#i made this as a resource for people who don't necessarily read the discord religiously

[abby-howard]

Scarlet Hollow decision tree

People occasionally ask to see a decision tree for Scarlet Hollow, so a while back I put one together for episodes 1-4! It’s not comprehensive, as most scenes at this point have at least some variation due to any number of tracked variables, but it accounts for most of the really major deviations.

For those who don’t want spoilers but would like to hear about how we kinda structure the game: I like to talk about it as more of a braid than a tree, which is not a new concept or anything, but I feel like it helps other narrative designers understand how to limit the absolute vastness that you can get with branching structures. The narrative branches off at decision nodes, but instead of continuing down significantly different routes, it comes back together at key moments. So there’s a single narrative throughline to the game-- events unfold in the town and you witness them in some capacity, but your perspective on them, who you’re with, the options available to you, all these are impacted by other choices you’ve made along the way, including the character traits you chose at the start of the game.

It’s not necessarily easier than doing routes, since it means Tony and I have to keep track of a ridiculous number of little variations including one-off dialogue choices players have made AND steering players to the important narrative moments can be tricky, but I think it makes for an interesting player experience! People get so excited when, say, a line at the end of Episode 4 calls back to something they said when they first met Tabitha at the beginning of Episode 1.

ANYWAY, HUGE SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT, do not proceed if you don’t want to know about basically everything that’s currently in the game!

Things start to get a little hard to read from here on out....

Episode four had to be broken into four images and looks like spaghetti

I’ll make another one of these for Episode 5 after it comes out sometime next year! (I know that’s a bit of a wait but it’ll be worth it >:D)