A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux

Buy Now$24.99 USD or more

Warning: this game contains flashing images. If this poses a health risk to you, please proceed with caution.

Scarlet Hollow is releasing episodically. If you'd like to try it out, you can download Episode 1 for free, which will share a save folder with any build you download here.

The first four episodes are out now — a single playthrough of all 4 takes about 8 hours, though over half of our players play through at least twice.

Buying a key on this page will get you access to all of the remaining episodes as they release, in the form of free updates.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Abandoned 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 where you’d finally meet your cousin and comfort her through the funeral. But instead, each new day welcomes new nightmares. You only have to survive a week. But you may not make it to the end in one piece.


Features

  • A heavily branching narrative where your choices matter. The relationships you forge and the decisions you make will dramatically alter your journey.
  • Terrifying and funny. Charming characters and snappy dialogue flip to pulse-pounding horror at a moment's notice.
  • 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 deep relationship system that changes how characters act around you. Characters don'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. You won't find any predictable vampires or zombies here.
  • Lots of romance options! Whether you're into goths, dads, Youtubers, mysterious recluses, actual monsters, or lo-fi beats to study and water your plants to, we've got all your bases covered.

  • Dozens of meticulously hand-drawn and traditionally inked backgrounds. Every background in the game is drawn by hand and inked on massive 19x24 inch paper.

  • Hundreds of immersive sprites. Each major character has dozens of hand-drawn sprites that interact with backgrounds and capture a full range of lighting, emotion, environment, and outfit changes.

Scarlet Hollow is a horror game and is not intended for all audiences. If you require a detailed list of specific content warnings, you can find one on our website.

Black Tabby Games
StatusIn development
PlatformsWindows, macOS, Linux
Publisher
Release date Jun 11, 2021
Rating
Rated 4.8 out of 5 stars
(135 total ratings)
AuthorBlack Tabby Games
GenreVisual Novel, Interactive Fiction, Role Playing
Made withRen'Py
TagsAtmospheric, Dark Humor, Horror, Meaningful Choices, Mystery, Psychological Horror, Thriller
Average sessionA few hours
LanguagesEnglish
AccessibilityColor-blind friendly, Subtitles, One button
LinksSteam, Steam, Twitter, Patreon, Blog, Soundtrack, Twitch

Purchase

Buy Now$24.99 USD or more

In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $24.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:

Scarlet Hollow Episode 4 1.2d 3 GB

Development log

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Comments

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Viewing most recent comments 1 to 40 of 45 · Next page · Last page
(+1)

can't wait for more episodes!!!!!!!!

(+3)

SPEAK TO ANIMALS FILLS ME WITH SO MUCH JOY!! Gretchen my beloved <3

Can't wait to play the next chapters!

(+7)

The cousin is still my favorite character by far.

(+3)

Will episode 5 be ready this year? :3

(+2)

Probably not.

(+3)

They did say that it will be released this year. We shall see if that happens. The game is super fun. Chapter 3 is by far my favorite. 

(+1)

This game looks interesting but is there any walkthrough?

(+2)

Hi!

This game is amazing, without a doubt one of the games I loved.

I only have one small problem, which is when I start a new game.

The screen doesn't read with TTS which is a problem for me as I can't figure out what I need to set ETC. Could you adjust this so that the game's TTS reads it? Thanks!

Other than that, the whole game is playable with TTS, which I really appreciate, hehe.

Very good Congratulations.

(+5)(-1)

A horror visual novel with non-animesque artstyle? I'm intrigued...

(+3)

I have not been this impressed or in love with a story since stranger things. Everything about this game is exquisite, characters, dialogue, story, art, music...this is a masterpiece. I haven't been able to play it myself but me and my bf recently discovered gab smolders and have been binging her playing these games. It's really getting me through some tough personal stuff. Keep up the incredible work!

(+4)

This game has been awesome and really fun to play through so far, I can't wait until Chapter 5 comes out. I just finished streaming Chapter 4 on YouTube and am excited to see where my choices lead to eventually before playing through again. I chose Keen and Powerful Build, but next playthrough I'm really curious about talking with animals. Thank you for making such an awesome game!

(+5)

Dustin c:

(+3)

Awesome characterization and great writing generally. I love being a Hot idiot with Powerful Build. Thank you Abby Howard!!!

(+5)

So this is what a masterpiece looks like :0

(+2)

If you like games and media like their comps (Life is Strange, Gravity Falls), you’ll probably love Scarlet Hollow. Great characters and a diverse array of people, genre appropriate but still surprising narrative beats, and genuinely different experiences for multiple playthroughs make this my favorite visual novel of the past few years.

(+2)

Played through the whole thing (so far!) once and was impressed by the gripping story and heartfelt characters, embedded in a deeply unnerving world.

Played through a second time and was awestruck by the nuanced ways characters reacted differently to even very subtle differences in my behaviour and build.

If it continues like this, this game will be a masterpiece.

(+2)

This game creates a small world inside a little mining town in Appalachia. 

It considers not only what actions you take but what actions you don't take, and the story will continue without you if you, maybe quite wisely, choose to have your Character try and sit out events as they unfold.  

The characters think about if you are kind or cold and respond accordingly and so you make choices without a dialogue box just by deciding what sort of impression to make on the people of the town.  Options are carefully chosen and thoughtfully worded, so you won't run into many TTG "Glass Him" sort of options but instead will have to consider how your choices will impact beyond the immediate.   As of episode 4 the horror is almost entirely the sense of something dreadful, or the knowledge of something secret and awful. So if you're looking for jumpscares, you'll be hard pressed to find them here.

(+1)

I can't wait until all the episodes are out. An incredible experience

(+1)

The best video game visual novel on itchio and steam. Worth the money, worth the wait, worth the emotional pain. I love this game

I keep forgetting itch.io even has a space for reviews or comments, anyway I love this game and I love Dustin god bless you lil buddy

my very flavorite

(+2)(-1)

Wow, just wow. This game and its details is just amazing. Iam looking forward to the next episode and I hope there will be a second season too! This is really the only visual novel game that caught my eye. Hope the next episode will be here soon and will be twice as long as the previous one. 

(+5)

Curious thought, but would it be possible to have the game on mobile?

(+1)

we'll look into it once episode 7 is done, but file size is going to make that tricky without setting up an in-app installer/downloader (which I don't know how to do... yet!)

(+4)

Genuinely one of the best games on itch. Couldn't recommend this enough <3

(+1)

Reese just became my favorite and I want to give him a big smooch so bad

(+3)

Wayne>>>

(1 edit) (+3)

Just finished Episode 4...

...I'm still trying to process it all. Wow. Just...wow.


Whatever I was expecting, it was certainly not that. I feel like a lot of things are going topsy turvy now, and I'm loving every. freaking. second of it. You guys are amazing and I am eagerly looking forward to what you all show us whenever Episode 5 is released. Hope you both have a very happy holiday and be well. <3

Circling back to this game is always a delight. Love the replay as each "skill" gives different dialogue options. So excited to see the next episode. :)

(1 edit) (+1)

Just bought your game from Steam (a tiny support from me). I really like your hand drawn background! Some people/characters are quite intriguing and listening to the animals is fun. Hopefully this will leave early access soon. Best wish for your continuous/future success.

PS: Ep.3 almost gave me heart attack at 1am.

when you say, date a monster do you mean like literally or just like a metafore ?

(+1)

Newest update reveals that it's meant literally

This was just, insanely good. I'm really excited for the rest of the episodes

Episode 3 was so delightfully surprising!

(+2)

I'm very hyped up by the development in Episode 3! I usually don't play alternate choices when I finish an episode because I enjoy the mystery of only knowing what happens in one route but I simply had to try out some other options. (And also because I wanted to see if I could change the fate of one character :') ) Now I have to erase what I know from the second branch when making decisions in Episode 4.

I'm really impressed by the game's structure and the dedication of the developers to make many of the choices matter. Not a lot of games can deliver that as it is a long process.

The themes of the game are also very interesting and important. Sexuality, gender identity, individual and generational trauma as well as privilege to name but a few. Anyone playing should be able to identify with a part of the game.

Many thanks for such a gem, I will definitely support any other games that come after 

(2 edits)

episode 3 is absolutely horrifying! thanks, i hate it!

(but it's amazing, i love it & this is everything i wished for with this game. a lot of titles that eke into the genre are afraid of going too far i think? how deeply unsettling the game is is amazing, the visual style of some of the scenes (looking at u library house) is perfect, and i'm excited to see how the plot develops!)

(also i would die for dustin)

Deleted 1 year ago

Hi! If you don't grab the flashlight Duke can't get a good shot in before the Ditchling jumps on him. The choice is between him or Gretchen. (Or both if you have a certain trait)

Okay thank you so much!

Not sure if I was the only one to experience this but I was unable to open this game on a mac. I had to physically go through the package contents, create an autorun file and rearrange other files in order to make it work. Just thought of giving you a heads up! 

Generally right clicking the .app file and forcing it open is enough. Mac os tends to have issues trusting games downloaded on itch :(

Episode 3 let's gooooooo

I bought this game on itch, is there any plans for a steam key to be included (for the achievements)

This is the question; I'd definitely buy if I could get it through Itch with a Steam key.

(1 edit)

Just bought this two nights ago. My god, this was such a phenomenal experience. I just loved everything about it, the art style, the music and sound, the writing, everything. It pulled me in within the first 5 minutes and didn't let go till I was at the end of Episode 2. I can't wait for the rest of the episodes and to dig deeper into this wonderful horror story!

Not super in love with downloading and saving across multiple executables. I’d prefer one big download.

That said, I’m totally into the art and concept!

Episode 1 is a separate executable because it's a free demo.

Cool, so Ep 3 will increment this?

(+1)

Yep

(+2)

Just played the 2nd episode I'm so into this... can't wait for the next ep!

(1 edit)

There are a lot of amazing recent horror narrative games like Tiny Bunny, Sally Face, and My Beautiful Paper Smile to name a few, Scarlet Hollow fits nicely in the group of stellar horror narratives.

Full Episode 1 No Commentary

Viewing most recent comments 1 to 40 of 45 · Next page · Last page