Scarlet Hollow (tuxdb.com)

Trapped in the dying Appalachian mining town of Scarlet Hollow for the funeral of your estranged aunt, you quickly find yourself at the center of a dark mystery that threatens your life and the fate of an entire town. Who lives, who dies, and the fate of an entire town rests on your shoulders.

Features

A heavily branching narrative where your choices matter. The relationships you forge and the decisions you make will dramatically alter your journey.
Terrifying and funny. Charming characters and snappy dialogue flip to pulse-pounding horror at a moment's notice.
A complex relationship system that changes how characters act around you. Characters don't just like or dislike you. Become friendly rivals, bitter adversaries, best friends, or mild acquaintances with everyone in town based on how you approach the story.
Trait-based dialogue and role-playing. Scarlet Hollow's dialogue system is driven by role-playing elements that let you choose who you want to be. Are you quiet and observant? Hot and clueless? 21 different character builds change how you interact with the world and how your story unfolds.
Original monster designs inspired by Appalachian myths and cryptids. You won't find any predictable vampires or zombies here.
Five romance options. Whether you're into goths, dads, Youtubers, mysterious recluses, or lo-fi beats to study and water your plants to, we've got all your bases covered.
Dozens of meticulously hand-drawn and traditionally inked backgrounds. Every background in the game is drawn by hand and inked on massive 19x24 inch paper.
Hundreds of immersive sprites. Each major character has dozens of hand-drawn sprites that interact with backgrounds and capture a full range of lighting, emotion, environment, and outfit changes.

Hardcore Mode is Here!

The monkeys paw curls!

For years you've asked us to give you a third trait in Scarlet Hollow, and today that wish is granted, though at a heavy price.

Introducing HARDCORE MODE.

Normally, each trait in Scarlet Hollow allows you to bypass a game and character altering sacrifice. In HARDCORE MODE, while you have three traits, you'll be unable to use any of them in these end-of-episode scenarios, allowing you to explore more dialogue, but without making the game too chipper!

So please, enjoy your new dialogue options, but know the suffering your hubris brings.

To unlock HARDCORE MODE, just finish the first four Episodes of the game. If you've already finished Episode 4, loading a save at the ending screen and clicking through to the credits will also unlock HARDCORE MODE. Once it's unlocked, there'll be an option to start a new HARDCORE run from the main menu.

Also, in case you were wondering, yes, there are new achievements for hardcore mode, so all of you completionists out there are going to have to run the misery gauntlet.
Game Description Image

Enjoy at your own peril,
Tony and Abby

p.s. I know what you're thinking "Is this an elaborate April Fool's joke?" And the answer is yes, but only in that we went ahead and actually made this patch.