1,5 years for a new episode and counting...

[Anri of Astora]

Game is dead. RIP.

[CSS]

It isn't dead there was an update just recently- it's do to come out sometime in early 2025 I believe, they made slay the princess in that time so they didn't run out of money

[NightingaleMuse]

-2 person development team.
-Ambitious game taking into account multiple branches and traits with 7 episodes in total
-Extremely niche gaming genre

Not gonna lie that I was at least hoping for a one episode a year release schedule, but I get why it's taking time.

I do wonder why Episode 4 data analysis has not been released yet. I always found that to be an interesting read.

[Black Tabby Games]

y'all gotta let us cook, folks!

(I'll be doing a write-up of the episode 4 data soon — those posts have been a lower priority than dev work, so it's been on the back burner for a while.)

[stone.fire.smoke]

We appreciate the quality you guys put into the story, don't pull it out of the oven until its done.

[Tokyo Gray]

I'm rather annoyed with this timeline and the excuses for the delays. This is not a difficult, nor expensive, game to develop. I suspect they've been doing extremely well financially with STP. Certainly well enough to "keep the lights on" in their "studio" from the seriously overpriced, unfinished SH alone. On the other hand, that's what a popular early access game usually is. An unfinished cash cow with lots of promises and excuses to keep sales up. I usually skip them altogether, but this dev seemed so sincere, decent and honest.
It never fails. Success and money alters priorities. Finishing this game clearly isn't an important one to them, though the sales probably are. I was under the impression, based on an earlier timeline, there were 5 chapters already finished when I purchased.
I don't doubt they started this project with good intentions, but 2026 is astoundingly unacceptable. I'm saddened by their lack of respect for those of us who supported this project, and the money we invested.
But, hey! Enjoy your new abode, and best wishes for a lovely wedding and honeymoon!

[Epimetheus]

Well, they are lazy geniuses, and had a real hitter not slaying the princess. I assume a sequel will come whenever suits them.

[Mngwa]

Originally posted by Tokyo Gray:

I'm rather annoyed with this timeline and the excuses for the delays. This is not a difficult, nor expensive, game to develop. I suspect they've been doing extremely well financially with STP. Certainly well enough to "keep the lights on" in their "studio" from the seriously overpriced, unfinished SH alone. On the other hand, that's what a popular early access game usually is. An unfinished cash cow with lots of promises and excuses to keep sales up. I usually skip them altogether, but this dev seemed so sincere, decent and honest.
It never fails. Success and money alters priorities. Finishing this game clearly isn't an important one to them, though the sales probably are. I was under the impression, based on an earlier timeline, there were 5 chapters already finished when I purchased.
I don't doubt they started this project with good intentions, but 2026 is astoundingly unacceptable. I'm saddened by their lack of respect for those of us who supported this project, and the money we invested.
But, hey! Enjoy your new abode, and best wishes for a lovely wedding and honeymoon!

Unfortunately this happens a lot with early access games. It happens so often that I am actually considering not to buy those at all in future. There are so many EA games that looked so promising, devs were working on it, posting maps, updates and such. But then something happens and suddenly there are no real updates. Just polishing and side details that do not contribute too much to the game. Only information is that the game is "being worked on" or absurdly long time that does not make sense. Scarlet Hollow is my favorite visual novel, exceeding anything from this genre I ever played, but sadly it seems that finishing it is on the bottom of the list. I wouldn't be surprised if it remained unfinished.

[Black Tabby Games]

Originally posted by Mngwa:

Only information is that the game is "being worked on" or absurdly long time that does not make sense.

I do want to remind folks of a couple of things:

1. Episode 5 is *much* bigger and more complicated than Episode 4, which is a major contributing factor to its lengthy development time.
2. We finish a given episode's full script before we start on any of the art, and we won't have preview images until we reach that point. This has been a challenge with talking about previous episodes as well — usually it isn't until the tail end of development that we have much that we're able to share publicly, and the deeper we get into the story, there's even fewer things we can share without spoiling things.

Right now, we've written close to a quarter of a million words for Episode 5, which is already quite a bit longer than Episode 4, which was our longest and most complicated episode to date. But there's still a lot more writing to do before the script is finished.

That said, it's totally understandable to be upset about the development time — it's taking a while, and you've all been more than patient with us—but I do want to stress that Scarlet Hollow remains our priority right now, and that we're working a full time schedule on it.

But we're also not going to rush things out the door until they're ready. It'll be done when it's done, and quality work takes time, especially with the growing complexity of different players' varying worldstates.

I hope you're all able to see that once Episode 5 has been released, as well as when the full story is finished.

[Rallania]

Guys. Seriously, just be patient.

Not only was Scarlet Hollow in development way before Slay the Princess and ALREADY has so much more content story wise (and that's saying a LOT considering that Slay the Princess is so incredibly story dense in general), but for those of you actually concerned about release uploads, development has actually been pretty consistent, as someone trying to argue against the game has already pointed out. For example, episode 1 was released 2020, episode 2 in 2021, episode 3 in 2022 and episode 4 also in 2022.

So in short, about a year for each episode with some months overlapping (taking into account the amount of writing INCREASING for each episode due to choices), with the exception of episode 4. Note that Slay the Princess was also released in 2023 in October with it's demo in 2022. Meaning the devs were literally FINISHING A GAME within the estimated average timeframe for episode 5 (and that isn't even going into just how big episode 5 will be considering how the devs actually PAY ATTENTION TO THE CHOICES YOU MADE--the 'girlboss' comment in episode 1 changing dialogue in episode 3 and the entirety of the Talk to Animals trait to name a few examples).

It shouldn't be surprising that it's probably going to be until 2025 that episode 5 is close to being done when considering the timeline of prior episode releases and how Slay the Princess is inserted into that timeline. Not to mention the QUALITY of those releases, mind you (why do you think Slay the Princess won best indie rpg??). I'm genuinely perplexed at why people are annoyed at the development timing when it's:

a) Been nothing but consistent in terms of uploads (as evidenced above) when actually analysing where the delays occur
b) Shown to be not only improving over time but also consistently worked on via bug/audio fixes (which if you want to argue as 'polishing', sure, but the fact remains that the devs are paying attention to the game and the people playing)
c) Has information AVAILABLE about upcoming updates (i.e community posts, info on social media. If you go on Patreon there's already a teaser about episode 5--won't specify because I don't want to spoil people genuinely interested but you can't pretend it doesn't exist)

It's a LOT to presume that "money alters priorities" when that clearly hasn't been the case here. It's even more astounding to say that Scarlet Hollow is "an unfinished cash cow" when not only is the game a lot cheaper than most early access games (quick reminder that, at least in the UK, BG3 was full price at early access--so about £49.99--and Scarlet Hollow is £19.99, which is MUCH LESS expensive than most current industry standard games being released, some of which have gone up to around £50-£60 on average, though that isn't to say BG3 isn't good (it is) but it goes to show just how expensive early access can actually be), but Scarlet Hollow and Slay the Princess are so obviously passion projects with the amount of care and detail that has been put into them (there is a REASON why there are so many theories surrounding Scarlet Hollow right now and why Slay the Princess is getting an update with even more content--which is FREE for people who already own the game).

You can't compare the game or the devs to EA or companies similar to EA when, unlike those companies, they've actually proven how much they care with Slay the Princess and are still keeping people in the loop. As someone already pointed out, there have been many EA games that have fallen into development hell overtime (with many being cancelled), meanwhile Slay the Princess was release within around a year of it's demo coming out.

Sorry for the rant, I'm just incredibly passionate about these two games and it annoys me to see people jumping to conclusions. Long story short let the developers develop in peace goshdarnit.

[Anri of Astora]

It is good to have a feedback from the dev. I really love this game and don't want to look disrespectful, art is indeed pleasure for my eyes and writing is also good.

But I surprised how long it takes to assemble a Ren'Py game, you can see its bare bones of an engine in save/load menu. We have to wait for 1,5 years for an hour of interactive adventure and that what? another year of SUFFERING? I can't wait any longer *dies*

[Black Tabby Games]

Originally posted by Anri:

It is good to have a feedback from the dev. I really love this game and don't want to look disrespectful, art is indeed pleasure for my eyes and writing is also good.

But I surprised how long it takes to scramble a Ren'Py game, you can see its bare bones of an engine in save/load menu. We have to wait for 1,5 years for an hour of interactive adventure and that what? another year of SUFFERING? I can't wait any longer *dies*

This is a pretty common misconception I've seen around visual novel development. The engine has very little to do with development time — almost all of our dev time is spent doing the following:

1. Writing the game. It's not uncommon for a fantasy novel (which typically sits somewhere between 50,000 to 150,000 words in length) to take well over a year to write. Episodes 3 and 4 of Scarlet Hollow were each nearly 200,000 words of writing, and Episode 5 will likely wind up at around double that. That's a *lot* of writing.

I know one playthrough might not take a lot of time, but there are lots of possibilities we have to account for when writing the script, which is how some folks have managed to squeeze hundreds of hours out of the game.

2. Scarlet Hollow has over 5,000 illustrations so far, and all of them are hand-drawn on pen and paper by one artist, who is also the game's co-writer. This also takes a lot of time. The backgrounds are each drawn on paper that's 2 feet long and a foot and a half wide, if you'd like to get a sense of how long that work might take.

3. And then there's the coding, which, while not deeply technical, is very tedious and complicated from a game-logic perspective.

To give an example of the tedium, see the ghost hunt in Episode 3, where you can have something like 9 characters in a room at the same time, all of whom have to be manually moved to reach to each line of dialogue.

To give an example of the complexity — there are a dozen variables tracking a given character's relationship with the player, and there are hundreds (if not thousands) of variables throughout the game tracking all sorts of decisions, big and small, that we're constantly referencing elsewhere.

Please bear in mind, at the end of the day, that we're just two people doing this, and I think the fact that this is written and illustrated by just two people sharing a vision is why so many folks have connected with the story so far.

Thanks for listening, and I hope this helps you understand our development process a little more ^^

[Zarok]

I really hope this game does get finished. I've had bad experiences with early access games and devs just leaving them unfinished. But this game has so much good story to it and the branching paths adds so much to it so I really want to see how the story ends and find out what if any theories are correct. It has been quite a wait between episodes but I really hope they are true to their word and do continue the game. This game needs to be continued it's such a good story and deserves a proper ending.

[Cat]

I think people really underestimate the time it takes to actually write a story. As someone who reads interactive fiction a lot, the wait between books can be years, and that's usually not while also making a VN that requires art on top of that. Writing a story with a million words and branching paths is a challenge in itself, then add everything else on top. Each episode reminds me a bit of that, some of my favourite interactive fiction has taken 5 or 6 years to get to where it is now and even then it's not finished stories.

Try to stay alive in the meantime and be patient, things take time, writing even more so. But the dev summed up this process in the earlier post.

[Dreamer]

Originally posted by Black Tabby Games:

Originally posted by Anri:

It is good to have a feedback from the dev. I really love this game and don't want to look disrespectful, art is indeed pleasure for my eyes and writing is also good.

But I surprised how long it takes to scramble a Ren'Py game, you can see its bare bones of an engine in save/load menu. We have to wait for 1,5 years for an hour of interactive adventure and that what? another year of SUFFERING? I can't wait any longer *dies*

This is a pretty common misconception I've seen around visual novel development. The engine has very little to do with development time — almost all of our dev time is spent doing the following:

1. Writing the game. It's not uncommon for a fantasy novel (which typically sits somewhere between 50,000 to 150,000 words in length) to take well over a year to write. Episodes 3 and 4 of Scarlet Hollow were each nearly 200,000 words of writing, and Episode 5 will likely wind up at around double that. That's a *lot* of writing.

I know one playthrough might not take a lot of time, but there are lots of possibilities we have to account for when writing the script, which is how some folks have managed to squeeze hundreds of hours out of the game.

2. Scarlet Hollow has over 5,000 illustrations so far, and all of them are hand-drawn on pen and paper by one artist, who is also the game's co-writer. This also takes a lot of time. The backgrounds are each drawn on paper that's 2 feet long and a foot and a half wide, if you'd like to get a sense of how long that work might take.

3. And then there's the coding, which, while not deeply technical, is very tedious and complicated from a game-logic perspective.

To give an example of the tedium, see the ghost hunt in Episode 3, where you can have something like 9 characters in a room at the same time, all of whom have to be manually moved to reach to each line of dialogue.

To give an example of the complexity — there are a dozen variables tracking a given character's relationship with the player, and there are hundreds (if not thousands) of variables throughout the game tracking all sorts of decisions, big and small, that we're constantly referencing elsewhere.

Please bear in mind, at the end of the day, that we're just two people doing this, and I think the fact that this is written and illustrated by just two people sharing a vision is why so many folks have connected with the story so far.

Thanks for listening, and I hope this helps you understand our development process a little more ^^

We appreciate your dedication and understand the challenge you face by doing all of this with only 2 people. The fact so many players feels impatient shows how much we like your game. Keep up with the good work!

On the other hand, please be aware that in real life, we players are getting older year by year and most of us will lose interest in it sooner or later without any update for a long time. You have a royal yet somewhat small fan base due to the fact that this is a very special kind game. It is just a fact that we only get attracted to a certain kind of entertainment at a certain point of our life.

Maybe you can divide Episode 5 into 2 mini chapters each of them only half as long and release them 1 by 1. Maybe you can release some sort of Beta testing for players who are willing to try earlier. Maybe you can consider make EP 5 less ambitious and a bit smaller. Maybe you can hire more staff to do non critical part of your work. And if you decides to keep making a masterpiece no matter how long it will take, you have my respect as well.

[Black Tabby Games]

Originally posted by Dreamer:

We appreciate your dedication and understand the challenge you face by doing all of this with only 2 people. The fact so many players feels impatient shows how much we like your game. Keep up with the good work!

On the other hand, please be aware that in real life, we players are getting older year by year and most of us will lose interest in it sooner or later without any update for a long time. You have a royal yet somewhat small fan base due to the fact that this is a very special kind game. It is just a fact that we only get attracted to a certain kind of entertainment at a certain point of our life.

Maybe you can divide Episode 5 into 2 mini chapters each of them only half as long and release them 1 by 1. Maybe you can release some sort of Beta testing for players who are willing to try earlier. Maybe you can consider make EP 5 less ambitious and a bit smaller. Maybe you can hire more staff to do non critical part of your work. And if you decides to keep making a masterpiece no matter how long it will take, you have my respect as well.

Muting this thread after this response, since I think I've said what there is to say, and it's probably not productive to get these notifications ^^

(Will leave the thread live so y'all have a vent space, though.)

But to answer your thoughtful suggestions.

• [bold]Maybe you can divide Episode 5 into 2 mini chapters each of them only half as long and release them 1 by 1.[/bold] We've talked about this. The main issue, other than disrupting the pacing of the episode, is it would also blunt some of our momentum — post release always means switching gears and dealing with a bit of burnout — so while it would get more content out faster, it would likely slow down overall development.

• [bold]Maybe you can release some sort of Beta testing for players who are willing to try earlier.[/bold] This is definitely a possibility, and we'll think on it. If the beta happens at scale, it runs some similar risks to above, mostly in terms of blunting our momentum. Part of the reason alpha builds for new episodes are gated on Patreon is to make managing those releases less resource intensive.

• [bold]Maybe you can consider make EP 5 less ambitious and a bit smaller.[/bold] Nope :)

• [bold]Maybe you can hire more staff to do non critical part of your work.[/bold] Unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot of work that extra bodies would be able to speed up! At the end of the day, we need to write the words, write the code, and illustrate the illustrations. All of those things need to be us, and they're almost all of the work. (Other than sound and music, which of course we already have help with ^^)

• [bold]And if you decides to keep making a masterpiece no matter how long it will take, you have my respect as well.[/bold] 🫡 At some point, it'll be in your hands, and this wait will have been worth it. And while you may have changed as a person during the wait, we'll have changed as well, and we hope that the skills we've continued to build over the years continue to keep pace with your personal development.

In the meantime, thank you for your patience!