Scarlet Hollow Patch and Roadmap!
A patch just went out for Scarlet Hollow, bringing us up to date with reported issues!
In terms of what's coming next:
I'm working on a devlog analyzing our post-episode 5 survey data. It's a long one, since I never wound up doing a player choice writeup for Episode 4 or for The Roads Untraveled (actually making the game felt like it took priority over doing a writeup)
All of the fine details of Episode 6 and 7 have been mapped out, through the (of course multiple) endings of the main story!
Abby's hard at work on writing Episode 6, and has been for a few weeks now :]
Once the devlog is finished, I'll be back to work on the post release balance patch for Episode 5. On the to-do list for that:
Adding the ability to visit the church during the Episode 5 panic sequence (will not be available on all playthroughs, but the prerequisites shouldn't be too difficult to hit)
Expanding the introduction to the farms. This should include car rides with Avery and Doctor Kelly (should they accompany you) as well as a "hostile" version of the Franklin car ride if you were arrested by him. We're leaning towards not adding a car ride with Tabitha, but will still explore it, and we're also exploring adding an extra transitionary scene if going to the farms with Stella. The goal of these scenes is to provide extra context to Julius, shared through the biased lenses of companions, before arriving at the farms.
Exploring an option for a player romancing "Hot" Reese to still be able to see Tabitha. We're satisfied with how matricide Reese plays out, since he still pushes you to interact with Tabitha on his playthrough, but a romanced "Hot" Reese feels like he's locking players out of content without much benefit.
We're going to see if we can make the two "library" Oscar scene variants possible romance lock-ins for players who missed Episode 4's lock-in.
We're doing some balance changes to the Episode 2 roads untraveled route (where you skip the library and visit the mines on your own.) Right now, this mostly penalizes your relationships, since Tabitha finds your presence at the mines annoying. We're hoping to rework this by adding a "rubberband" effect, where if you choose Stella, Kaneeka, or Tabitha's hangout in 3, it undoes the RU damage to that character's relationship.
We're also going to allow non-street smart players who visit the mines on their own to meet up with Isaacs in Episode 3.
Powerful Build and Keen Eye both feel undertuned to players, and PB in particular is at an all-time-low pickrate. We'll be looking to improve the experience of these two traits. The "extra episode 4 ending" we've talked about will be part of the buff received by Powerful Build.
We want to rework the "attach the baby to avery" route to better communicate what's happening before a player makes their decision. (Attaching the baby saves avery and the baby, not attaching it leads to both of them dying.)
What a mouthful! As always, alpha testers on patreon will get first access to this patch to help us test it out. https://www.patreon.com/c/abbyhoward And if you're still here, don't forget that there's only 19 days left to grab a poster! https://topatoco.com/collections/black-tabby/products/ah-sh-sh_prints
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