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Hello, after enjoying Slay the Princess and checking out your other game, I absolutely fell in love with Scarlet Hollow. It is such a beautiful game with such a comfy yet horrifying atmosphere, it’s so unique and it is undoubtedly my favorite narrative of any game I’ve played, I eagerly await your continued efforts.

With The Roads Untraveled and Chapter 5 next in your sights I had a couple questions regarding that state and current features of the game.

“With new routes being made and narrative alterations happening for the currently released chapters, what will be the status of current saves and will they be able to be continued when Chapter 5 is released?” I intend on continuing my first save when any new chapter releases so my very first ‘complete’ playthrough will be seeing all the content blind. But if you go back to change material previously implemented, I am curious on what will be the procedure if existing saves contain decisions that have been changed.

“Will hardcore mode be expanded to new chapters, and if so will it remain available from the beginning going forward or will we have to clear a chapter normally to unlock its hard mode?”

“Hardcore mode allows for the choice of 3 traits rather than 2 when Scarlet Hollow is clearly designed around having 2 with the different synergies and certain choices that use both. Is there any chance that hardcore combination will be added that use 3 traits?”

“In general, is there any intention to expand hardcore mode?” Hardcore mode is my personal favorite as I really enjoy difficult decisions in games and not being able to always have a perfect option. For a game with ‘You can’t save everyone’ on all the marketing, the trait get out of jail free cards always kind of rubbed me the wrong way. So an option to disable those and get an extra trait meaning more dialogue and character strengths had no downside to me. I am curious if there are any plans for differences between a hardcore route and a normal one in regard to story or otherwise, seeing as a hardcore world is one with every sacrifice made.

You have made an amazing game and I have been hard at work spreading your gospel among my friends and family.

Hi! Thank you for being a hardcore mode superfan. I think it's pretty neat and that everyone should do a hardcore playthrough at some point for maximum pain. :) Answers in bold: “With new routes being made and narrative alterations happening for the currently released chapters, what will be the status of current saves and will they be able to be continued when Chapter 5 is released?” We never make any narrative changes to the game that invalidate pre-existing saves.

“Will hardcore mode be expanded to new chapters, and if so will it remain available from the beginning going forward or will we have to clear a chapter normally to unlock its hard mode?” Once you unlock hardcore mode, you unlock hardcore mode, but as more episodes release in the future, its initial unlock will continue to move to the end of the most recent episode. (So if you haven't unlocked it yet, you'll have to finish Episode 5 to unlock it after that release, and then when 6 and 7 release as a pair, you'll need to finish the game. But if you already have it unlocked you'll retain access.) Hardcore mode is very much a supplementary way to enjoy the story, so placing it at the end of the game feels right.

“Hardcore mode allows for the choice of 3 traits rather than 2 when Scarlet Hollow is clearly designed around having 2 with the different synergies and certain choices that use both. Is there any chance that hardcore combination will be added that use 3 traits?” No. It's a lot of extra work for a supplementary game-mode. There will probably be some instance where tree logic means you effectively get something like this, however. (i.e. situation X requires traits a and b to reach based on earlier decisions, we forget this while writing, and add a menu option for trait c.)

“In general, is there any intention to expand hardcore mode?” Hardcore mode is my personal favorite as I really enjoy difficult decisions in games and not being able to always have a perfect option. For a game with ‘You can’t save everyone’ on all the marketing, the trait get out of jail free cards always kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Yes and no. Hardcore mode was designed to offer a rich alternative to the base game primarily through emergent narrative. So while we're not consciously adding something specific to hardcore mode, there will likely be dialogue combinations and scenes that are only attainable through a combination of things that can happen over the course of a hardcore playthrough. These are interactions that would have been written regardless (because we're as thorough about fringe worldstates as possible) but may not have been accessible (or would be very difficult to access from the main playthrough.)

From a labor perspective, we built hardcore mode because it offered a whole new way to play the game in exchange for very little development effort — I think it took about a day to set things up and rework the logic around major decisions. Putting a bunch of extra development time into it defeats the purpose of that efficiency, especially when the game is complicated enough as is. We do have more projects we'd like to get to after Scarlet Hollow is done, which does require it being done at some point ;)