Something bad is happening in the town, and some local animals are the unfortunate warning of impending doom. It’s in the content warning, but I have to stress that there are animals in pain in this game. The different experience I got just from being able to talk to animals turned a piece of psychological horror into a work of supernatural tragedy. Each trait offers different dialogue options showing what is really happening in the story.

You can also be a flirt, an empath, or very intuitive. You could also choose to be incredibly strong so more physical tasks don’t pose problems. Maybe you want to talk to the many animals in the game to gain insight into what happens in the town. After choosing your name and preferred pronouns (he/him, they/them, or she/her-non-binary characters exist in this world without consequence or judgment), you choose two unique traits out of seven options that define how your story will go. The branching narrative options of Scarlet Hollow can allow for multiple playthroughs of the game. Her work also reflects reality with diverse casts that look like the actual world. In Howard’s work, monsters are real and bring the worst traits out of the people who have the misfortune of discovering them. Her work in horror features large ensemble casts of unlikely friends in a world of inky crosshatching and sprawling shadows. Scarlet Hollow is the debut game from Abby Howard, the cartoonist and graphic novelist behind The Last Halloween, Junior Scientist Power Hour, and Earth Before Us. The strange, wonderful, and horrifying things you notice are just daily life in the Holler. No one bats an eye that the town’s most famous resident is a cryptid hunter on YouTube. More buildings than not are boarded up and abandoned in the town. Tabby’s home is a dilapidated manor on the side of a cliff. The bus stop has one bus arrive and leave each week. The further you go into the town of Scarlet Hollow, the stranger things get. For the next week, you’ll be living with your cousin Tabby, who you also never met before, as you wait for the funeral service of one of the last members of your family. You never met her or even saw your ancestral home because of a falling out in your family. You play as an estranged family member attending your aunt’s funeral.

Scarlet Hollow is a horror/adventure game in the form of a visual novel. Content warning: gore, gun violence, animal suffering

Scarlet hollow episode 1