Review | Scarlet Hollow Episode 5 - No Place Like Home

We all are, in some way or another, the result of what came before us. We’re often reminded of and affected by the mistakes we committed as teens, the scars we received as children, or the inherited burden of our familial and local history. These things tend to stay with us, so it’s no wonder that finding a new home and becoming someone new is such a staple of fiction.

We all strive to be our own people, in our own ways. Some of us seek erasure, to become an untainted canvas on which we can paint a possible future. We try to grow beyond family struggles and childhood trauma. We look for a place in which we can truly belong.

But even then, sometimes home calls us back. For better or for worse.

Scarlet Hollow is the first outing for Black Tabby Games, a duo that excels at creating unique narrative experiences. The studio’s second game, which funnily enough was finished first, is the increasingly popular Slay the Princess, an unforgettable barrage of existentialism, meta-narrative, and wonderfully morbid theatrics.

The game has been released chapter-by-chapter for a few years now, but the 2023 detour into Slay the Princess left Scarlet Hollow fans waiting for a continuation since the end of 2022. Since then, the duo has gained a lot of recognition and success, and the time for resolution is finally here. After a 2025 update that fleshed out the starting chapters even more, we finally got a new chapter this month. With the release of the game’s second-to-last update, we’re inching closer to the end of this wonderful journey.

Black Tabby’s games are quintessential examples of visual novels. The focus is always the text, the choices, the interactions, the dynamics. There aren’t secondary mechanics supporting the experience, be it an RPG battle system or a trial simulation. The games do not need anything else to prop them up.

Not that there’s anything wrong with VN hybrids. I’m a sucker for good detective games, after all. Scarlet Hollow and Slay the Princess, however, put the focus on choice, on story. While I consider Slay the Princess an achievement in narrative design, I’ve always been partial to Scarlet Hollow.

The game’s thrilling story opens with you, a distant cousin of a family that runs a mining town, coming to your mother’s birthplace to assist with your aunt’s funeral. As you start meeting people and getting exposed to supernatural hijinks, it’s clear that a lot is going on. It’s a horror story, a thrilling mystery. And also a portrait of people stuck somewhere and wishing they could be anywhere else.

The Holler, as the city of Scarlet Hollow is nicknamed, has a wealth of wonderful characters that only get more detailed as the story progresses. They react to many of the things you do and say, and are quick to connect to your character’s estrangement from the town with their own personal doubts.

At the beginning of the game, you get to pick your name, pronouns, and traits. Combining different abilities with different choices makes it so each trip to Scarlet Hollow feels different from the last. You’re visiting the city with completely different characters, after all, and the game really lives up to that idea.

It is, at its core, a story about feeling trapped. By fate, by circumstance, by economic reasons, by supernatural phenomena. You can’t do much of anything except move forward. And if some genius comes and tries to fix it all up, well, it may just make it worse.

Scarlet Hollow cooks this wonderfully contrasting serving of helplessness and agency through its incredible narrative design. You get a lot of choices. About what to say, what to explore, what to try. How to interact with people, where you decide to go.

I’d compare it to a role-playing game. You get so much freedom to define your character, and everyone reacts accordingly. The options are limited, but somehow it feels like the developers are always accounting for whatever you might want to do. This requires a level of care, attention, and passion that, as a narrative designer, is just mesmerizing for me to see on screen. Few developers are as dead-set on player agency as Black Tabby is.

I must confess, I don’t wish to spoil a single thing. So I’ll just come out and say it: I think this is one for the history books. The climax of one of the most meticulously designed narrative experiences of the last few years is finally getting going.

The increasing tangle of branching choices and possible states the game could be in by this point should give anyone pause. But the developers manage to continue the story wonderfully while setting everything up for the finale.

After so many years, the Holler is getting its big moment. Black Tabby is ready to deliver what it started a long time ago. 

While the recap before the chapter starts is always helpful, it tends to focus too much on the concrete actions of the player. Some more details on the lore we’ve discovered would be much appreciated, especially for those who have been away for a while and have racked up many playthroughs.

I do think this chapter, more than any other, benefits from doing multiple playthroughs. As you get a better perspective on the small town, more and more variations start to arise. The depth of the possibilities is easy to miss in just one playthrough. Someone playing one time through the episode might come out thinking it’s a very solid entry with great production value. Only through multiple perspectives can you start to actually realise how much work and consideration have been put into this chapter, hidden in plain sight.

That said. Yes, I did flirt with him, and it was great. Thank you very much.

As everything is in place for the final chapters, I can’t help but be excited. I’ve been feeling the Holler’s call for many, many years, and it has been worth the wait.

So we go back. Back to the beginning. Back to Black Tabby’s first game. Back to our family home. We’re returning to find out if this convergence of fate and ambition manages to create something beautiful or leave us lost in its wake.

Nowhere else to go, but towards the final stretch.

You might not be able to save everyone. Maybe not even yourself. But there’s no turning back now. Welcome home. You’ve been dearly missed.

Scarlet Hollow Chapter 5 was played on PC with a code provided by the publisher.