Game 7: Scarlet Hollow, Part 1

Because 'Slay the Princess' was so damn good, I'm playing Black Tabby's earlier game, Scarlet Hollow.

This is starting out a bit personal.

And unlike Slay the Princess where your character is the same for each playthrough, you get to choose character traits!

I'll go with 'Mystical' and 'Talks to Animals'

Sadly there's no voice narration (at least so far), which really made Slay the Princess shine, but that's pretty forgivable being that it was their first title - voice acting probably isn't cheap.

You're on a bus driving toward a funeral.

This guy on the bus is a creep.

You get a myriad of dialogue options!

Virginia, eh? Did it take Burke and set the game in my state?

We arrive, ditch the creep, and come to the family mansion.

Nobody should be living here, the place is slowly falling off a cliff!

Inside, my cousin Tabitha is about as welcoming as the house appears.

May I stay at a hotel instead?

I find a cat and attempt to use my ability to speak with animals.

Alas, the cat only speaks French.

If this game gives me the option to pay for a Hotel I'm taking it in a heartbeat.

At least there appears to be toilet paper

My Mystical trait helpfully lets me know that the Hotel is a great idea, a phenomenal, cosmically brilliant idea.

Given how clean Tabitha keeps the place I'm surprised there aren't bones on the floor.

All right, Tabitha leaves and it's time to explore on my own!

Made myself a sammich before heading out to the town

Eh, maybe my hotel options actually aren't great either.

This town has seen better days

I meet Stella and her dog Gretchen. Gretchen loves me, dogs are better to talk to than cats. She knows Tabitha but has lost touch and been worried about her lately.

 My mystical sense is giving me warnings that something is up with her too, she may not be who she appears to be.

It's fun to tell the truth knowing nobody will believe you.

Stella's nice enough to welcome me to the town by treating me to a local diner. I like her far more than Tabitha.

I feel like she's coming on to me but hey, I don't think my character's married so why not.

She's a youtuber that hunts cryptids.

So many dialog options! Much like Slay the Princess I get the impression there are a lot of paths one could take.

I agree to come along on the 'Hunt for Skunk Ape' and she wonders if she can get one of her old pals, Reese, to join us. She calls him and I get her side of the conversation - something is up with Reese, he can't come, she offers to take easier trails but he ultimately declines. It feels both plausible and interesting and very human, I'm enjoying the writing here - this is a good game.

I'm enjoying the art too, that look of disappointment as she hangs up.

We run into Duke on our cryptid hunt, who comes with a change in the music - my lack of musical acumen would undoubtedly be a letdown when describing it, but I'm drawn in.

Thankfully, you can listen to it here.

Duke is out here hunting his own quarry - he thinks a mountain lion has been hunting his chickens.

We don't get too many of them here in Virginia, but then again I'm hunting 'Skunk Ape' with Stella so it's not like I can fault him.

I'm not sure if being Mystical is helpful or just scary.

Stella and Duke argue about what could be out there when I feel the wheels of fate turn in a dark direction.

I warn them. I'm probably goddamn Helen of Troy but I'm going to try.

Goddamn it.

We leave Duke and I assume that Stella will see reason but she refuses and still wants to go into the woods for her video.

One thing Slay the Princess improves on is the displayed dialog is just white subtitles at the bottom and the dialog options are off unobtrusively on the side - there's a lot of good art to look at in both games but here in Scarlet Hollow the dialog box obscures a chunk of the image with the option to hide it. In StP I never felt the need to hide part of the user interface because your options never covered anything important. 

Oh, hey, we found.... something!

This is... not good.

Stella didn't hear it, I think my talk to animals skill let me understand it. Gretchen the dog has been funny but some of the things the deer was saying hint at what I assume the larger picture is. In StP there's a really cool overall story that's not revealed until the end, and I didn't fully grasp until my 2nd-3rd playthrough - it's delightful to play through again because the game drops both subtle and overt hints of what's going on but you won't fully grok them until you understand what's happening, who you are, who the princess is. So I'm looking for those sorts of things now.

Some hints are more overt than others, Mystical is giving me plenty.

Stella that is a bad idea.

The music turns ominous, oppressive while we try to find whatever it is. Glimpses and sounds.

One of Duke's chickens, wounded, with another 'growth', like the deer. To my ears it's chanting like a cultist.

Duke joins us while Gretchen the dog has some insights - it doesn't smell like an animal?

Plastic seems like an odd scent to be picking up.

Holy Moly there are Attribute Combination conversation options.

You can only choose two attributes, how many dialog options are there? How many times would you have to replay the game to see them all?

We shouldn't have come out here. I regret my life choices.

To think I was complaining about a messy bathroom earlier...

I don't think you can save everyone....

The choice here is pretty explicit.

Duke's got a shotgun, right? Maybe he can take care of himself. I help the dog.

The gun goes off behind me.

A brief flashlight image on Duke - there are parts of this game that auto-advance after a short animation and don't give you time to linger, and the glimpse of Duke's body is one of them - still enough to see that the shotgun hit him in the head and it's not going to be an open casket funeral.

Stella wants to follow the things, possibly because she's insane. I manage to convince her that it's time to go and call the police.

Small town cops decide it's just fine to leave the body out there for the night.

They at least drive us back to Stella's house.

The cops seem suspicious of me even after seeing the footage. Stella wants to try to investigate these things more, in part because she's afraid the cops might blame me for what happened.

Oh, we're out of the woods, but we're not out of the woods yet.

Did this thing follow us to Stella's home?

But then Stella's friend Sybil lets us in, a kind old woman, and the figure is gone.

Oh ho, Stella is clever! The cops confiscated her camera for evidence, so I assumed the footage was gone, but she stashed the memory card.

Kaneeka lives here (Sybil's adopted daughter?) and has a computer we can use.

 Gretchen loves Kaneeka! I'm glad I saved the dog, sorry Duke.

After viewing the footage, Sybil does seem to know something.

Perhaps all of this has happened before and will happen again?

Another set of combined-trait dialog options.

I'm pretty sure I'll be playing through this again with different traits.

I end the night at Stella's place - I don't feel like going back to the mansion and I assume Stella's bathroom is cleaner.

That's... an odd message. What happens if I don't save the game?

Oh right, a bunch of games were being made 'episodically' for awhile, weren't they? The Telltale Walking Dead games were like that. Scarlet Hollow now is a full game but these messages are probably left over from a time when they'd have been separate 'episodes' and you'd transfer your save to the next 'episode game'. So, looking that up - I'm right, and I discover that this game is still early access - they're not done with the game! I sort of assumed that since this was released earlier than the fully-formed StP that this one would already be finished and I blew right past the label. I don't regret that, episode 1 was really good and I'm very curious to see how many branching paths there might be in the future, but for now I'm going to put it down and return to it another time so that I don't just blow through the released episodes and then hit a hard stop for what could be over a year before they release the final part of it. Good thing is I understand StP was a commercial success so I'm optimistic that Black Tabby has the funds to finish this.