All of the things we've had to keep under wraps have finally been unveiled to the public, so we thought it'd be a great opportunity to catch folks up on the workings of our studio for the past couple of years!
A "State of the Studio" sounded too grim, so we're calling it a State of the Union instead, which still works, because we're just the two of us, and are married and spend all of our time making our games anyways.
A TL;DR if you don't want to read a 4,000 word essay on running an indie studio (though you shouuuuuld)
We wrapped our full time work on Slay the Princess — The Pristine Cut about a month ago, meaning we've been back at it for Scarlet Hollow for a little while now, but we've also been juggling that with unpacking at a new place and planning an actual wedding to make up for the one we had to do in our tiny apartment for covid reasons! A lot of life events had to be put on hold to make room for the 80 hour work weeks that were needed to keep the lights on for our studio. But everything is finally starting to stabilize!
Prior to Slay the Princess being announced, Scarlet Hollow's funding was in a precarious spot (we were each making $5 an hour and that was going down every month). But now with Slay the Princess' success, we're able to comfortably self-fund the entire rest of Scarlet Hollow's development, meaning we get to stick to our original vision without publisher interference and without running the risk of having funding pulled. I'm not sure how much folks have been following studio closures in the game's industry this past year, but they've been absolutely merciless. While it was a struggle to stabilize without outside support, we're now in a much better position to make the games we want to make moving forward, which means we won't have to pull any punches with Scarlet Hollow's final acts ^^
We'll be getting out the first alpha builds for Episode 5 to testers later this year, probably mid-fall.
Episode 5 will come out some time in 2025, but we don't want to pin down any specifics until we're confident about our timing.
Expect more regular updates as we move into July and August — right now there's still a lot of script to go, which isn't very exciting from a sharing perspective (Episode 5 is multiple fantasy novels in length.)
I know how frustrating it can be for something you can care about to take longer to finish than you'd like it to—we've also felt a lot of that pain over the past few years—but it's important for us to do our work the right way and free from any external compromise. And thanks to all of your patience and support, now we can do that!
So from the bottom of our hearts thank you all so much. You mean the world to us, and we're so excited to give you the best possible version of Scarlet Hollow!
~Tony and Abby
LudoNarraCon is here: discounts, livestreams, and panels with the devs!
Hey folks!
First thing's first, we know you've all been incredibly patient with us as we've tackled the MOUNTAIN of work that is Episode 5. We don't have any firm updates for you at the moment, other than it currently being our primary focus as a studio. For those of you who might have missed updates on its development earlier this year, it's currently shaping up to be about the size of Episodes 2, 3, and 4 combined, and a hell of a lot more complicated than any of our prior work, so we're taking our time and making sure that we do it right while also shifting into a more sustainable development cycle for us as human beings.
We founded Black Tabby Games in March of 2021, and since then, I don't think a week's gone by where we haven't worked at least 60 hours a piece. While we love our work, that ferocity has taken a toll on our overall health, so we're working to scale that back to a healthier 50.
That said, as we get deeper into the year, you can expect more regular updates in terms of sharing new art and spoiler-free/spoiler-lite progress.
Anyways, LudoNarraCon is finally upon us, and boy do we have a MOUNTAIN of things for y'all.
First thing's first, Scarlet Hollow and Slay the Princess are each going to be 20% off, starting at 1pm EST on May 9th. So if you've been itching to pick one of them up, now's the time, and you can also pick up both game's bundled together for an extra discount here: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/33452/The_Black_Tabby_Games_Collection/ If you already own one of either Scarlet Hollow or Slay the Princess, I'd suggest buying the other through the bundle, since you'll still be able to apply the extra discount there.
At 7pm Eastern on Thursday May 9th, we'll be doing a retrospective Twitch stream where we'll play through the ORIGINAL demo cut of Slay the Princess as well as the first episode of Scarlet Hollow. This'll be broadcast on http://twitch.tv/black_tabby_games/
On Friday May 10th, we've got 2 panels that will be broadcast on the LudoNarraCon Steam page.
At 1pm Eastern, I'll be doing a fireside chat with Meredith Gran where we talk about narrative design.
At 5pm Eastern on the 10th, Abby and I are on a panel moderated by Patrick Klepek (formerly Vice, now Remap Radio) alongside Ben Gelinas (Times * Galaxy, formerly Bioware + Remedy) and Gareth Damian Martin (Citizen Sleeper.) The topic of this panel is balancing storytelling with player choice.
On Sunday, May 12th, at 1pm Eastern, we'll be doing an art stream, specifically going through some of the process of how Abby makes assets for our games! This one'll be simulcast on both Twitch and our Steam page!
All the best, and can't wait to share more updates with you all! Tony and Abby
Episode 5 Progress Update!
Hey folks!
We're still in the thick of development for Episode 5, but we wanted to give y'all some updates on how it's going! Moving forward, we're going to be sharing more regular progress updates on our Discord server, where we've just started a running thread. If you want to find this thread, it's under the #the-corkboard forum in the Scarlet Hollow section of the server, and it's titled "Progress Update Thread." I'll also be sharing those updates as follow-up comments on this Steam post moving forward as well. You can join the server here: discord.gg/blacktabbygames
"I've been back to work on the script for quite some time now, and things are progressing very well!
I feel so solid about what's been done so far. I'm working on one of the toughest parts of any episode, the part where you go around and talk to people, where the variations in individual storylines really come into play. Some characters have just a few variations requiring different versions of the same scene to be written three or four times, while others have more than ten, and of course we want to make sure that we aren't just showing variation for variation's sake-- we also want to make sure that the scenes all have their own points of interest, which requires a little extra care and attention. But I'm most of the way done with all of them at this point! Just a few more scenes to go :zombiethumbsup:
This is also the part of working on Scarlet Hollow where Tony doesn't have much to do, so he's working on the script for the Pristine Cut and I've been doing Slay the Princess art (and sometimes editing) as a cool down in the evenings!
I'll be sure to keep everyone updated with some regularity so we can all keep track of how things are going!"
To give some extra details here, the script for Episode 5 was about half-way finished by the time Abby had to shift into full-time art work for Slay the Princess. Like pretty much all of our studio's major content launches (i.e. finished episodes and full games), we had to take some time off following StP's release to deal with burnout, and Abby also had to deal with the sudden death of her father.
We're fully back into the swing of things now. One of our top priorities with Scarlet Hollow has always been to go the extra mile when it comes to giving weight to your decisions, and we're at the point in the narrative where there are a *lot* of intersecting variations.
It's also generally been the case that the beginnings of episodes demand more time and effort relative to their lengths than their middles and ends, so the rest of the script should be much smoother sailing from here!
Still feeling great about releasing Episode 5 this year, and in the meantime, a huge thanks to everyone for your patience and support!
Best, Tony
New Poster and Some Other Updates!
Hey there!
It's October, and we wanted to celebrate with not one, but two new sets of limited edition Scarlet Hollow merch, both of which are crowdfunding right now on our online store.
In other news, we're rocketing towards Slay the Princess' release on October 20th. It's shaping up into something we're extremely proud of, and we can't wait until we can finally share it with you. If you haven't had the chance to do so, you can wishlist it on Steam to get notified as soon as it's out — there'll be an extra launch discount available to owners of Scarlet Hollow (and to folks who want to buy both games at once)
After that release, we'll spend a couple of weeks polishing out any bugs, then another couple of weeks taking a well-earned rest, and then we'll get right into working on what's left of Episode 5, which is also shaping up into something we're extremely proud of, and unsurprisingly, into something ~even bigger~ than Episode 4. We're taking the choices you've made in your playthroughs very seriously, and we can't wait to show you some really cool branching.
As always, thank you so much for your support for both of our games! We wouldn't have been able to come this far without you.
Best, Abby and Tony
New limited charms! Get Wayne and Avery before they're gone!
Finally, a way for you to keep your good friends Wayne and Avery with you at all times. Avery brought you a cutting, and Wayne left his horrendous odor at home. instead smelling of delightful seasoned cherry wood! This unlikely pair is eager to grace your keychain with their particular kind of charm, in charm form, no less.
We don't have any new development updates since last time — we're in the home stretch for Slay the Princess right now (wishlist and play the demo if you haven't already!) And we're about half-way done with the script for Episode 5.
If you want all the latest updates for both of our titles, the best places to get them are our discord and newsletter. Links for those:
Note: our discord server has an automatic filter that will auto-kick accounts that are under 5 hours old — so if you're making your first account to join, bear with it and check back then.
As always, thanks so much for your patience and support. Both of our games mean a lot to us, and we're so happy you're all along for the ride.
Best, Tony and Abby
Screen-reader hotfix
Made the character creation flow accessible to players who require screenreaders. Self-voicing will now describe the flow for each screen, as well as tell the player what traits they've hovered.
A couple of minor bug fixes for menu logic as well
Limited edition Stabby charms and development update!
Heya folks!
It's been a little while since our last update, so we're here to share a couple of exciting little things and to give you a general progress report on how things are going with Scarlet Hollow Episode 5 and Slay the Princess.
First thing's first! We're doing a limited run of wooden character charms/keychains, and the page to order them is live right now. We're starting out with Tabitha and Stella, but if they sell well, we've actually got designs mapped out for most of the main cast.
A preview of some of our other charm designs!
Next up, today is also the start of the Steam Summer Sale, and Scarlet Hollow is 25% off. We're going to do something a little special for this sale, where for every 10 copies sold over the next two weeks, we'll be making a free copy of the game available to claim on itch.io, starting with 5 copies available at the time of this post going out. And as a reminder, until at least one or two sale cycles after the full release, 25% is going to be the discount we run Scarlet Hollow at. There's no steeper cut around the horizon to hold off for, but also if you're planning out your spending, you don't need to feel like you'll be missing out if you want to hold off until the next discount cycle.
STILL if you're looking for an opportunity to buy Scarlet Hollow or to gift it to a friend, there's no better time than the present.
Work on both games is continuing to go well. The first draft of Episode 5 is nearing halfway done, and Slay the Princess' script is also well past that point, with the Tower, Adversary and Stranger routes fully written as well as a ton of other never-before-seen content. We've locked in an internal release date for Slay the Princess, and are confident about hitting it — there'll be an announcement in the coming months so keep your eyes peeled!
In terms of release schedule, anticipate Slay the Princess later this year, and Episode 5 some time in the first half of next year — it's going to be our biggest chapter yet—with much more content than Episode 4—and now that we're a little more stable as a studio, we're making sure we're prioritizing our health instead of burning the candle at both ends for years straight.
Both games'll be well worth the wait!
Thank you as always for your support and patience! It means a lot to be able to make our games the way we want to make them :)
Best, Tony and Abby
Auto-Advancing Text Added as an Accessibility Option!
You can now toggle auto-advancing text and set that text's speed in the game's preferences.
New poster! And other updates — SO MANY other updates!
Hey folks!
Everyone really seemed to like the beach poster (it funded in ~an hour~), so we're doing another! And this time, it's everyone going to the State Fair.
The crowdfund is live now and will run for 15 days, so it should end on the 19th, and the first 50 backers get an enamel Ditchling pin thrown in for free ^^
We've got a few other things going on this week too, since it's the start of LudoNarraCon, a four day online festival celebrating narrative games on Steam!
Scarlet Hollow is 25% off for the next week. It's very important to us that we're transparent about discounts, so a reminder: every single discount we run from now until at least couple of cycles after we leave early access will be precisely 25% off. So if you want to pick up the game right now but money's tight, don't worry about FOMO pressuring you to spend. It'll be on sale at this same price again soon. Likewise if you're holding off because you think a steeper discount might be around the corner, that wait's going to be quite a while.
Slay the Princess has the honor of being one of the exhibitors for LudoNarraCon, meaning that out of hundreds of applicants, it was one of only 43 titles selected for prime-time featuring! We don't have any major updates for the Slay the Princess demo for this event, but that's because we had a major update a little over a month ago. If you haven't had the chance to check it out, the demo's been updated with a director's cut that features roughly an hour of brand new content and is much closer to the vision we have for the final game. If this is the first time you're hearing about it, Slay the Princess has cosmic horror meets The Stanley Parable vibes, and if you've enjoyed the humor in Scarlet Hollow, you'll probably enjoy it as well! It's also fully voice acted, featuring the talents of Jonathan Sims and Nichole Goodnight.
I'm hosting a panel for LudoNarraCon about using game mechanics and systems as tools for narrative design. It should go live on the event's Steam page on Friday at 4pm EST. We managed to pull together some amazing panelists, including Emily Short (Creative Director at Failbetter Games), Sarah Northway (I Was a Teenage Exocolonist) and Son M. (Love Shore). Should be a treat if you want to hear about people's writing process.
We're also doing a Q&A livestream where you'll get to see Abby work on some background art for Episode 5 of Scarlet Hollow and ask us all sorts of questions about both of our games. The stream will be simulcast to the Slay the Princess Steam page as well as our Twitch channel, and we'll be sure to look at chat in both places to make sure we see your questions!
Work on both games is going really well! The first draft of Episode 5 is about 25% done and we've been having a lot of fun writing it. It's felt great from Episode 4 onward to finally be able to start cashing in on things that have been set up from the beginning on the game, and it's only going to get more fun from here. It's still too early for us to have a release estimate for Episode 5, but rest assured that we're working incredibly hard to bring it to life!
Thanks so much for your support! Tony and Abby
5/1 Patch Notes
Small patch:
Biggest change is adding some range to Kaneeka's reactions to you calling Tabitha in Episode 2 based on your relationship values with her.
