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Early Access Release
From award-winning graphic novelist Abby Howard, this is a horror visual novel and adventure game where your choices deeply matter and is being released across 7 episodes. Hand-drawn backgrounds and sprites work together with a complex relationship system to bring to life an immersive world of charming (and terrifying) characters. Who lives, who dies, and the fate of an entire town rests on your shoulders. Episode I (Sep 8/2020) is free-to-play. You jolt awake as the bus hits a particularly nasty bump. You feel like you’d only just managed to start drifting off, and now here you are, awake again and still exhausted. For a moment, you’re hazy on the details of where exactly 'here' is, confusing this bus with the many others that came before it. But as your mind continues to reassert its existence in the waking world, the past few days come back into focus. The long-lost cousin, the bad news, the twenty-six hours of bus rides with countless late-night stops in seedy depots that felt unsafe even in the middle of the day. You wouldn’t normally find yourself traveling like this, but your cousin bought the tickets. The funeral of her mother, your aunt, seemed like something you shouldn't ignore, even considering your own late mother’s rocky relationship with this side of the family. Fortunately, the end of your long journey is in sight. You're almost in Scarlet Hollow. Episode 2 (Jun 11/2021) Trapped in the dying Appalachian mining town of Scarlet Hollow for the funeral of your estranged aunt, you quickly find yourself at the center of a dark mystery that threatens your life and the fate of an entire town. Who lives, who dies, and the fate of an entire town rests on your shoulders. 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. A complex 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. Trait-based dialogue and role-playing. It'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? 21 different character builds change how you interact with the world and how your story unfolds.
Original monster designs inspired by Appalachian myths and cryptids. You won't find any predictable vampires or zombies here. Five romance options. Whether you're into goths, dads, Youtubers, mysterious recluses, 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. Episode 3 (Mar 7/2022) is a significant expansion of the game, with nearly 150,000 words of new content. A single play-through will likely take players 2-5 hours, and exploring all of the episode’s new content will likely take at least twice that amount of time. It seed the player and Tabitha being put on tribunal by the vengeful spirits of Chris Shaw and his descendants. They want payback for the injustice done to them by the Scarlet ancestors and intend to make either the player or Tabitha pay the price. One of the characters are forced to sacrifice a portion of their life force and there will be lasting effects. The only way to get out of this entirely is if you have the Book Smart trait, as you can then make an argument that neither yourself nor Tabitha should be held responsible for the sins of your ancestor. The player and Tabitha can also opt to just pull a Screw This, I'm Outta Here!, but the implication is they are just prolonging the issue as Chris Shaw's spirit will refuse to rest. |
