I am hot, I am gay, I am mystic, and I'm new in town. But Scarlet Hollow hasn't been the most welcoming to its prodigal daughter. It's kind of my fault, to be honest with you; my two chosen traits - Hot and Mystic – mean my character's innate sex appeal is dampened by the fact that she keeps making ominous psychic predictions. Not everyone is up for being a beautiful yet unsettling co-heiress to a crumbling coal mining town in the Appalachian mountains, spending her days vacillating between flirting with an emo kid's hot mom and telling anyone who will listen about the ill omens pointing to something dreadful about to happen, but I certainly am.
Visual novel-meets-narrative adventure Scarlet Hollow is technically developer Black Tabby's first game. Chapter one launched back in 2020, and the two-person studio launched Slay the Princess – another incredible choice-based narrative game – between instalments to help pad out funds. Six years on and with seven episodes planned out, Black Tabby has only just put out the first two acts of its fifth episode. The Holler, in all its sleepy paranormal splendor, has wound its dark tendrils beneath my skin; I have played 13 hours of it in about three days.
