Hi again, everyone! We're nearing Episode 3's completion, so we finally have a release date for y'all: March 7th. We both feel pretty strongly that this new chapter is the best Scarlet Hollow has been to date, and we can't wait to share with you. Sorry it took a little longer than expected-- because we always want to be as a transparent as possible with y'all, we wanted to explain why there was a bit of a delay:
First up, Episode 3 is huge. Like, as much content as Episodes 1 and 2 put together huge. There's close to 200,000 words of new content (of which you'll maybe see about 1/4-1/3 in a given playthrough) and over 1,500 new art assets. For reference, Episodes 1 and 2 were each about 100,000 words of content, bringing the total for all three to around 400k. For further reference, the Lord of the Rings (all of it) is 481,000 words long.
Next, the less fun back in December, we both got (thankfully mild) Covid cases staggered about a week apart and then we both got the flu (again, staggered about a week apart.) At the time, we didn't think it would have such a heavy impact on our ability to work, but we wanted to prioritize our health during that that time, and we unfortunately lost about a month of productivity to being sick and taking turns taking care of each other. We also moved to a completely new city in the fall, and that kind of giant move took a lot more time and energy than we thought it would!
And finally, the lead up to Episode 2's release was a horrendous crunch (about 3 weeks of 14-16 hours a day, making up for time lost to stress during the mess that was living in the US in the Fall and Winter of 2020.) For this episode, we wanted to make sure to give ourselves some extra time and padding upfront so we wouldn't have to deal with similar crunch again (which also means we'll be able to do more bug testing before release). Thank you all again for your patience and support as we continue to make Scarlet Hollow the story we want it to be, and we hope you feel that Episode 3 is worth the wait we certainly think it is! All the best, ~Tony and Abby