High Tail Hall

High Tail Hall, also known as HTH, is an ongoing adult furry role-playing game project created by Crowchild and later by HTH Studios. First launched in 2003 as a Flash game on Newgrounds, the High Tail Hall project has gone through four major versions in the history its development as a result of setbacks and delays throughout the years. The game currently exists as a public beta and is planned to have a full disk release when it is completed. In the current version of the project, the player's character can explore an island called New Cyana in an unspecified body of water, exploring the nature, ruins, and the in-universe version HTH Studios, all while seeking intercourse with the HTH Studios cast members and natives on the island.

High Tail Hall 1.0
The High Tail Hall project began its existence as a discussion on the Yiffstar messageboards. Crowchild, the creator of Pendragon Entertainment, announced he would be making a flash game akin to The Tail Underground, seeing as updates to it were sporadic at best. This announcement included a statement that people who wished to be in the game needed to only ask.

It was also believed that High Tail Hall was inspired by The Tail Underground, and vice versa. Both Ian R. Soulfox and Crowchild created their animations independently with overlapping development periods, with High Tail Hall being released after Tail Underground. Crowchild later confirmed that he used the idea of torch lighting from Tail Underground and incorporated it into his own game. Ian has mentioned that he doesn't mind HTH, and that he enjoys its existence. Crowchild also encourages similar projects, such as Crowjob in Space and The Penthouse.

Version 1.5
Some time after the announcement and following a series of prototypes, High Tail Hall Version 1.5, was released onto Newgrounds on July 21, 2004. The game quickly gained exposure on the site and won the Daily Feature award for July 22. Version 1.5 was viewed 11 million times and held a score of 4.21 stars by the time it was removed in late 2017 by the Newgrounds moderation team. . An archived copy of Version 1.5 was uploaded to Crowchild's Fur Affinity account in 2011.

Version 1.7
Version 1.7 was a short-lived expansion of Version 1.5 that entered development in August 2004. It was originally hosted on the Pendragon Entertainment website before being moved to a separate web domain to the game's increasing size. Unlike Version 1.5, each section of Version 1.7 was divided into multiple .swf files to decrease lag when new updates were added to the game. Other users who wanted their characters added to the game were given the option of paying a fee for their inclusion.

Over the course of a month, the game received several updates that refined the animation of the sex scenes, added Jade Felicity Lanely, and expanded the setting of game to include a second-floor bathroom and a forested area outside of High Tail Hall with a non-functional Stargate. A hidden scene involving an reptilian male and a female satyr could also be found the forest.

After several weeks of inactivity on hightailhall.net, Crowchild announced on September 16 that HTH Version 1.7 was lost in an apartment fire a week earlier that destroyed the majority of Pendragon Entertainment's projects, and issued an apology for the setback. Full refunds were given within two to four months to those who commissioned to have their characters be in the game.

Version 1.9.9 - High Tail Hall Classic
While continuing development of the Rio Davis DVD in October 2007, Crowchild teased the existence of a new project code-named "Project X" on his FurAffinity account. Additional clarification was given that the side project was not the anticipated High Tail Hall 2.

Three days later, Crowchild revealed that "Project X" was a remake of High Tail Hall 1.0 titled High Tail Hall Classic. The remake was planned to include an updated art syle, new animation and music, and the addition of voice acting, and was going to be released on FurAffinity and the HTH Studios website. Two previews of High Tail Hall Classic were released on the same day, which was a screenshot of the redesigned bar and a voice demo animation with Fossil as the voice of Maxwell Moore.

The project was dropped in favor of HTH 2 and no new updates were given for twelve years. On October 16, 2019, a suprise announcement unveiled an updated version of 1.5 that shared the High Tail Hall Classic name. After a period of testing by their Patreon's Alpha Team, it was released as Version 1.9.9 to Gold members on October 26.

Version 1.9.9 adds ambient music, sound effects by the Studio's voice actors, new links on the suggestions box and tip jar, developer credits, and fixes some long-standing bugs.

Characters
Fully interactive characters
 * Luca Shoal, an androgynous fox. Luca is a maid for High Tail Hall and wears a French maid outfit. They are owned by their creator/player, Luca Shoal.
 * Tanya Winters, a female Zebra. Tanya is a barmaid who serves drinks and sexual favors to guests.
 * Zoe Mallari, a female cheetah who works as a stripper at High Tail Hall.

Other characters:
 * Maxwell Moore, a black male tomcat. Maxwell is a bartender and the implied owner of High Tail Hall. It is suggested that Maxwell has engaged in sexual relations with the strippers.
 * Boris, an old male crow. Boris is from Russia and is one of Maxwell's regular customers.
 * Jade Felicia Lanely, a female blue fox exclusive to Version 1.7. Her interactions with the player are unfinished, and right-clicking "Play" on her shows some of her planned actions and dialogue.
 * A female kangaroo stripper and an avian character. The kangaroo can be seen having sex with the avian character in the basement of the bar.
 * An unnamed crow in a second floor room who only reads a book and has no further interactions with the player.
 * A reptilian male of ambiguous species having relations with an unnamed satyr, both of which are exclusive to Version 1.7.

Locations
High Tail Hall has a bar with an outside balcony on the main floor, private rooms, a dance floor downstairs off the ground floor, and a Version 1.7-exclusive bathroom on the second floor. There is also a hidden entryway on the second floor only accessible by clicking one of the hallway lamps, a hidden envelope containing erotic photographs, and the code E1B2.

Clicking on a clothes hanger in the storage room takes the player to a hidden room where they can enter the code on an unidentified electronic device. This triggers a scene that shows three red circles with the numbers 13, 85, and 27 with each number being shown above a different circle.

High Tail Hall 2
After a period of time in which Crowchild was preoccupied with moving and working, a new incarnation of the High Tail Hall project, titled High Tail Hall 2, was released on March 6, 2008 to positive reviews from the furry fandom. This included new characters who first appeared in Crowchild's standalone artwork and a new setting.

From March 2008 to December 2008, several new characters with numerous new adult character-to-player-to-character interactions had been added to the game's content. According to Crowchild's FurAffinity page, an update was scheduled for October of 2009, but it did not occur. Crowchild resurfaced on February 21st 2010 promising an update within three weeks. However, this deadline was missed as well. The project was considered by much of the community to be dead. . Tyvara Panther, the voice actress for Rio Davis and Crowchild's girlfriend, commented on Crowchild's FurAffinity page, linking to a blog post made on her page, which answered some questions posed about the status of the project by the community.

It was later revealed that the operating system and computer Crowchild used to develop High Tail Hall 2 and HTH Studios Presents: Rio suffered an irreversible crash, erasing all progress that Crowchild made on both of the projects.

Characters
Fully interactive characters:
 * Bella, a female polar bear (voice acting by Amaracol Canis).
 * Rio Davis, a female wolf/fox hybrid (voice acting by Tyvara Panther).
 * Ginger, a hermaphrodite cat (temp. inactive).
 * Jezzel, a female husky.
 * Shelly, a female collie.
 * Shemyay, a female jackal (temp. inactive/off game).
 * Cindy, a female rabbit.
 * Kristy, a female cat.
 * Aleta, a female parrot (voice acting).

Other characters:
 * Bruce, a male dinosaur (Bartender).
 * Drake a male duck,
 * Simone a female swan
 * Two unnamed swans with Drake and Simone
 * An unnamed non-anthropomorphic parrot on a stand.
 * Felicity, a female rat.

High Tail Hall: New Cyana
On February 26, 2011, HTH Studios launched a completely changed and revamped version of High Tail Hall with a new interface and a new look. This iteration of High Tail Hall dropped version numbering from its title, returning to "High Tail Hall" while the original game became referred to as "HTH Classic" within the community. On October 21st, 2012, Crowchild unveiled a $5 per month Gold Membership plan as a method of keeping the project funded, allowing him to fully dedicate his time to developing High Tail Hall. A High Tail Hall Wiki was later created by the Studio on Wikia to document the game's characters, locations, items, and other important information.

While initially warmly recieved, this version has recieved criticism for the changes in art style, animation quality, bugs, long development period, scope, frequent revisions of character designs and scenes, and its subscription-based model.

Build 1 - Adobe Flash

The original Flash build used a combination of animated sprites/scenes created in Adobe Flash and pre-rendered backgrounds created in LightWave 3D while retaining the point-and-click gameplay of its predecessors. Additions to the initial Flash version of HTH included a real-time day-night cycle, a bird's eye map of the Cyana Archipelago and its numerous locations, and in-game puzzles that have yet to be solved by players.

Crowchild continued to develop the Flash build of the game every year until October 2017, with an average of three scenes per month and occasional updates to the in-game locations.

The Flash version was available as an in-browser open beta accessible to users who created an account on the Studio's website until it was removed on August 30, 2018 when the website underwent heavy restructuring. After the transfer was complete, HTH Studios announced on September 29 that the Flash version would be re-released as an offline download in response to the continued depreciation of Adobe Flash on most major web browsers.

The offline release of the Flash Archive build was completed and released later in July 2017, with a final iteration titled the "Final Patch" currently being developed with no release date announced.

Build 2 - Unity Engine In October 2017, due to the pending discontinuation of Adobe Flash support and its increasing destabilization, HTH Studios announced that High Tall Hall's development focus would shift to the Unity Engine. Although a prototype was experimented with as far back as 2015, the first playable alpha was released on February 17, 2018. The current version build is 0.1e as of April 2018.

Unlike the previous HTH versions, this build is set in a fully navigatable 3D enviornment using ported and reconfigured Lightwave 3D renders from the Flash build. Characters are still presented as 2 dimensional sprites, but with increased detail made possible by the Unity Engine's modernized capabilities. Plans for full 360 views of every character sprite are underway and will be implemented in the future.

Development of this build has become more sporadic after HTH Studios shifted focus to Red Light District as a means of testing out new elements and ironing out bugfixes.

Legacy
High Tail Hall became a popular staple of the furry fandom in the early 2000s and has led to the creation of many fan games and projects inspired by the game's concepts. This is not a complete list of every one of them but those who have gotten significant attention over the years.

Twilight Cavern
Twilight Cavern was a fan created spin-off of the original High Tail Hall made by Jack Salem, which planned to use High Tail Hall's pre-existing characters and locations alongside new ones created by him. 12 female characters, 1 male character, and 6 locations were planned, but any interactions with the characters were to remain exclusively heterosexual. After Crowchild returned to working on HTH 2 in 2008, it became a seperate endeavor and any ties to HTH were scrapped.

OpenHTH
OpenHTH was a fan-made open-sourced project aimed at expanding High Tail Hall 1.7 after initial development ceased. The first and only version of OpenHTH was 0.0.2 and contained dialogue enhancements, replaced incorrect spelling and grammar, fixed typographical mistakes in the original HTH 1.7, added ambient music, and included background animation enhancements. Users on the project's forum were encouraged download the latest version of OpenHTH and assist in adding content or enhancing the game, or downloading the base version of HTH 1.7 and creating their own modifications to the game. Development of OpenHTH was abandoned shortly after the first release for unknown reasons.

Controversy
Early versions of High Tail Hall prior to version 1.1 included an uncredited clip of Depeche Mode's song "Personal Jesus." This clip was removed from 1.2 on.

On January 27, 2017, HTH Studios announced the discontinuation of scene updates and limited the number of interactive characters and accessible locations to free members in response to financial difficulties the studio has faced over the years. The announcement provoked backlash among members, with accusations of HTH Studios and Crowchild being greedy as a result of the increasing number of paid content in High Tail Hall over the years. . On July 13th, 2017, free content updates temporarily returned in the form of a character rotation system in which a single Gold-Exclusive character would be available for one month to free users, decided on by the $10 patrons of HTH Studios' Patreon account. . This system was later discontinued in favor of a free version of the HTH Unity build that is scheduled to be released in the future.