Scarlet Hollow

The game is great! Give it a shot! The story is very well written and quite deep. It grabs you immediately. The atmosphere you're thrown into is difficult for me to describe but it feels quite unique. It manages to put you in an almost constant state of unease without being a cheap horror that relies on jump scares and shock factor. There are many possible routes you can thread upon and you can have several playthroughs that are considerably different. Additionally, the devs seem to be actively working on the game and besides adding more content to progress the game further, they also rework and expand the content that is already there which makes consecutive runs even on the paths you've already trodden before fun and interesting. With every run you find more and more details about the story. Overall a great game with great replay value! Highly recommend!

The names of the achievements alone is worth a million stars.

Will probably update this review after I've done a few more runs but it's clear that lots of thought has been put into each trait and how it affects dialogue options and approaches to given situations. The responsiveness and story branching is quite incredible too! As for the story itself, I've been having a blast. Widows Bay if it was a visual novel vibes.

I've played a number of visual novels, some to absolute completion, but this is on another level with the massive ambition. The game is always giving you a lot of dialog choices, almost an absurd amount sometimes, but it avoids common trappings of games using artificial choices and flavor text where it's basically plus one or minus one as a reaction and the higher score is how this character feels about you. In Scarlet Hollow, people do react to your choices and weight their feelings about you, and some people you just can't win over. This game also has a lot of illustrations, they go out of their way to show so many hand drawn locations and character reactions that often change from click to click, they really put in maximum effort. As of typing this, I've barely started episode 4, and in the current early access build, there's 5 finished chapters, a recent patch added 60,000 more words to chapter 5. It's something where I keep thinking about things I'd like to try in the next run, like at the start you pick two traits, I did street smart where you can lie to people, be sneaky, and read people, the other is a brawny strong man type, and the unique options on both are really fun. Then you get options like being book smart or having a natural connection to the supernatural, stuff that sounds like it would be great for a 2nd run, to better understand the esoteric things I can't comprehend now. It's a game that's very character focused, and everyone in the small town is really interesting to get to know, they put in a wide variety of romance options for anyone's taste, like I picked the girl who makes videos investigating the paranormal (which hasn't resulted in much until recently) but I can see the appeal of the burly muscle dad, or the town goth, there's also an old lady who knows more about the towns mysteries that is an option to, if you don't mind dating decades above. This was made by the people who did Slay The Princess, which I really do need to sit down and play more of that, especially as I get closer to the end of the early access content here, having their previous game with a ton of different paths to try out. It'll be cool when this game does get the full release version, and it would really be something time consuming to 100%, but with all the options and different traits, it feels like there's enough here to make each run feel different enough, like the vast options to deal with dangerous or mysterious situations, like I can't brute force my way out of everything, but someone with paranormal gifts could have a better solution. And the game opens with, you can't save everyone, you might not even save yourself. So I'm hoping the skills I have and the choices I make will turn out fine in my first run.

A southern gothic inspired story game with amazing visuals. The vibes are immaculate. I was warned, and yet... I still chose to obliviously wander into the woods at night with a complete stranger. Did I continue to make bad choices? Yep. Was I entertained? Also yep. A classic "I can fix them". It might still be in early release, but I couldn't tell. There's potential here for infinite hours of a good time. I highly recommend the experience.

i chose the talk to animals trait and it did not help me at all but it was really funny so it was worth it

Buen juego.

This is one of the best games I've ever played. The amount of detail is unmatched. The characters are dynamic and complex, the dialogue is well written, this game balances so many different themes and mood, effortlessly switching between them. One minute a harrowing supernatural horror, the next a lighthearted comedy, all while unraveling a dizzying mystery. I've played this game many times and still haven't uncovered all it has to offer. I feel lucky to have found this game and given it a chance, I know a part of it will be with me forever.

While some parts are hit and miss (some of the characters are a bit weird sometimes, someone at Tabby Games must freaking LIVE off PB&J and/or Ice Cream & Mac and Cheese - and like, no, I don't want to romance this person, thank you, you want to put on a little more clothing when you have guests OLIVER?! - and what's up with the absolute weirdo on the bus? And for the character complaining about it being a tiny hick town, it's actually an fairly diverse group of characters, in a good way, but someone at Tabby Games definitely has a "type" nod nod wink wink.) but character nit-picking aside, there are so many nooks and crannies to this game, that it's an amazing power house of a choose-your-own-horror-story that I've played, beaten, and come back to, repeatedly, trying to find different allies or get revenge on people who upset me last playthrough. But things and characters change so often that I've found it stays pretty enjoyable, fresh. It has good storytelling in general. The story telling and art direction varies from good enough to excellent, although sometimes I lost the plot and had to read about what just happened (episode 3 and the end of four) but it's an enjoyable well fleshed out game that put a great deal of effort into replay value - and that effort shines. Not without its flaws, it's a very replayable and fairly creative game. (also spooky banjo music unlike project zomboid really is top notch environmental story telling.