Recent reviews by LuvianBlue

I loved this game. If you enjoy games like Chants of Senaar or Heaven's Vault but want something more difficult, you will likely enjoy this game! I think this game is the perfect size for the difficulty level.

This game does not hold your hand. It gives you a handful of pieces of information and leaves you to sort things out yourself. But that feeling when you pop a word into place and see it make sense in other places where it shows up and slowly sentences start to reveal themselves is a delight.

I will say the "cursive" font of the letter that gives you your information is not the most readable. But I really, really enjoyed this game, even if it had me clawing at my brain at times trying to figure out how to progress. I want another game like it now.


If you wanna check this game out, here are my suggestions for how to approach it:

- The information from the letter is all really, really useful! And the letter itself tells you exactly how it's all useful!

- You will want to have some way of taking notes or scribbling down thoughts with you while you're playing, it will help.

- Don't be afraid to just plug in some guesses at the words so you can see if/where the same words show up on other artifacts. Slot in words you think might make sense for now even if you wind up changing them later, it at least helps you find where words repeat :)

- Take it step by step, don't get overwhelmed trying to figure out what everything means all at once, note your questions down and come back to them later as you gain more information. Especially when you're just starting the game, think about "what is one thing I'm noticing about this language/these artifacts and what could it mean?" and then try out some things based on what possible answers you think there could be to your question.

- Don't try to brute force things. Twice I got stuck and tried to brute force my way through the artifact the game said might be like a Rosetta Stone by guessing at words, it was not helpful. Approach things thoughtfully.

What a beautiful game! I'm so excited for the rest of the episodes to come out! There's so much packed into Scarlet Hollow, you can't see everything in one run through so it has a lot of replayability value considering you're trying to unravel the mysteries of the town. At the beginning of the game you choose 2 traits from a list of 7, and they have a big impact on what information you can learn and what options you have available to you. Sometimes there are combo options that you only get with a specific combination of traits. The choices are also generally quite clear regarding what their tone is going to be, I don't feel blindsided like I have in some other games where I choose an option that says "I disagree" and my character winds up screaming obscenities and threatening murder someone. In this game I can make choices with confidence that the resulting dialogue coming out of my character's mouth will align with the choice I made.

The art is incredible and clearly done with so much love. The relationship system is more complex than just "like" and "dislike", with characters seeing you as reliable or unreliable, or choosing to open up to you or close themselves off to you. I also really appreciate the variety of dialogue options, such as having the same dialogue choice listed twice, but one being marked as a (lie) and the other being an honest opinion, allowing the player to decide if their character is giving hollow flattery, or a genuine compliment. The achievements are hilarious too!

I highly recommend this game!