In Skinwalker you are thrown into a classic horror situation, resembling that of the Blair Witch Project or Slender. Four university students out in the woods, night falls, strange things start happening! It plays as one of the characters giving an account of what happened two months after the incident. The idea of the Skinwalker is nothing new, it was originally a Native American legend, but it has been fairly well transcribed onto RPG Maker VX Ace here by SnowOwl.

You take control of one of the students, retracing the path of his memories. There's no classic combat, the gameplay consists of progressing through the story by interacting with events. There's no need for any perticular skills to complete the game, there's no way to die or game over! Basically, a classic move-and-watch visual novel situation.

The one thing that really strikes you about the game is the graphics. The maps are beautifully done; simple yet very effective. They're not too cluttered, and good use of lighting and screen tints gave it a really good horror atmosphere. I was disappointed at some points where there were fairly drawn-out periods of just black screen. It kind of slowed the flow of the game down a notch.

The developer is talking about maybe making it so there are several possible endings. Personally i don't know if this might take some of the game's charm away. I consider it more as a visual novel, and think that any other ending could possibly be unsatisfactory for the player. It's a well told story, and any other endings would have to be craftily done. A longer game in the same style would be excellent.

Overall it was very simple, minimalist, and a great way to spend twenty minutes. The music didn't go over the top, and there were a couple of well placed outbursts. Was it scary? Personally, not for me, but i suppose it's relative to the person playing. I would describe it more as freaky! Some quietly disturbing images appeared from time to time, but i wasn't jumping out of my skin. I'm giving the gave four stars in recognition of it's beautiful design, well done SnowOwl!