Hey cousins!
The Steam Winter Sale is here, and with it, the last discount we're running on Scarlet Hollow before we hike the base price to $24.99 in early January. The upcoming price hike makes the current 20% off sale the equivalent of 36% off the new price, so if you've been looking for a good opportunity to pick up Scarlet Hollow, now's likely the cheapest the game will be before we finish Episode 7 and leave Early Access!
We also wanted to take this opportunity to do a bit of news roundup, as well as to talk about what's coming next for Scarlet Hollow and our studio!
First, some news:
- Scarlet Hollow once again made John Walker's list of the best games of 2022, both on Kotaku and on Buried Treasure. We were his Game of the Year last year, so it's great to make his list two years running.
- We also made Kotaku's list of the top 18 current PC games. Pretty rad.
- We were nominated for an impact award, as well as several other awards at this year's MEGAMIGS convention up in Montreal.
- We were included in IGN's face-off for the best horror games — there was no way we were going to beat the combined weight of every resident evil + silent hill game, but hey, we put up a fight!
- Y'all helped us overfund our Wayne plush campaign, so there'll probably be more merch to run in the future!
And last but certainly not least, a development timeline of what's coming next for our studio:
- Abby and I are taking our first multi-week long vacation in years — starting roughly around when this post goes live. I'll fix any emergency bugs that crop up, but for the most part, we'll be resting for a bit.
- In January, we have a content patch planned for the first 4 Episodes, including a new resolution to Episode 4's major conflict, a new scene for Episode 1, some new art, some new achievements and some small buffs to underpicked traits.
- Once that's up, we're going to be working on Episode 5 and Slay the Princess in parallel.
- (If you haven't checked out Slay the Princess yet, it's a small, fully-voice acted side project we started working on during some of our downtime. It features the incredible voice talents of Jonny Sims (The Magnus Archives) and Nichole Goodnight (The NoSleep Podcast, a lot of other stuff.) There's a roughly 90 minute demo you can check out right now for free on Steam! Wishlists are always appreciated if you want an easy way to show your support!
- Our writing process is such that only one of us is touching the script for either game at any point in time, so Slay the Princess' development should have minimal impact on Episode 5's timeline. We're shooting for a Summer release for Slay the Princess, and hoping Episode 5 will be ready either late next year, or early the following year.
- It's probably not surprising right now, but Episode 5 is once again an increase in scope and ambition over Episode 4, so we're going to make sure it has all of the time in the oven it needs to live up to the vision we have for it. I think y'all are *really* gonna like what we've got planned, though ^^
Once we're in the new year, we'll be putting out monthly updates tracking our progress for both games!
Thank you all for your patience and support — you're the reason we can make Scarlet Hollow as the game we want it to be, and we're so grateful for all y'all!
Happy holidays,
Tony + Abby