An embroidered dark medieval folk tale. While life in a seemingly ordinary village is all about simple chores and idle gossip, sinister secrets hide below.
GAME FACTS
TITLE: Scarlet Deer Inn
RELEASE DATE: 7/21/2026
MSRP: $19.99
DEVELOPER: Attu Games
PUBLISHER: Attu Games, Aurakenn Games
PLATFORMS: PC, Steam Deck (current); Switch and Xbox (future)
PLAYED ON: PC
You play as Elise, a mother of two. She is just an average person trying to survive daily life and small town drama is a quaint medieval village, but not all is as it first appears.
Elise has recently taken over the day-to-day management of the Scarlet Deer Inn, following the death of her husband. She is raising two small children, Kuba and Bara, who are generally good kids that spend their days interacting with the guests at the Inn.
The game starts out normal enough, with Elise interacting with patrons at the Inn and visiting with local townspeople. She has to help her elderly neighbor Dorota deliver some items to people in the village, and in the process of doing so, you see a bit of the daily drama between the people who live there. Nothing out of the ordinary for life in a small village.
It isn’t until Elise searches deeper within the village that things take a turn for the worse. Elise stumbles upon a horrifying scene, and learns one of the villagers is not who people thought. Furthermore, it seems local children have been disappearing, and Elise’s own children go missing in the process.
Elise has to find and rescue her children, but she discovers that the true source of the madness may be something beyond this world.
BEHIND THE GAME
Scarlet Deer Inn was developed by Attu Games, a husband (Lukáš Navrátil) and wife (Eva Navrátilová) team from Znojmo, Czech Republic. Eva ((@EvaBalikova) runs their social media and was the primary writer on the game as well as handling all of the embroidery for the character artwork.
Lukas primarily handled programming, backgrounds / environment art, and digital animation. Both Eva and Lukas collaborated on the music, using “traditional instruments”, plus bringing in a few other collaborators as needed.
Prior to Scarlet Deer Inn, Lukas released a game titled Toby: The Secret Mine which was a Limbo-looking game that received mixed reactions on Steam.
As far as inspirations, Eva has listed Studio Ghibli as a major influence for the art direction and overall beauty, and when asked on X (Twitter) what their story inspirations were, she said: “The lore is a mix of Brothers Grimm and Slavic fairy tales, combined with Hot Fuzz and Night in the Woods.”
MY IMPRESSIONS
The very first thing that struck me about Scarlet Deer Inn, is just how beautiful everything is. The animation style does invoke a Studio Ghibli-like vibe, and you can tell a lot of attention to love went into crafting each background and environment. Similarly, the character animations look outstanding, and each one was created by hand embroidering each animation frame, then scanning them into a computer for the final rendering. While I’m not convinced the visual style couldn’t have been done completely digitally, overall it looks very impressive nonetheless.
The music is also 100% top-notch, and the devs did an outstanding job making it feel like it completely fits the tone and action at all times. While I’m not sure I’m excited enough to buy the soundtrack, it perfects serves its purpose in the game.
The gameplay is generally simple but tight and well designed. Most of the village scenes play out like a side-scrolling walking simulator, with Elise fetching items and speaking with her fellow villagers. The underground sequences are where the majority of the action is, and consist of light platforming and puzzle solving. There is a mechanic involving dark and light, which has been somewhat controversial online (probably the only element that has a little negative chatter), where you have to keep a light source around you, otherwise you take damage and eventually pass out. The light source either comes from torches or lamps in the environment, or from a handheld torch that Elise needs to keep refreshing at each standing torch lamp she comes across, as it burns out over time (and relatively quickly). There are also a few chase segments where either Elise is chasing something to stay in the light or Elise is running from something that could kill her.
The real reason to keep moving forward and playing the game is the story, and while it may not win any awards, it was well written and interesting enough that it kept me playing until the very end. There are a few twists that keep things engaging, and I was 100% invested in seeing Elise rescue her kids and put a stop to the evil. The dialogue with the villagers was also well written and made me feel like a part of their little village.
The game is relatively short, and I rolled credits in about 3 1/2 hours total. For what it is, though, I’m glad the game wasn’t any longer. It was just long enough, and had just enough action and stress, that I felt accomplished once I had defeated the final boss. With an MSRP of $19.99 it feels like it sits at the upper limit of value vs price, to justify picking it up right away; you can certainly find similarly priced indie games that deliver deeper, and many more hours of, gameplay ([cough] Silksong).
SCORE: 8/10
Scarlet Deer Inn is a really lovely indie game that combines beautiful hand-crafted visuals and music with an interesting story, and just enough action to keep things interesting all the way to the end. While the price might be at the upper end of what I would consider a good value, the total experience is worth having, and this is one game where the level of craftsmanship and love that went into it seem to more than justify its price. I’m very glad I picked it up and played it to the end, and I hope you’ll consider doing the same.
SAMPLE GAMEPLAY
You can watch my beginning gameplay in the video below: