Scarlet Hollow and Slay The Princess make branching narrative look easy

At least for the first five episodes, Scarlet Hollow does not share Princess‘ style of cheeky meta-fiction. Instead, it’s marked by a structural and thematic ambition. Each individual episode of Scarlet Hollow represents a day leading up to the player character’s aunt’s funeral. The player character comes to the titular small town having never met her, their cousin Tabitha, or any of the extended Scarlet family. Their deceased mother left the town soon after they were born and raised them far away from the Hollow. While each ending of Slay The Princess is more or less self-contained, every episode of Scarlet Hollow cascades into the next. The vision is a strong one. Scarlet Hollow jump starts Slay The Princess’ engine—networked, character-driven decision-making—into a southern gothic horror epic.

The rewards of this approach immediately manifest as dread. The best story routes in Princess have the shivering bite of great horror short fiction or the salty, bloody kiss of romance. Yet, because each one is self-contained, the game does not really build momentum between routes. While every episode of Scarlet Hollow has an individual arc, each one builds to a broader picture of the town and the Scarlets’ history. In the day, the player explores the town, befriends or antagonizes its residents, and hunts for clues to the game’s many mysteries. When night falls, the horrors begin. These horrors escalate over time, and the consequences of their actions from one episode rattle across the next. Watching the game chart those consequences, across what is now over a half-decade of writing, is immensely satisfying. What is less successful is the player character themselves.

In Slay The Princess, the player character starts as almost nothing at all. Yet, with each ending, the player might begin to understand who exactly they inhabit. Each individual ending is a shard of self. These shards form a mirror, one which displays both the princess and the Hero, reflections and strangers both. Taken as a whole, the game is a portrait of a relationship. Every individual choice teaches the player about the contours of that relation. It’s a brilliant subversion of blank slate characters. The more choices the player charts, the more singular the Hero becomes.

In contrast, Scarlet Hollow’s protagonist is defined by the player, who names them, chooses their pronouns, and even christens the hometown from which they’ve traveled to Scarlet Hollow. There are only two facts that define them: They are from elsewhere and they know nothing of the Scarlets’ torrid past. An urge to see what would happen tends to motivate choices in Scarlet Hollow. That is not an uncompelling reason to move forward. Furthermore, the accumulation of choices over Scarlet Hollow’s runtime do create something of an individualized identity. Yet, without a past to draw from, it is difficult to conclude anything about what the player character is. Disco Elysium is forever invoked as a titan of video game storytelling, yet most have not learned its most fundamental lesson: That one need not compromise between fully realized, psychologically complex characters and ones that players have a serious role in shaping. It’s considered common sense in games that a blank slate character is more relatable than a well-defined one. However, Harry Du Bois or Geralt of Rivia stick in the mind far more than any Skyrim player character. Games’ avoidance of specificity is a symptom of cowardice, not good design sense.

Fortunately, the means the player does have of shaping their character are lean and compelling. Two such traits are “mystical” and “hot,” which make a Scarlet full of grim portents and corny pick-up lines. This is where Slay The Princess’ tonal problems reappear. The traits are as much a vector for jokes as anything else. “Hot” is particularly guilty of this, seeming to mean that people would ignore an awful pick-up line because of the character’s aura. Sometimes, though, “hot” means something a little thornier than sheer physical attraction. In its best moments, it’s closer to a serious charisma, an attraction that makes people act irrationally. Every trait appears to have moments like these, ones that spill from superficialities into something deeper. The traits also have a clever mechanical function. At the end of each chapter, the player will have to make a brutal decision. The right trait can help them find more, often less difficult, ways through those choices. However, the player will have to take some of those brutal choices head on. Just as Slay The Princess pulls its two main characters together whatever the player chooses to do, Scarlet Hollow makes clear that they cannot escape everything. Big budget games like Mass Effect are infamous for promising meaningful choices and, ultimately, fudging them. Hollow and Princess alike make choices stick in your gut.

What is totally optional, however, is romance. It is a little disappointing that Scarlet Hollow goes for a more generic romantic structure. Everyone in Scarlet Hollow will have interest in the player should they pursue them, whatever the player’s chosen gender. Romance is an encouraged-yet-optional path, not a core thematic element. This has become a default model of the video game love story, evangelized by the likes of Baldur’s Gate 3. Yet, Scarlet Hollow has an attention to detail that many games like it don’t attempt to muster. Here is one example. At the end of episode four, if the player sleeps with Stella, Tabitha’s childhood friend and cryptid YouTuber, she can accompany them to the “forbidden wing” of the Scarlet Manor in episode five. Upon discovering multiple disturbing secrets, they can resolve to confront Tabitha. However, upon arriving at Tabitha’s office at the Scarlet mines, Stella talks over the player character. Her excitability, and her friendship with Tabitha, ruin any chance at putting things delicately, and as a result Tabitha calls the cops. Stella is a being outside of the player’s own wants. Trusting her has consequences. Simultaneously, Scarlet Hollow reflects what is most frustrating about video game romance, yet still pulls it off far better than games with a much larger budget.

Both of these games are as frustrating as they are illuminating. Their flaws and their strengths articulate multiple weaknesses of the landscape around them. Their jokey tone cheapens both games’ articulations of tragedy and horror. Scarlet Hollow‘s nameless protagonists showcase why blank slates are an ineffective storytelling device, despite their prevalence. Yet, they both scale their ambitions with confidence and a clear head, something even the best big budget games rarely do. Most video games still struggle to take themselves seriously. Scarlet Hollow and Slay The Princess are the products of that struggle. They swing between the medium’s most profound highs and its wretched lows. They offer a sign of better things to come and a map of how to get there, while reinforcing why games need to move on in the first place.