Black Tabby Games recently released the first episode of Scarlet Hollow, a horror visual novel and choice-driven adventure game set in the mountains of Appalachia. After the initial release, they put up a Linux version too!
It's made by the award-winning graphic novelist Abby Howard whose previously works include the comics of 2013: The Last Halloween, Junior Scientist Power Hour and The Last Halloween - all of which had very successful Kickstarter campaigns. Scarlet Hollow will have hand-drawn backgrounds mixed with animated sprites together with a "complex relationship system to bring to life an immersive world of charming (and terrifying) characters".
Watch video on YouTube.com
Your choices are supposed to matter here and while I haven't seen exactly how far that goes, the character build options you get to pick were interesting in how it affected conversations and actions. With my own play-through I picked the Powerful Build option, which definitely made for some amusement. I was able to partially intimidate an annoying person on the bus thanks to it, who ended up giving me a bag of…dripping peanuts? Well, Protein is Protein. Oh there's an old smelly takeaway in the fringe? Well Protein is Protein - gotta stay buff. Wait isn't this a horror? Some of the writing made me laugh but I don't want to spoil too much more.
Looks like it's going to be a fun series if this first episode is anything to go by. Great music, some wonderful artwork and with a really good atmosphere too. I don't often manage to get sucked in with visual novels but this is great. Seems users on Steam agree with is getting a Very Positive rating so soon after release.
You can play the full first episode free on Steam, with a Kickstarter campaign launching October 1 for the rest. We'll follow along and let you know how it goes.