YMMV / Skin Walker

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Joe, especially in one of the bad endings. Did Joe really just snap and kill all his friends because he thought they took him for granted, while imagining the skinwalker? Or was there a real skinwalker which influenced him to act this way? If Joe was the 'skinwalker' all along, did that mean Joe only imagined seeing a duplicate of Michael and Celeste? Did he kill the animal the group finds outside their tent? If there was a real skinwalker, did Joe just insist there wasn't to try and make logical sense of it all? Is he right about his friends thinking they're better than him or is he just delusional and paranoid? Joe himself says at the start of the game that the events may not have occurred exactly as he remembers, leaving even more room for interpretation.
  • Is Michael secretly insecure and afraid of being alone, which is why he acts rather arrogant and pushy?
• Cliché Storm: The game's premise - bunch of college students go camping in the woods and encounter something horrifying. However, the game features some unexpected twists halfway through and manages to maintain a creepy and unsettling atmosphere despite this. Also, unlike some classic horror stories, the plot doesn't hinge around the characters acting like complete morons. On the download page, the creator also describes it as "the classic camping-trip-gone-wrong movie from the eighties made into a RPG Maker game", so the clichés may be intentional.
• Fridge Horror: In one of the endings, Joe yells for Darren to get the shotgun while they're sheltering in the cabin. However, it's soon revealed that this Joe is actually the skinwalker disguised as him. How did it know about the shotgun...unless it had been watching Darren and his friends since they arrived, if not longer? Darren even sounds somewhat surprised when Joe mentions it, though he's too frightened to truly question it.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The skinwalker itself is a walking source of nightmare fuel. It's incredibly creepy, can mimic other's voices, take on their appearances (though not quite perfectly at times) and though it's not made clear what exactly it wants, it's obviously malevolent and just seems to be messing with the protagonists much of the time.
  • The sequence where the characters, having realised there's something sinister lurking in the woods, have to walk along a dark and foggy path to reach the safety of the cabin. They soon get lost and player character Joe has a unshakeable sense that they're Being Watched, which is only the beginning of the horror. Overall, it's one of the most creepy moments in the game that runs on Nothing Is Scarier.
  • In a very subtle moment of creepiness, as the characters are walking back to the cabin through the fog, you can briefly make out the dark silhouette of the skinwalker following them on the right side, sticking close to the treeline. A lot of players miss it the first time around as it's dark, fog-shrouded and occurs off to the side, so it's easy to overlook or mistake for a shadow. Finally noticing it can instil a sense of dread that it was Hidden in Plain Sight the entire time, while the protagonists remain oblivious.
• Paranoia Fuel: Seeing as the skinwalker can take other people's forms, the game generally runs on this. Can you be sure your friend is still your friend? And how well do you know your friends, anyway?
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Mostly due to its short length (it's roughly twenty minutes long), the game leaves a fair amount of unexplored potential for its premise. In particular, the way Joe casually brings up Celeste's health issues at the start sets it up to have consequences later in the game, but this is never addressed again.

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