're not sure when/if we'll do print runs for them I guess it'll depend on how well this second campaign goes! You can see the art for the next one and download HD wallpapers of all these prints and tons of Scarlet Hollow game art on our Patreon right now!

We've got a few other things going on this week too, since it's the start of LudoNarraCon, a four day online festival celebrating narrative games on Steam!

• Scarlet Hollow is 25% off for the next week. It's very important to us that we're transparent about discounts, so a reminder: every single discount we run from now until at least couple of cycles after we leave early access will be precisely 25% off. So if you want to pick up the game right now but money's tight, don't worry about FOMO pressuring you to spend. It'll be on sale at this same price again soon. Likewise if you're holding off because you think a steeper discount might be around the corner, that wait's going to be quite a while.
  
  
• Slay the Princess has the honor of being one of the exhibitors for LudoNarraCon, meaning that out of hundreds of applicants, it was one of only 43 titles selected for prime-time featuring! We don't have any major updates for the Slay the Princess demo for this event, but that's because we had a major update a little over a month ago. If you haven't had the chance to check it out, the demo's been updated with a director's cut that features roughly an hour of brand new content and is much closer to the vision we have for the final game. If this is the first time you're hearing about it, Slay the Princess has cosmic horror meets The Stanley Parable vibes, and if you've enjoyed the humor in Scarlet Hollow, you'll probably enjoy it as well! It's also fully voice acted, featuring the talents of Jonathan Sims and Nichole Goodnight.
  
  
  
  
• I'm hosting a panel for LudoNarraCon about using game mechanics and systems as tools for narrative design. It should go live on the event's Steam page on Friday at 4pm EST. We managed to pull together some amazing panelists, including Emily Short (Creative Director at Failbetter Games), Sarah Northway (I Was a Teenage Exocolonist) and Son M. (Love Shore). Should be a treat if you want to hear about people's writing process.
  
  
• We're also doing a Q&A livestream where you'll get to see Abby work on some background art for Episode 5 of Scarlet Hollow and ask us all sorts of questions about both of our games. The stream will be simulcast to the Slay the Princess Steam page as well as our Twitch channel, and we'll be sure to look at chat in both places to make sure we see your questions!
  
  

Small patch:

Biggest change is adding some range to Kaneeka's reactions to you calling Tabitha in Episode 2 based on your relationship values with her.

Assorted tiny fixes.

When we originally redesigned Stella between Episode 1 and Episode 2, there were a couple of sprites in Episode 1 we'd never gotten around to replacing (notably when she calls the police in certain paths) Those sprites have finally been replaced w/ new ones that more accurately reflect her final design.

We've also included a handful of small bug and typo fixes.

Hi everyone!

Did hardcore mode get you down? Do you really, more than anything else in the world, just want to go to beach with your favorite scarlet hollow pals?

That might be easier said than done, but did you know that right now, you can bring the beach with you to your very own wall in your very own room? We're doing a mini-crowdfund for an AU scarlet hollow poster, and the first 100 backers get a free bonus sticker sheet. The crowdfund ends on April 21st, so get yours while you have the chance!



We're going to be doing a new thing where we post monthly AU posters like this for the "first look" tier on our patreon, and folks at that tier will also be able to download 4k HD wallpapers of these posters (and a lot of other scarlet hollow and slay the princess art as well!) In fact, the patrons-only early preview of that second poster is already live!

As always, thank you so much for your continued support we can't wait 'till we can share the next piece of Scarlet Hollow with you!

Best,
Tony and Abby

The monkeys paw curls!

For years you've asked us to give you a third trait in Scarlet Hollow, and today that wish is granted, though at a heavy price.

Introducing HARDCORE MODE.

Normally, each trait in Scarlet Hollow allows you to bypass a game and character altering sacrifice. In HARDCORE MODE, while you have three traits, you'll be unable to use any of them in these end-of-episode scenarios, allowing you to explore more dialogue, but without making the game too chipper!

So please, enjoy your new dialogue options, but know the suffering your hubris brings.

To unlock HARDCORE MODE, just finish the first four Episodes of the game. If you've already finished Episode 4, loading a save at the ending screen and clicking through to the credits will also unlock HARDCORE MODE. Once it's unlocked, there'll be an option to start a new HARDCORE run from the main menu.

Also, in case you were wondering, yes, there are new achievements for hardcore mode, so all of you completionists out there are going to have to run the misery gauntlet.



Enjoy at your own peril,
Tony and Abby

p.s. I know what you're thinking "Is this an elaborate April Fool's joke?" And the answer is yes, but only in that we went ahead and actually made this patch.

Hi everyone!

Wanted to share a couple of quick updates.

Slay the Princess was accepted into the PAX Rising showcase, which is a special spot on the show floor for exciting new indie games we've been demoing it there since Thursday, and will also be there today and tomorrow, so if you're headed to PAX, please come say hi!

As part of the showcase, we put together a vastly expanded the Slay the Princess demo, adding entirely new chapter 2 branches, tons of art, and hundreds of lines of brand spanking new VA from Nichole Goodnight and Jonathan Sims. While you can play this demo at PAX, you can also play it on Steam right now! All-in-all, there's about 2.5-3 hours of content total!


Look how popping this booth is!

On top of progress with Slay the Princess, we continue to be hard at work on Episode 5 of Scarlet Hollow we're still plugging away at the script right now (Episode 5 is going to be our biggest yet by a wide margin [how surprising!]), but in the meantime, we've been cooking up a brand new game mode that'll give you an entirely new way to play the game. Keep your eyes peeled for an update at the beginning of next month!

If you want early access to this new mode (and want an early reveal) that build is available to the alpha tester tier on our Patreon right now!

As always, thank you so much for your continued patience and support! Running a two-person studio building these kinds of projects is incredibly challenging work, and all of you are the reason we're able to remain independent and free to make our games the way we've envisioned them.

~Tony and Abby

idk what's wrong with steam's updater so i'm trying a fresh depot. sorry about the big re-dowload!

Looks like re-enabling our beta branch this AM mucked with the live build and made the end of episode 3 cut to credits instead of start episode 4. this should fix that!

Fixed a backlog of minor spelling errors.

Finished remaining issues with restoring a handful of accidentally cut dialogue options.

Switch a menu option to hug Reese to have the (Explore) tag.

Hello cousins and Scarlet Hollow enthusiasts.

It is my pleasure to inform you that Tabitha is a contestant in the "girlboss wars" a bracket to find the ultimate girlboss. She is currently in a hairy matchup with Isabelle Animal Crossing, who is not a girlboss, and we need your help to secure her victory. You can vote for your cousin here.

It would be extremely neat if Tabitha takes home the full thing, so I can replace the awards widget on the Scarlet Hollow steam page with "2023 ultimate girlboss winner"

please enable my shitposting.

tyvm,
Tony

p.s. brief development update while you're here:

Things are going well, and we're continuing our hard work on the scripts for Episode 5 and Slay the Princess. I know we say this every time, but Episode 5 is our most ambitious yet, both in terms of branching as well as general scope, and while it's going to take us some time to get it ready, I think you're all going to really like what we've got planned for you.

Slay the Princess also got into this year's PAX Rising showcase, a celebration of some of the most promising upcoming indie games. We'll be taking an updated demo to PAX East with us, so if you're attending, please stop by the booth and say hi! You'll also be able to play this updated demo on Steam starting on day 1 of convention, so if you can't attend, you won't be missing out.

Thank you, as always, for your boundless support! We appreciate each and every one of you. ^^

Fixed a backlog of small bugs and typos, and unlocked some additional dialogue options that were previously inaccessible due to bugs.

Fixed a couple of small bugs introduced in yesterday's patch

changed the music track playing in one of the new scenes

Hey folks!

It's been a little while and we've got a new update for you.

Here's what's new:

A couple new short scenes to flesh out the tail end of Episode 1.
Some updated sprites.
Fixes for all of the typos and minor bugs found since late December.
Better controller support. (Still a work in progress)

While we still have plans to add an additional ending to Episode 4 as well as some extra dialogue options, we're tabling those changes for the time being they weren't quite landing right for us, and we only want to add new content when it elevates the experience. And we also don't want to spend too much time lingering on additions to Episode 4 when we've been eager to move onto what comes next.

SO! With this update published, we're now turning our full attentions to writing Slay the Princess (free demo available if you haven't had the chance to try it out) and Episode 5!

Can't wait to share more with y'all~
~Tony + Abby

Hey everyone!

Two fun pieces of news today

The first is that we've launched a Steam bundle with Meredith Gran's wonderful Perfect Tides it's a point-and-click coming of age story, and it was one of my favorite games of the past year, so we're really excited to be able to put this together. Anyone who owns Scarlet Hollow is able to pick up Perfect Tides for a 10% discount, and if you *don't* already own Scarlet Hollow, you can pick up both games for 10% off.

Like all bundles, this discount stacks with other sales, and there'll likely be a coordinated discount between both of our games at some point in the next month or so. Perfect Tides is absolutely worth the pick-up at full price though! A sequel is also in the works, so if you're interested in point and click games, please head on over and give it a wishlist.

We've also got a new HD wallpaper pack up for download for $5 and above patrons, which also contains our previous wallpaper packs for Episodes 1-3. All in all, these packs contain 47 unique backgrounds, and they're all available in native 4k, 2k, and 1080p, so if that's the sort of thing that that strikes your fancy, please check out our page here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/77016578?pr=true

We've just gotten back to work in the past week, and are gearing up for the home stretch of the Episode 4 patch we mentioned back in December. We've also been hard at working building out the structure of both Slay the Princess and Episode 5 of Scarlet Hollow, with more details to come as we get further in development!

Hey cousins!

The Steam Winter Sale is here, and with it, the last discount we're running on Scarlet Hollow before we hike the base price to $24.99 in early January. The upcoming price hike makes the current 20% off sale the equivalent of 36% off the new price, so if you've been looking for a good opportunity to pick up Scarlet Hollow, now's likely the cheapest the game will be before we finish Episode 7 and leave Early Access!

We also wanted to take this opportunity to do a bit of news roundup, as well as to talk about what's coming next for Scarlet Hollow and our studio!

First, some news:

• Scarlet Hollow once again made John Walker's list of the best games of 2022, both on Kotaku and on Buried Treasure. We were his Game of the Year last year, so it's great to make his list two years running.
  
• We also made Kotaku's list of the top 18 current PC games. Pretty rad.
  
• We were nominated for an impact award, as well as several other awards at this year's MEGAMIGS convention up in Montreal.
  
• We were included in IGN's face-off for the best horror games there was no way we were going to beat the combined weight of every resident evil + silent hill game, but hey, we put up a fight!
  
• Y'all helped us overfund our Wayne plush campaign, so there'll probably be more merch to run in the future!
  

• Abby and I are taking our first multi-week long vacation in years starting roughly around when this post goes live. I'll fix any emergency bugs that crop up, but for the most part, we'll be resting for a bit.
  
• In January, we have a content patch planned for the first 4 Episodes, including a new resolution to Episode 4's major conflict, a new scene for Episode 1, some new art, some new achievements and some small buffs to underpicked traits.
  
• Once that's up, we're going to be working on Episode 5 and Slay the Princess in parallel.
  
• (If you haven't checked out Slay the Princess yet, it's a small, fully-voice acted side project we started working on during some of our downtime. It features the incredible voice talents of Jonny Sims (The Magnus Archives) and Nichole Goodnight (The NoSleep Podcast, a lot of other stuff.) There's a roughly 90 minute demo you can check out right now for free on Steam! Wishlists are always appreciated if you want an easy way to show your support!
  
• Our writing process is such that only one of us is touching the script for either game at any point in time, so Slay the Princess' development should have minimal impact on Episode 5's timeline. We're shooting for a Summer release for Slay the Princess, and hoping Episode 5 will be ready either late next year, or early the following year.
  
• It's probably not surprising right now, but Episode 5 is once again an increase in scope and ambition over Episode 4, so we're going to make sure it has all of the time in the oven it needs to live up to the vision we have for it. I think y'all are *really* gonna like what we've got planned, though ^^
  

A few more assorted fixes, removed link to Wayne plush campaign now that it's ended.

Happy holidays!

Hey folks!



Quick reminder that today is the last day to pick up a Wayne plush before they go into production. There won't be any extras, and there won't be a second run, so if this is something you'd like, now's your final chance to get one! You can back the campaign here: https://www.makeship.com/products/wayne-from-scarlet-hollow

Cheers,
Tony + Abby

Fixed an error introduced in the library scene when inviting Tabitha to the ghost hunt in episode 3.
Updated credits to be up-to-date on listing patron alpha testers.

Hey folks!

This *isn't* the big patch we were talking about around a week or so. We're taking some time off before finishing work on that, so expect that one some time in January.

Changes for this patch:

* A few inconsistent details with the family medical records have been ironed out.
* Various bug and typo fixes we didn't want to leave up until the New Year.
* Re-worded the descriptions for several traits to more accurately describe them (and to see if they alter pick-rates for underpicked traits)

Happy holidays!
Tony + Abby

Hey folks!

After talking to a bunch of our mentors and thinking about the expanding scope of Scarlet Hollow, we've decided to do a small price increase in January following the Steam Winter Sale. The base price of the game will be increasing from $19.99 USD to $24.99 USD (alongside small updates to regional pricing to reflect Steam's updated guidelines/recommendations there). This price change will also help position us better for future console ports. (Nothing to announce there yet, but it's definitely something we've been actively thinking about)

Since we're not doing paid DLC, this price change won't affect any current owners, nor will it affect anyone who purchases the game before these changes go live. But we're making this announcement in advance, because we wanted to make sure that folks had a significant heads up/buffer time before this change, so if you're someone who's been on the fence about picking up the game early, you'll still have multiple opportunities to buy it at a discount before price changes go into effect.

On top of the current Episode 4 launch discount, we'll be running the same 20% sale during the Steam Winter Sale, so plan accordingly!

Thank you all so much for your support!
Tony and Abby

(p.s. thank you to everyone who's helped get the Wayne plush funded over the past week. It's going into production in 5 days, so there's still a chance to pick one up, if that's your thing.)

* Mystical gets a few more reflavored options for tea
* Various bug fixes
* Steam Deck fix should FINALLY work for everyone (fingers crossed)

Gonna keep this one short!

We're going to be doing a marathon live stream of all four current Episodes of Scarlet Hollow with some special guests starting today, at 1pm EST on our Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/black_tabby_games

It'll probably take us two days to get through everything, so if we need a second day, it'll be starting at 1pm EST tomorrow, again, on our Twitch channel.

While we've got you here, I also wanted to give a short roadmap on the content updates we have planned for Episode 4. They're less substantial than previous Episodes, but:

• We'll be making some changes to how Mystical functions in the Tea Room to bring it a little more in line with its performance later in the Episode. These changes will be informational, so don't expect different outcomes for that scene, just a little more fluff!
  
• Some time next week, we'll be releasing a whole new ending for the Episode 4 dilemma. We won't say anything beyond that, but it'll be neat!
  
• Alongside the above patch, we'll also be adding a few more achievements to the episode that were cut during our crunch. Y'all have been 100%'ing this too fast, but mostly we thought it'd be fun to add in some extras that highlight some truly rare worldstates.
  
• It looks like the Nightly build of Ren'py has the steam deck fix we've all been waiting for, so expect a patch for that shortly!
  

fixed a buggy transition into a cutscene where an empty dialogue box lingered on a black screen for a moment

Various bug fixes, as well as a handful of rebalances.

Highlights:

* Hot gets additional slight bonuses to relationships with other characters. (Already a hidden benefit of the Hot trait, but we amplified its effect slightly.)
* Doctor Kelly romance post Episode 4 no longer locked exclusively behind the hot trait.
* Late Episode 4 cutscene remastered. Final shot lingers less + music is sync'd better. (Whoops I loaded an earlier cut of the animation into imovie for the release build)
* Added some extra dialogue to a couple of post Episode 4 big decision branches.

Hey folks!

Big thanks to all of you for a truly special episode launch. The reception's completely blown beyond our expectations and we can't express how much it means to us to finally have been able to share this chapter with the world.

We just put out a patch that addresses most of the reported day 1 issues and makes some minor balance tweaks.

Most notable change is to the scene with Stella at the end of episode. If Tabitha is present and has a sufficiently close relationship to the player, she will insist that the player helps her talk to Stella, so it's easier for those two to reconnect without robbing the player of the emotional catharsis of the scene.

We also have a survey ready for you to share your choices with us, which, as always, we'll compile into a write-up and dev log! Here's the link to the survey: https://forms.gle/bgLfn4Hmk97pt3RSA

Thanks again!
Tony and Abby

Layering issues, a couple of missing sprites, and a couple of messed up variables around the major decision! For the latter, if you ran into an obvious issue at the tail end of the ep (error screen or dialogue that didn't make sense given your choices) you might want to replay from the big choice!

Fixed a few broken achievements and rare logic errors, among other assorted bugs

Hey folks!

It's been a long time coming, but Episode 4 is finally here. Enjoy! :)

To celebrate the launch, we've also included an extension on the Wayne plush crowdfunding campaign, so check it out if that sort of thing interests you! Our composer also decided to make the entire Episode 4 soundtrack pay what you want on his Bandcamp for the next week, so pick it up now while you still can: https://brandonboone.bandcamp.com/album/scarlet-hollow-episode-4-official-soundtrack

There have been a few changes to earlier episodes over the course of Episode 4's development, with the most notable one being an overhaul of the Mystical trait. Both Wayne and the carvings have their own themes as of Episode 4, and we've also replaced the Original Sin track in earlier episodes with these new recordings.

If you want to join in the community discussion, please check out our Discord (discord.gg/blacktabbygames) and the Scarlet Hollow subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/ScarletHollow/).

The Discord is also the best place to report bugs! Alpha testers did a great job with the new episode, though, so hopefully there won't be too many to find! If you run into weird issues early on, try verifying the integrity of your installation through Steam I know the first round of patching was a little funky for some of our testers, but that should clear most things up!

Aside from bug fixes and a celebratory stream (date TBD), we'll be taking a month or so off some time off to recover from this deadline. And then it's going to be straight into work on Episode 5 and Slay the Princess.

Thanks so much for your support, and welcome home,
Tony + Abby

PS: As a note, Episode 4 is an escalation over prior chapters, so if you happen to need content warnings, we've updated our website to have an episode-by-episode breakdown: https://www.blacktabbygames.com/content-warnings-sh

Hey folks!

We need one more day for the finishing touches. I underestimated the visual complexity of implementing some of the animated sequences in the new Episode and I wanted to make sure we got them right. And we did! But it took a little longer than expected, so I'm still adding the finishing touches to a small handful of scenes, and then want to spend some time this evening making sure every major bug is ironed out before we share our new content with the world.

Hate to delay yet again and I know a lot of you have been so excited to play today, but every delay has gone into making the new chapter hit harder and look better.

Episode 4 tomorrow at 1pm EST.

Thank you so much for your patience,
Tony

Hey folks!

Deepest apologies but we're gonna have to do ONE more (extremely short) delay for Episode 4.

Work is almost done, but we want a little extra time to give one of the endings the breathing room and extra complexity it deserves.

Cheers, and thank you so much for your patience and support, it'll be worth it ^^
~Tony and Abby

Hey folks!

We unfortunately lost some time to illness earlier this month, so we're giving ourselves a little extra time to finish up work on Episode 4. It's now slated for November 30th instead of November 22nd.

Cheers, and thank you so much for your patience and support!
~Tony and Abby

Hey folks!

We've been running into a recurring issue with a small subset of Steam Deck players where the game would regularly freeze on them. I haven't been able to replicate the issues on my own deck, but it seems likely that this issue was, ironically enough, introduced back when Ren'py officially added Steam Deck support. The Ren'py devs are aware of this issue (other devs have reported it as well), but we haven't received any updates lately, and we didn't want to leave affected deck users hanging any longer.

This latest patch recompiled the game in the last version of Ren'py that was available prior to official Steam Deck support. Hopefully, using this early version of the engine should resolve the issue, and as far as I'm aware, there hasn't been any important functionality (aside from some light performance improvements) introduced in more recent versions.

Since I haven't been able to replicate the deck freezing issue on my own end, though, I have no idea if this actually fixes the issue. If you have a deck, especially if you've been running into this problem, please let me know if it persists or if it seems to be resolved!

(And if you're suddenly running into other issues due to the engine rollback, please likewise let me know if that's the case!)

Apologies for any inconveniences folks have run into over this, and hopefully this gets things working for everyone again!

Thanks!
~Tony

Hi everyone!

We're nearing the home-stretch of Episode 4's development, so we figured it'd be high time to announce a release date and share a new trailer.

[previewyoutube=LLfEzv57SjI;full][/previewyoutube]

Episode 4 is set to release on November 22nd. I feel like we say this every time there's a new release, but it's also a long one. The full script for the episode is around 800 pages and somewhere around 200,000-250,000 words, bringing the total length of the game past One (1) Lord of the Rings or One (1) Infinite Jest in total content. Episode 4 has a lot of opportunities to revisit the consequences of earlier decisions, as well as even more new mysteries to unravel! And things are going to start to really steam up for certain romance paths.

We're extremely proud of how Episode 4 is turning out, and we can't wait to share the full chapter with you next month!

A few other notes:

• The game is currently on sale for Steam Scream Fest! If you haven't had the chance to pick up a copy, now's a great time! Scarlet Hollow is never going to dip below 20% off before leaving early access, and there's going to be a price hike before the full release, so if you've been holding out for a steeper discount, this is as steep as it'll get for at least a couple of years!
  
• If you want to get your hands on part of Episode 4 early, test branches available for Alpha Tester Patrons. A chunk of Episode 4 is available there now, and there'll be an update to the build later this week that brings things up to ~Episode 3's length content-wise.
  
• We have an ongoing crowd-funding campaign for a Wayne plush with glow in the dark eyes. There's ~two weeks left in the campaign as of the time of this writing, so please check it out if that sort of thing interests you!
  
• If you haven't had the chance to check out Slay the Princess, it's also participating in Scream Fest and has a free demo with 60-90 minutes of content.
  

Event to broadcast a pre-recorded palythrough to the store page

"You don't have to be afraid of me." Tall, dark, and handsomely rotting, all Wayne wants to do is protect you from the horrors of Scarlet Hollow, but someone keeps sneaking off and having near-death experiences (that someone is you.) Now in plush form, Wayne can keep an even closer eye on you and keep you out of trouble. Forever.



We're partnering with Makeship to do a limited run of Wayne plushes, complete with glow in the dark eyes! The campaign is live, and if it does well, there'll be many more Scarlet Hollow plushes to come (Dustin?? Gretchen?? A Ditchling?? The possibilities are ENDLESS)

"You don't have to be afraid of me." Tall, dark, and handsomely rotting, all Wayne wants to do is protect you from the horrors of Scarlet Hollow, but someone keeps sneaking off and having near-death experiences (that someone is you.) Now in plush form, Wayne can keep an even closer eye on you and keep you out of trouble. Forever.



We're partnering with Makeship to do a limited run of Wayne plushes, complete with glow in the dark eyes! The campaign launches on October 17th, but if you follow the link above, you can sign up to receive a notification as soon as it goes live!

Also, a quick update on Episode 4: development is moving at a breakneck pace, and we're still hoping to have the episode ready for Halloween. As is always the case for new episodes, however, quality is always going to take precedence over rushing a release. We'll be sure to provide an update as soon as we feel comfortable naming an official release date.

Updated the date on Stella's overlay to be October 24th, 2022. It was previously October 12th, 2022, which isn't a real Monday.

Fixed an issue where the game was consistently adding too much spacing between lines of dialogue.

Assorted other small fixes.

Join us for a quick dive into Scarlet Hollow while we talk about the game's development and answer your questions.

Added an accessibility feature in the preferences allowing players to remove or lower the intensity of a visual overlay that can be acquired in Episode 3.

Fixed some text-clipping issues.

Hi everyone!

We're going to be doing a special Q&A livestream tomorrow, August 28th, at 6pm EST on our Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/black_tabby_games

We'll be playing Phasmophobia while taking your questions, and we'll be joined by Nichole Goodnight (Princess VA) and Brandon Boone (composer)

Here's the details:



Hope to see you there!

Assorted small bug fixes.

Various small fixes as well as some code-refactoring to speed up Episode 4's development :)

Hi everyone!

It's with much excitement that we're finally ready to announce our second game, Slay the Princess! (Please wishlist it!)

Check out the trailer here:

[previewyoutube=RByDoYQpFa8;leftthumb][/previewyoutube]

Slay the Princess is a story-driven horror/dark comedy game where you are tasked with slaying a princess. Because she's bad and really has it coming. It's FULLY VOICED, and features the incredible talents of Jonathan Sims (The Magnus Archives) and Nichole Goodnight (too many things to list!) Once it's out, folks who already own Scarlet Hollow will be able to pick it up at a discount, too!

We're hoping to have the full game finished and released sometime in Q2/Q3 of next year. The demo will be available to the general public Soon but if you want to play it right now, you can always join the alpha tester tier on our Patreon :D

We also wanted to take a second to update you about Scarlet Hollow's release schedule, because we value transparency AND we don't want any of you to think that us having a second game in the works is taking priority over Scarlet Hollow.

Right now, our roadmap is as follows.

• Scarlet Hollow Episode 4 some time late this year, ideally on Halloween, though it's still a little too early to know for certain.
  
• Slay the Princess (Full Release) Some time mid next year, probably around May or June.
  
• Scarlet Hollow Episode 5 Some time in 2023 after Slay the Princess is finished.
  

Something went very wrong with the last patch attempt, sorry!

Hotfixed the message you receive when enabling self-voicing to conditionally change if you're using a gamepad.

Patched an issue where Steam achievements weren't being awarded to players.

This event's just here so we can set up a broadcast!

Refactored the code so our engine's built in linter functions properly. As a result, there should no longer be any missing images or errors from misspelled variables in the first 3 episodes.

Minor dialogue changes.

small bug fixes with layering and a couple of typos

Fixed a crash caused by trying to access the "character history" screen before creating a character

Fixed various minor typos and clipping issues.

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.
  

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.
  

Character creation now how a conditional on screen keyboard that appears if you're using a gamepad, circumventing the need to use a keyboard to type in a character name.

Hey everyone!

Sorry there was a bit of a gap before these fixes went out, it's been a really busy month!

Fixes include:

- Typos
- Avery disappearing for a single frame near the end of episode 3
- A few instances of broken game logic, including for runs where you see Isaacs (missing flag for your post Isaacs hangout choice leading to some weird interactions with Tabitha) and a line of questioning shunting players on a "leave" path at the end of episode 3 to a dialogue tree for the book smart path. The latter should have no impact on your save, though the issue with Isaacs might have minor cascading impacts on the rest of that run. Our deepest apologies for missing that until now! Hopefully, the fact that it took so long to catch this bug means that its long-term issues are minimal.

What's next?

We're hard at work on Episode 4 - the script is somewhere around halfway done, though it's always hard to estimate these things when you're in the middle of it.

We're also working on a content patch for the first three episodes that we're hoping to have out some time in June that'll add some of the following:

• More flirting options, both for the hot trait and for non hot players.
  
• Fleshing out some dialogue menus that feel like they could use more varied responses.
  
• Even more trait specific dialogue, as well as some added trait-specific narration.
  
• Updating some old art assets to be more consistent with the rest of the game.
  

Assorted fixes for bugs that have been caught over the past couple of weeks - sorry this one took a bit, taxes + GDC needed all of my attention for a bit!

High level:

Fixed some typos/missing punctuation.
Removed some inconsistencies present in rare decision combinations.
Updated Tabitha's default left hand sprites to reflect the update to her default right hand sprites.

Thank you all so much for the overwhelming mass of fan art submissions! As our special way of saying thanks, we'll be doing a full, live, marathon playthrough of the first three episodes of Scarlet Hollow on Saturday, 4/16.



We'll be simulcasting to our Twitch, our YouTube, and our store page here on Steam (where it looks live we've finally fixed our streaming issues!) Twitch is usually where we see the most activity, so if you want to be in the biggest chat, that's probably the best one to check out!

Follow us on Twitch to get that extra notification when we go live!

And if you want the best access to Scarlet Hollow related news and events, our Discord and Twitter are great ways to plug into the community.

Hey folks! Quite a few exciting things in the works lately we're so happy to finally share them here:

Tabitha added as a romance option.

You can now select five traits at character creation. To balance this out, we've also increased our trait pool by adding another FIVE, which all have secret conditions to unlock. Will you master the Kamehameha wave? Or maybe you'll wear a fursuit to your aunt's funeral. The possibilities are endless.

Added 253 *bad* endings! Better be careful about what choices you make, because some of them are bad and they'll make you start the whole game over!

You've asked for voice acting, and we've heard you! Added Ditchy the Ditchling as a new talking companion. Enjoy over 5,000 lines of fully voiced commentary.

Added a new story branch, where you sit in the estate and do nothing all week.

Hey everyone!

Popping in with a quick update on how the Fan Art competition is going we've already smashed through our second goal! We've been absolutely blown away by the response, and have loved all of the art, memes, music, and fanfic we've been seeing! If you want to make sure you're seeing all of the best Scarlet Hollow fan content, make sure you're:

• 
  
• A member of our Discord
  
• Subscribed to /r/scarlethollow
  

Fixed some broken logic in the library in episode 2 for players who skipped sybil's house in episode 1, but talked to her about wayne before the library

We've already blown past our first submission goal for the fan art competition, so it's time for the promised Q&A with our cast of characters. It'll take place on our Twitter (@blacktabbygames) today, starting at 4pm Eastern, and you can start submitting questions NOW through our CuriousCat.

Hope to see you there!
~Tony and Abby

Assorted typos

Various small fixes. Adding a couple more justifications the player can offer for a major decision on a certain branch.

Hey folks!

It's been almost a week since Episode 3 came out, so we wanted to share a couple things with you all.

The first is that, just like after Episode 2, we've put together a survey to let you share what decisions you've made so far in game! This information is super valuable to us since it lets us see what traits, characters, and decisions are under- or over-picked, and helps us maintain a decent balance of things going forward.

The last time around, for instance, we used this data to add significantly more content to Powerful Build and Street Smart in the first two Episodes (entering the forbidden wings, punching a ditchling, better sneaking at the mines) to make those traits feel more valuable and expressive to players.

We also use the information to do deep dive write-ups on game design for our devlog.

There might be an interesting announcement/reveal buried in there this time as well, so definitely fill it out if you want to be in the know! Here's the link: https://forms.gle/smqGGhJntedER1Aw8

There's a question on the survey that asks how scary you think the game is don't worry about your answers for that question changing the direction of the game in any way. This is more just curiosity from the two of us, and something we might use to direct the marketing of the game.

On top of the survey, we also wanted to take the chance to collect some of the most important changes and fixes we've made to the game over the past week. Since we want to make sure players are aware of some of the more important bugs, there'll be some spoilers here, so if you haven't finished Episode 3 yet, read at your own peril!

• We've added controller support! The only place this is a little iffy is during character creation I haven't figured out a way to bring up a keyboard on screen to type out a character name/home town, but maybe that's just something I don't know how to do.
  
• We've edited a couple of achievements to make them easier to obtain/to make the achievement art less confusing. The three that come to mind are: "Let's see who this really is," which now has 3 separate opportunities where you can earn it, and the "Tight-knight social circle" and "The gang's all here" pair, which now both have art that wholly reflect the conditions needed to earn them. Hope this helps folks who've been stuck going for 100%
  
• On day one, we had a few unfortunate spots in the wrap-up segment of the episode that would incorrectly jump to incorrect world states. For those of you who had an extra-confusing wrap-up, this might have been what happened. Good news, though! Because of the way things were flagged (major decisions marked right after making them), the issues with these saves shouldn't carry over into episode 4.
  
• For a few hours yesterday, there was a pretty bad bug with an extra dialogue option we added to Tabitha's route. Selecting "I'm with Tabitha. Neither of us owe this ghost a damn thing. We're leaving." accidentally jumped the player to the special trait ending of the episode rather than the leaving route. Thankfully I caught and patched the error within hours, but these changes unfortunately are going to persist with those saves. For now, it's unclear if those saves are going to be broken in a good way (effectively having 3 traits for a major decision) or if they'll be broken in weird and unpredictable ways moving forward. Many apologies if you picked that option on your first playthrough, since it probably made the ending much more confusing than we intended! If you have one of those saves, it's up to you if you want to continue with it or reload an earlier save continue at your own risk, and again, our deepest apologies for the error, but we want to make sure we're as transparent as possible with our players when mistakes like this have been made.
  
• We fixed a lot of missing sprites and typos! A member of our discord was amazing enough to help set up a linter specifically for the sprites side of that, so at this point, I believe EVERY missing sprite in the first 3 episodes has been fixed.
  
• Fixed a fair number of explore options that weren't correctly disappearing. This should have minimal impact on your saves, but the game won't remember that you picked those options if you did so before we patched things.
  
• Fixed quite a few instances of text overlapping with choice menus.
  
• Fixed a bug on the non-Tabitha route that would loop players back to earlier in the haunt for certain dialogue options. If you continued to play through that worldstate, that shouldn't have any negative consequences for Episode 4.
  
• Fixed a few instances where achievements weren't properly being earned, most notably including "The Gang's All Here" which was only triggering for players who had done a non-Tabitha hangout but still invited her ghost hunting.
  

• Episode 4! We're getting right to work on the script tomorrow. It's going to be so cool we're optimistically hoping to have it out by Halloween, but as is always the case, we're going to make sure we take the time we need so it lives up to our standard of quality, so it may take until closer to the end of the year.
  
• There's a fan art competition going on right now where the more entries we receive, the more rewards you unlock as a community, with the top prize being a marathon livestream where the devs play through all three episodes in one sitting! You can find more information on this competition here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1609230/eventcomments/3183487594845534140?snr=1_5_9_
  
• We'll be doing a content patch to Episode 3 at some point in the next couple of months! This patch will include adding a few more dialogue options to the wrap-up phase of the Episode, as well as fleshing out a few niche details here and there to make a couple of traits even more impactful. We'll also be adding a special CG to commemorate the departure of a certain beloved character, so keep your eyes peeled!
  
• As some of you may know, a certain ending path in Episode 3 alters the appearance of your game. Because of the significance of the decision leading up to this change, this alteration is permanent. That being said, we want to make sure our visually impaired players are able to take this option without ruining their experience, so at the start of Episode 4 (and between every other Episode moving forward) we'll be adding an accessibility option that allows players to reduce or entirely remove this modification. We won't be adding this option to the middle of the episode so it doesn't break the tension, but once the assets are done, we'll probably add it to the transition between Episodes 2 and 3 as well so that ending sequence is also more accessible!
  

Fixed a few typos + corrected a branching error w/ a dialogue option added in the previous patch.

Fixed more missing sprites (should be all of them) + a few more typos.

Added controller support use the dpad to navigate menus and the face buttons to advance text.

Made the "let's see who this really is" achievement easier to get by adding it to two extra dialogue paths.

Fixed a few more typos, overlapping menus and missing sprites!

Hey folks!

Now that Episode 3 has been out for a few days, we figured it was time to announce the next Scarlet Hollow fan art competition!

Here's how it's gonna work:



Post original fan art, memes, or fanfic to either Twitter (using #scarlethollow) or /r/scarlethollow, (or AO3 if you're in the fanfic bucket)

The more entries we get, the more community rewards we get. For now, there are three tiers of rewards.

We're part of the Women's Day Event on Steam, so to celebrate that and Episode 3's launch, we'll be doing a livestream today to show off some gameplay and take some questions! We'll be going live at 1:15 pm EST!

Fixed a few small bugs including: rare error messages, missing sprites, and explore options that wouldn't close themselves off.

Also fixed cloudsaving to work cross-operating system.

the gang's all here was bugged and only achievable to players who had skipped tabitha's hangout.

we've also update the achievement art to more clearly communicate its requirements.

Fixed a couple minor bugs

Couple small fixes.

Addressed some typos + missing sprites. Remixed two audio tracks that were previously a little too loud. Fixed an issue with a powerful build option that sent the player back to an earlier point in the episode

avery instant-transmissioned into the library in an instance where they shouldn't have been there

small balance tweaks

Fixed an error where a major decision accidentally flowed into another ending path.

Assorted fixes to typos and missing sprites.

Fixed two instances of the game abruptly ending and returning to the title screen before the end of the episode.

Fixed an instance where a path jumped to an incorrect worldstate.

Fixed a few error screens from incorrectly spelled variables.

Fixed a couple display bugs as well as a crash during Tabitha's hangout.

Hello everyone!

After many months of love, blood, sweat, and tears, Scarlet Hollow Episode 3 is finally here for you to enjoy. This episode has been an absolute passion project for us, and we're eternally grateful for the support and patience you've given us. This game wouldn't be possible without you.

Happy haunting,
Abby and Tony

Hi again, everyone!

We're nearing Episode 3's completion, so we finally have a release date for y'all: March 7th.

We both feel pretty strongly that this new chapter is the best Scarlet Hollow has been to date, and we can't wait to share with you. Sorry it took a little longer than expected-- because we always want to be as a transparent as possible with y'all, we wanted to explain why there was a bit of a delay:



First up, Episode 3 is huge. Like, as much content as Episodes 1 and 2 put together huge. There's close to 200,000 words of new content (of which you'll maybe see about 1/4-1/3 in a given playthrough) and over 1,500 new art assets. For reference, Episodes 1 and 2 were each about 100,000 words of content, bringing the total for all three to around 400k. For further reference, the Lord of the Rings (all of it) is 481,000 words long.



Next, the less fun back in December, we both got (thankfully mild) Covid cases staggered about a week apart and then we both got the flu (again, staggered about a week apart.) At the time, we didn't think it would have such a heavy impact on our ability to work, but we wanted to prioritize our health during that that time, and we unfortunately lost about a month of productivity to being sick and taking turns taking care of each other.

We also moved to a completely new city in the fall, and that kind of giant move took a lot more time and energy than we thought it would!



And finally, the lead up to Episode 2's release was a horrendous crunch (about 3 weeks of 14-16 hours a day, making up for time lost to stress during the mess that was living in the US in the Fall and Winter of 2020.) For this episode, we wanted to make sure to give ourselves some extra time and padding upfront so we wouldn't have to deal with similar crunch again (which also means we'll be able to do more bug testing before release).

Thank you all again for your patience and support as we continue to make Scarlet Hollow the story we want it to be, and we hope you feel that Episode 3 is worth the wait we certainly think it is!

All the best,

~Tony and Abby

Hiya folks!

Scarlet Hollow is up for the overall fan-favorite award at the Game Development World Championship, and with your help, we can totally cinch it! Please head on over to their website and vote for us. Voting should be pretty easy you don't have to make an account or provide any personal info.

URL for voting: https://thegdwc.com/fanfav/

Episode 3 is currently chugging along, and should hopefully be ready at the end of February. Our development cycle was a little derailed for a couple of weeks by (thankfully mild) covid, but we're closing in on the final act of the Episode right now. The release version should be quite a bit more content than either previous Episode, though some of that content will, of course, be spread across multiple playthroughs.

In case you missed it on twitter the other day, here's a full reveal of Reese's room!



Cheers,
Tony and Abby

In some exciting and entirely unexpected news, Scarlet Hollow wound up topping Kotaku editor John Walker's list of the 10 best games of 2021! It's absolutely wild to think that our still-in-progress game's already gotten this level of recognition! We wouldn't be here without your support and enthusiasm for our game, so thanks so much to each and every one of you from helping us along on this incredible journey.



Absolutely nuts to wake up to this Tweet! As a holiday treat and a celebration of this win, have some more preview art for Episode 3. A garden, but whose???



Happy New Year!
~Tony and Abby

Steam achievements were broken this should fix them.

We've also combined the PC and Linux builds into a single package, which should reduce patching/upload times on our end.

Hey everyone!

About a week ago, we put out a call on Twitter asking for folks to email us their saves so we could play with a broader set of save files for Episode 3 bug fixing. Y'all were incredibly helpful, and on top of using these files to play through the first big chunks of Episode 3, we also took the opportunity to peak under the hood and fine tune our relationship system.

Up until this point, we were a little too forgiving with how easily a number of characters warmed up to the player, so we've made some changes to give everyone a more immersive experience. Loose patch notes here:

• This is going to give a lot of you panic attacks, but it was too easy for players to get Tabitha to like them by the end of Episode 2. A lot of this is more about behind the scenes numbers that influence events in Episode 3 onward, so don't take her calloused attitude towards you as a sign that you're screwed. I've personally played through with the new adjustments a dozen or so times and have watched several playtesters do fresh playthroughs, and the balance is now *exactly* where it should be.
  
• Stella now has more worldstates where she's emotionally closed off (but still friendly) to the player. There's a fair amount of Stella content in Episode 2 that was, for all intents and purposes, inaccessible prior to this patch's adjustments because it was too easy to get into a positive feedback loop with her. Some of her scenes should now feel more dynamic based on prior choices.
  
• For Kaneeka, major decisions weren't given enough weight, making it hard for the game to define your relationship with her.
  
• The police and miners now have different dialogue with you in Episode 2 if you puked in front of them in Episode 1.
  
• Dialogue history is now accessed through the chat bubble button, making way for the journal button to be repurposed for your decision history and character info once those features are ready to be rolled out.
  

Hey all!

Every so often we like to put together a devlog to serve as a retrospective on a major content update for some part of Scarlet Hollow's development. For our most recent post, we decided to take a long look at our October Balance Patch, both in terms of the factors that drove us to make that patch, its execution, and finally a look at how that new content shifted the breakdown of player choices in-game.

Take a look at the full post here: https://blacktabbygames.medium.com/why-you-should-care-about-balance-in-your-narrative-game-dcb7cbaa36fb

Hi everyone!

It's been a whirlwind of a year Episode 2 came out in June, and we've put out a couple of major content updates to the first two chapters of the game since then. Both of us have been absolutely floored by the amount of support we've seen from our players, and it's been incredible to watch a community come to life around Scarlet Hollow with each new piece of the story, be it our discord community swelling in membership, our growing subreddit, or any of the amazing fanart people have been .

It would absolutely mean the world to us if you nominated our game for the Steam Awards specifically for the Outstanding Story-Rich Game category. There should be a button that lets you do that at the top of this update!

But we didn't just want to post this update to ask for nominations! We also wanted to take the opportunity to give you a taste of what's to come for Episode 3 (which is currently slated for late January or early February.)

[previewyoutube=dMWlv5g93XU;full][/previewyoutube]

We're trying a lot of new stuff in this next chapter, and we feel pretty good about it being a big step up over Episode 2. Romance will start to bloom, consequences for your actions will echo throughout the town, and you and your companions will take another step closer to the doom foretold by the Ditchlings on Monday.



And you'll finally get to meet Reese.

We are so excited for when we get to share this new chapter with you, and until then, we'll be hard at work making sure it lives up to our highest expectations. If you want the most regular updates on our development, make sure to join our Discord or follow us on Twitter!

As always, thank you again, all of you, for your support!
~Tony and Abby

Hotfixed a few UI issues that were introduced in yesterday's patch (text overlap in several menus because I accidentally did testing w/ reduced font size)

Added a flirt option w/ oscar for hot players when discussing Historical Buildings of Scarlet Hollow

Hotfixed the Loremaster achievement which should now be achievable

Hey Everyone!

After taking a look at the results of our post balance patch survey, we noticed a couple of things:

• Powerful Build, Street Smart, and Hot all shot up in pick rate as players' preferred traits, which means the patch is working as intended.
  
• Book Smart is now noticeably underpicked.
  

• Book Smart has an entire extra book in the library.
  
• Book Smart now has additional entries to read in 'Appalachian Folk Monsters.'
  
• Some previously universal dialogue options in the library have been made Book Smart exclusive.
  
• General typo fixes.
  
• Added a tooltip to introduce players to the keybinding for hiding the UI.
  
• Three new achievements.
  

Hey folks!

Now that it's been a little over a week since we released our balance patch, we wanted to send out a quick survey to see how players interacted with the patch and to get some fresh data on people's favorite traits!

Check it out here: https://forms.gle/M1XPhM1onCM2vbRq7

We've also hit our first threshold in the October fanart competition, with team Monsters eking out a win by one entry. We'll be doing a livestream on our Twitch channel this Saturday morning and drawing *your* monster requests. Follow us there or on Twitter to get a notification when we go live!

Hey folks! While we're hard at work on Episode 3, we didn't want to leave you hanging with no new Scarlet Hollow content in this, the spookiest of all months, so we took some time to make some changes we've wanted to make for quite a while.

• Buffing underpicked traits. One of our goals with this patch was to give some much needed attention to traits that weren't quite hitting the mark for us. While every trait has some changes, we felt that Powerful Build, Street Smart, and Hot needed to feel better to play.
  
• Added more romance content for Hot. If you're more interested in the dating and romantic side of Scarlet Hollow, there are some fresh incentives to pick it as one of your traits.
  
• Removed the brick wall barring access to the forbidden wings in Episode 1.
  
• Powerful Build has more opportunities to live up to its namesake.
  
• Street Smart has more exclusive options in the mining camp.
  
• Tightened dialogue with the Teens in Episode 2. The middle section of the mines should feel snappier and flow better.
  
• Reworked trait descriptions to make them more accurate to their effects in the game.
  
• Redesigned Tommyknockers. The Tommyknockers have been given a makeover. Likewise, instead of disappearing as soon as you see them, they now just pull back a little bit. Their previous behavior meant that players who had auto-skip or auto-forward options turned on missed them entirely.
  
• Changed some art assets in one of the Episode 2 ending paths to more clearly convey what's going on.
  
• Redesigned Reese's house.
  
• Several new art assets tied to buffed traits.
  
• Be allergic to peanuts if you want?
  
• New achievements!
  
• You can no longer have an empty string as your character name or hometown.
  
• General edits and typo/style corrections.
  
• Improved keyboard navigation so that arrow keys simultaneously scroll the choice menu and move between options.
  
  Don't forget that the October fan art competition is still going on! And if Discord is your thing, feel free to join the growing Scarlet Hollow community on our server.
  
  Episode 3 is coming along really well, and we can pretty comfortably say it should be ready somewhere between late January and early February. And it's gonna be a banger, y'all.
  
  

Happy October! It's time for another Scarlet Hollow ~fan art competition~ and this time, we've got two competing teams!

The theme? People vs Creatures

We've got streams planned throughout the month, and what art you submit decides their content!



The Rules:

• Two Teams: People vs Creatures
  
• Team with the most entries by Oct 25th picks the theme of our Halloween livestreams
  
• Creatures: we take your monster requests and draw them live!
  
• People: we work on Episode 3 backgrounds live!
  
• Every 10 entries per team unlocks a BONUS livestream (max 1 per week)
  
• Entries with people AND creatures count for both teams.
  
• Enter as many times as youd like!
  
• Creatures include monsters, animals and because hes spooky, Wayne
  
• Use #scarlethollow on Twitter or post your creation to /r/scarlethollow
  
• Fanfic counts!
  

Hey everyone! It's a year to the day since the release of Scarlet Hollow Episode 1, and we're celebrating with a livestream where we'll be working on new art for the gaming and answering your questions!

Come join us! https://www.twitch.tv/black_tabby_games

Hey folks!

We were absolutely floored by the response to the Episode 2 survey we sent out a little while back! At the time of our analysis, we had 457 responses, though that number's now well over 500.

If you'd like to see how your own choices stacked up against other players' you can head on over to this link: https://blacktabbygames.medium.com/breaking-down-player-choices-in-scarlet-hollow-episode-2-4c284013808a

As always, thanks for your support, and we can't wait until Episode 3 is ready to share!

It's almost been two months since we released Episode 2, which felt like a good amount of time to wait before sending out a survey to look at player choices!

After a few weeks, we'll take the information players share with us to make some neat infographics showing how your individual choices stack up!

https://bit.ly/ScarletHollowSurveyEpisode2

Hey folks!

Thanks to your votes and support, Scarlet Hollow cinched the victory in last week's GDWC fan favorite awards, which means we're moving on to the finals!

As always, thanks for coming to bat for us!

Hey folks!

Scarlet Hollow is up for the Fan Favorite awards in the GDWC, and it'd mean the world to us if you popped in and helped us out. Voting is quick, easy, and free, just head over to this link.



A couple of other housekeeping notes:

Our fan art "competition" ends this Saturday! Everyone who posts fan art before then will receive a signed postcard from the devs. Full info here.
If you haven't left a review for us, that's one of the easiest ways to help us get more traction and visibility, and it's greatly appreciated!
The script for Episode 3 is coming along really smoothly, and it should be our best episode yet! Can't wait to share our hard work with y'all!
We're in the early stages of designing our journal system, which will keep track of your character build and decisions you've made over the course of the game it'll go live at some point before Episode 3's release!

Hey folks!

We just put out a medium-sized patch that covers a few things:

• We've added an optional recap between Episode 1 and Episode 2 that covers character introductions and major decisions.
  
• There are now visual assets for the text message conversation at the end of Episode 2.
  
• Small typos and other fixes.
  

• The scenes for Episode 3 are all fully outlined, and we've started working on the script.
  
• I'm still working on prototyping a journal system to keep track of player choices, characters met, and your build. It'll be out at some point before Episode 3.
  

• In case you've missed it, we're running a fanart community event throughout the entire month of July. You can find the details here, but the gist of it is that if you make and post fanart at any point this month, we'll send you a signed postcard!
  
• If you haven't had the chance, feel free to join the thriving Scarlet Hollow Discord community: discord.gg/2uSZq4FXmd
  
• Reviews are always appreicated!
  

Hey folks!
We're ordering ~extra~ postcards today, and we've decided we'd do a special giveaway for the month of July. If you make Scarlet Hollow fanart and post it to twitter with #scarlethollow or on this subreddit or on our Steam page, we'll send you a SIGNED postcard!



Accepted fanart includes, but is not limited to:

Great news! It looks like Scarlet Hollow's already sold enough copies that Steam's given us the go-ahead to start making some community items, like trading cards, stickers, backgrounds and badges.

And to thank you, our wonderful community, we want *your* input before we get to designing them! So tell us what you want to see in them, and we'll make sure to cover as many bases as possible ^^

Some currently requested items:

• Dustin
  
• Gretchen
  
• A spooky background w/ the woods and some Ditchlings
  
• Trading cards of the romance options (and Tabitha's smile)
  

Thanks to a user from our Steam boards, I was able to fix Episode 1 achievements and get them to properly port to Episode 2! Any achievements you've already earned from our demo page will automatically be granted to you on launch.

Hey everyone! Now that the rush and panic of launching a new game on Steam is starting to settle, we wanted to take a quick moment to thank each and every one of you for helping the Episode 2 launch exceed our wildest expectations!

We can't express how much we appreciate the outpouring of support, enthusiasm, and fanart we've received over the past few days, and we're so grateful that all of y'all are making it possible for us to tell our story the way we want to tell it.

Thank you all so much!
~Tony and Abby

ps We'll be sure to keep posting major updates on our progress here, but if you want to stay even more up to date, you can always follow us on Twitter or join our Discord!

Twitter

• https://twitter.com/blacktabbygames
  
• https://twitter.com/AbbyHoward
  
• https://twitter.com/tonyhowardarias
  

Very quick hotfix here, patched three achievements that weren't functioning as intended. Spoiler-free notes below:

Just the Two of Us could only be earned on one of three worldstates where it should have been achievable.

I'm not here to make friends was achievable, but didn't have correct conditional logic, making it harder get.

Evil Has Triumphed was unachievable. (Oops)

I'm hoping to fix the bugged Episode 1 Achievements for players who carried over saved states later this week, but am waiting on a response to a support ticket w/ Valve before proceeding with a fix.

Just put out a quick hotfix. Fewer notes here than usual, since it's starting to look live we've patched the majority of bugs. Episode 1 achievements fix still in the works!

• Fixed a few rare crashes from misnamed variables.
  
• Fixed a few typos.
  

Hey everyone, thank you for making this an ~incredible~ launch weekend! We remain eternally grateful for your support, and for all of you making it possible for us to make Scarlet Hollow and share it with the world!

We just put out a hotfix addressing a few bugs:

• In branches without Gretchen, Oscar would appear in the foreground instead of the background during the library (accidentally introduced with last night's hotfix)
  
• Fixed a conversation in the mines that accidentally loops (talk to animals + tabitha present)
  
• Added a couple extra dialogue options where they felt necessary or relevant
  
• Fixed various small typos
  
• Fixed some missing sprites.
  
• Removed a message at the end of Episode 1 that says Episode 2 is releasing in June. We'll hopefully get a patch out for the Episode 1 Steam page some time this week that reflects the new release as well!
  

Hey everyone! We hope you've been enjoying Episode 2!

We just put out a small hotfix to fix some bugs folks have encountered:

• Missing sprites from Tabitha mine sequence added.
  
• Fixed an issue with Tabitha mine sequence where characters would layer over each other incorrectly.
  
• Fixed an issue where you couldn't properly visit the Opossum on day 2 if you didn't have talk to animals or hadn't given him your clothes on day 1.
  
• You are now correctly able to earn the No Man Left Behind achievement.
  
• There are more opportunity to earn the Smile achievement.
  
• Fixed various typos and some logical inconsistencies.
  

As more and more of the Episode 2 build falls into place, we've gotten to the point where we're comfortable naming an ~official release date~

So mark, your calendars, and make sure you've wishlisted and followed Scarlet Hollow Episode 2 is coming out on Friday, June 11th.



We've been making good progress on the wishlist front, too every day we inch closer and closer to that coveted 5,000 wishlists goal, at which point we'll be doing a vinyl sticker print run of Tabitha's smile that you'll be able to buy through our online shop. If you haven't had the chance the share our Steam page with friends, it'd mean the world to us if you did so to help us hit that goal even faster! (And maybe hit the next goal so we can print a Dustin pin.)



Thanks, as always, for your continued support, and for helping us work on such a fulfilling project. We can't wait to share what we've been working on!

Hey everyone!

Thank you so much for supporting our work and following/wishlisting our new page! We are ~just~ on the cusp of hitting our second wishlist milestone, so we've decided to go ahead and schedule a special celebratory livestream for this Saturday afternoon, starting at 11:30 AM Eastern. Abby'll be taking your requests and drawing them live until she gets tired and can't draw any longer. It should be a fun time for all!



If you want to help us keep our momentum going, be sure to follow us, and to share this page (and Scarlet Hollow) with folks you know.

Thanks again for the support, and we can't wait to see you at Saturday's stream!

As part of launching our new Steam page, we set up some mini-stretch goals that unlock new previews and merch. And y'all helped up hit our first goal on day one.



One goal down, five to go...

Without further ado, here's your first preview of Episode 2's soundtrack, with a relevant teaser image to boot!

[previewyoutube=9P-gqTVnMt8;full][/previewyoutube]

Hope you enjoy, and we can't wait until Episode 2 is ready for release!

Best wishes,

~Abby and Tony