We Love It's Guide to…
After returning to a haunted North Carolina town for a funeral, shape a week of investigation through trait-based choices.
Released 11 Jun 2021
Investigate Paranormal Disturbances
Choose Your Traits
Talk to Animals
Your aunt’s dead, your cousin hates you, and you’re stuck in the dead-end town of Scarlet Hollow. Choose your path through a branching narrative so dense that you'll see less than 1/5 of the game on a single playthrough. You won't be able to save everyone. Good luck, and welcome home.
Developed by Black Tabby Games · Published by Black Tabby Games
You return to the rural town of Scarlet Hollow for your aunt’s funeral and reunite with your estranged cousin. What begins as a family visit turns into a week of investigating strange events and the town’s paranormal mysteries.
Explore locations around town, talk with residents, and follow leads involving strange sightings, haunted places, and the old mine. Dialogue choices let you decide what to ask, what to share, and how to approach tense situations.
At the start, choose two character traits that unlock different dialogue and ways to engage with the world. Choices affect relationships and later scenes, while alternate traits and decisions reveal new details across multiple playthroughs. The story is presented as a visual novel with hand-drawn art.
In this helpfulness-selected sample, players often praise the detailed branching, character writing, and replay value, saying that choices and traits reveal different conversations, relationships, and clues. Many also appreciate the hand-drawn art and slow-building horror atmosphere, often balanced with humor. Some reviewers criticize the unfinished, episodic release and long waits, while others feel that major plot events can limit agency; several also mention wanting more language options.
From the developers of Slay the Princess, Scarlet Hollow is an immersive horror-mystery with sharp writing, impactful choices, and meticulously hand-drawn art.
Coal mines sealed off after a deadly collapse. Strange creatures preying on livestock. Houses infested with vengeful spirits. The sleepy town of Scarlet Hollow has suddenly come alive with horrors, just in time for your arrival. This was supposed to be a quiet getaway in the rural mountains of North Carolina. All you had to do was finally meet your long-lost cousin and comfort her through her mother’s funeral. But now, each new day welcomes new nightmares.
You only have to survive a week. But can you get to the bottom of the horrifying mysteries haunting Scarlet Hollow before they claim your life?
The first five episodes are available now, with one major content update planned before the story reaches its conclusion.
Features
A heavily branching narrative where your decisions (actually) matter. The relationships you forge and the decisions you make will dramatically alter your journey.
A complex paranormal mystery. Investigate haunted houses, strange sightings in the woods, a deteriorating mine, and more as you try and piece together what happened in Scarlet Hollow.
Trait-based dialogue and role-playing. Scarlet Hollow's dialogue system is driven by role-playing elements that let you choose who you want to be. Are you quiet and observant? Hot and clueless? Can you talk to animals? 21 different character builds change how you interact with the world and how your story unfolds.
A dynamic relationship system that reacts to your every choice and changes how your story unfolds. People won't just like or dislike you. Become friendly rivals, bitter adversaries, best friends, or mild acquaintances with everyone in town based on how you approach the story.
Original monster designs inspired by Appalachian myths and cryptids.
No jumpscares. All of the horror in Scarlet Hollow comes from dread, tension, and a sprinkle of disturbing imagery.
A touch of romance. Whether you're into goths, dads, moms, paranormal investigators, mysterious recluses, or actual monsters, you'll find something waiting for you here. And if you'd rather avoid that entirely, your story won't be any less for it.
Hundreds of meticulously hand-drawn and traditionally inked backgrounds. Every background in the game is hand drawn and inked by Ignatz-winning graphic novelist Abby Howard.
Fully immersive art. Each major character has dozens—and often hundreds—of hand-drawn sprites that interact with backgrounds and capture a full range of lighting, emotion, environment, and outfit changes.
| Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux |
|---|---|
| Achievements | 224 |
| Age ratings |
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| Controller support | Xbox |
| Controller required | No |
| Demo | View demo on Steam |
| DLC / extras | 1 listed on Steam |
| Metacritic | 91/100 View on Metacritic |
| Website | Official website |
