Tony Howard-AriasHow Slay the Princess earned 25,000 wishlists in two weeksNote: this post was originally published for our patrons on August 8th , and data contained within is only accurate for that time-frame…11 min read·Aug 12, 2022----
Tony Howard-AriasAnalyzing player choices in Episode 3 of Scarlet HollowIn case you don’t know me (or the game I’m about to do a spoilers-heavy deep dive into), I’m Tony Howard-Arias, one of the co-creators of…11 min read·Jun 7, 2022--5--5
Tony Howard-AriasHow Early Access Can Work for Episodic Narrative Games — A midpoint post-mortemFor those of you who don’t know me, I’m one of the two developers of Scarlet Hollow — a choice-driven horror visual novel releasing…12 min read·Mar 30, 2022--1--1
Tony Howard-AriasHey there!Frankly, we first added inventory functionality when we thought there would be more use for items throughout the game — originally we had…1 min read·Dec 13, 2021----
Tony Howard-AriasHow to think about game balance as part of narrative design (and why you should care)When we published a large balance patch for our game this October, it was met by a lot of surprise from our player-base. For those of you…16 min read·Dec 2, 2021--4--4
Tony Howard-AriasBreaking down player choices in Scarlet Hollow Episode 2For those of you who aren’t in-the-know, Scarlet Hollow is an episodic narrative horror game currently in early access on Steam and itch. A…11 min read·Sep 3, 2021----
Tony Howard-AriasMarketing your first indie game — What we learned from releasing the same game twice.For those of you who don’t know me, I’m one of the developers for Scarlet Hollow, an episodic horror visual novel that I co-create with my…12 min read·Aug 12, 2021--1--1
Tony Howard-AriasWhat goes into making an indie gameAbout once a week or so, we get a comment from a passionate fan asking about our release schedule and why there’ll be so much time between…9 min read·Mar 8, 2021--2--2
Tony Howard-Arias5 rewrites that made Scarlet Hollow a better gameWriting for video games was a surprisingly different beast (read: much harder) than the linear story-telling Abby and I were used to when…8 min read·Feb 8, 2021--3--3
Tony Howard-AriasCreating a dynamic relationship system in Scarlet HollowIn our first run at figuring out the relationship system for Scarlet Hollow (play Episode 1 for free on Steam), we tried a kind of Dragon…7 min read·Jan 25, 2021--3--3