Developer SnowOwl, who looks to have quite a few games under his belt, is most known for three games in particular, those being Miserere, which I've seen basically described as "Yume Nikki IN SPACE!" (I have yet to play it, gonna get to that one eventually), Rust & Blood (a VERY good game, one deserving of far more attention, I'll review that eventually), and this, Skinwalker. Of those, Skinwalker seems to receive slightly more attention and/or prominence than the others, at least from my view. Why is that? My guess is because it is by far the simplest one to play. Miserere, being heavily inspired by Yume Nikki, from what I've read involves lots of exploration and getting easily stuck in parts. Rust & Blood is a game about resource management and maintaining your easily depleted stamina, and doing so under strict time constrictions, all in a nasty setting, definitely not as accessible. This game, on the other hand, may as well be a visual novel for all the "game" it has to offer. If it were a more interesting "game" I wouldn't mind but the rest of this title simply doesn't stand up unfortunately.

Before going on, I will say one thing I admire about this, though it's less about the game itself than the general "gameography" (is there another word for it?) of SnowOwl, in that there is a very distinct visual style he has developed for himself. SnowOwl himself remarked about how someone played a game of his and how that person remarked that it looked like "a SnowOwl game" without realizing that it was. He apparently was proud that he was now officially responsible for a distinctive style of his own. And indeed he does. Subject matter aside his games have a kind of muted color palette, the palettes being generally limited but detailed in their shading and contrasts, with plenty of corners and bits here and there shrouded in dark, and a sometimes painterly kind of detail to things, particularly backgrounds and the ground you walk on. Hard to explain, really, but just look at screenshots of this game, Misere, Rust & Blood, and Reap & Sow and see what I mean. Not something I initially acknowledged, and not something anyone without prior knowledge of his games will recognize either, but as a recent observation it's pretty cool to see.

Back to the rest of the review, which unfortunately will be less positive. First I will start by saying that this game's namesake takes from a Native American legend of a shapeshifter who can take the form of any animal it wishes. I haven't read much beyond that but the game does stay true to that basic description, sort of. Anyway, the game consists of four friends camping out in the woods, none of them having much of a personality whatsoever. One of them happens to be narrating the tale. So much so that practically 2/3rds of the game is narration or some sort of dialogue box (rough estimate). The minimal interactions you DO get feel completely pointless. You walk to the top screen, click on the wood, walk back. Click on the pit, start a campfire. Talk to a character, time to head into the tents for a night's rest. Then more narration. Then some unusual, freaky noises outside. You go out to investigate into the wood, your first encounter with a monster-like thing. Unfortunately it's an encounter sapped of any tension since you automatically run away and you're unable to go back (and he never chases you). Then even more narration. These are all the most rudimentary, mindless actions. I have a feeling that this was intended to be some sort of visual novel but decided to include a few bits where you walk around and interact with a couple things to make it feel more like an RPG Maker adventure title. They feel so horribly slapped-on and the game would have perhaps benefited had it just been made as a non-interactive visual novel with RPG Maker graphics.

I'm not done yet, I haven't even talked about the story itself yet or the one bit of agency the game gives that leads to one of three endings. For a game so non-interactive, I think the story is OK for what it is. A spooky 'round-the-campfire tale (I hear the kids these days call them "creepypastas" - I wonder how pasta would taste cooked over a campfire...) but without much substance, but, I'm not sure it's trying to be a story of substance, it is what it is. Now, the part with the three endings... this could be the most interesting part of the game; except they execute it in a way that makes no damn sense whatsoever. At two points you are prompted by dialogue boxes asking you to do one thing or another. What you choose will lead to what ending you get. The problem is is that there is zero correlation I can see between the choice you make and the ending you get. So, in one instance, I mean, whu...? Seriously? Why? What is the connection between one choice and the other? IT MAKES NO SENSE. And that's not mentioning the other prompt if you get there and the equally nonsense consequences for choosing the wrong option.

But if you DO get the right ending? Well... actually it's a pretty decent ending. Nothing revelatory, and, of course, it's all just text and some pictures, but it's prolonged enough with plenty of drama and horror to go around, and wraps things up sufficiently. So... yeah, that's about all I have there.

My summation: It's not too bad as a piece of amateur horror writing with some good and occasionally creepy visuals (sounds too), but not good enough to justify making it into a "game," of which there is almost none to speak of. The interactions were pointless and this would have been better off without any of the typical RPG Maker adventure/horror gameplay elements altogether. And the thing with the multiple endings... OK so there are a lot of games where you make a decision whose consequences are unforeseen and you don't know what impact they have until it's too late. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, sometimes... just another decision. Even when you have no way of knowing that what you did led to what happened, it most cases it at least makes sense when you do find out what it caused. Not so here. Unless there's some elements of the story I overlooked completely, I could not make heads or tails of why what did what.

Buuuut... the game is playable and short enough (so short I don't think you can even save your game anywhere - at least I had to play through the game three times to see the three endings) that it might be worth at least one try to see if you're at all engaged by this. If you're bad with horror games though there are a few creepy and one mildly "jump scare"-y moment because of the lack of interactivity it's basically not much different than watching a horror movie/reading a short horror story so if those don't bother you, you should be OK here.

Still I don't like the idea of this game being a main representative of SnowOwl's body of work. This is so very much amateur hour work that I don't want someone to play this considering that it's among his most renowned titles and later see, say, Rust & Blood and be like, "oh the guy who did Skinwalker made that? Pass." When in reality the other games have FAR more substance. Rust & Blood is also a pretty short game, but in terms of mechanics, atmosphere, story, general gameplay... it is a much better work, and I would imagine the same goes for some other games of his which seem far more involved (Reap & Sow... unfinished as of now, but there's a demo; it's supposedly like Harvest Moon... only you're a skeleton. And there are dream sequences that are important to the game's progression, or something(?). I don't know, I'll play it when it's finished).