Criss Angel voice: “Skiiiiiinfreeeeeeeak”

I have a rocky history with games under the Torture Star Video banner, and by extension Puppet Combo. Up until last year I wouldn’t have given one of their releases much more than a passing rec for the spooky season. Then, quick as a round sent from a nondescript grassy knoll, Sniper Killer scrambled my brain. SK isn’t just the best game this collective has released, it’s a top-notch retro horror experience that I point to as best-in-genre, and it made whatever Jordan King released next a must-play for me. Fast forward to, uh, now, and we have Skinfreak – a new 80’s-ish horror trip with enough funky lighting and black leather to bring giallo comparisons to mind. My skin’s been thoroughly freaked, I’ve lived to tell the tale, and it was…huh, how do I feel about this one actually? It’s complicated.

Skinfreak is, for the most part, a traditional slasher experience in just about every way. Lengthy opening with a fun twist to establish stakes and our killer, introduction of our lead, immediately putting her in a horrible situation that the audience knows more about than she does, and trying to get her through it as everything rapidly falls apart. What this lacks are the narrative risks taken by the previous game. Sniper Killer had us playing both sides of the conflict, as if Indigo Prophecy was mixed with Hitman and also actually good. Skinfreak has no such ambitions. Don’t get me wrong, I did not and do not expect games in any designer’s ludography to resemble each other or constantly one-up, but returning to the well so soon after making a game that memorable felt more like a concession of scope than a truly novel riff on the formula.

One thing Jordan always gets right are the performances, which is to say they’re a mess and I love them. The voice actors are all over the place. Some are playing as if they’re on stage, some are basically mumbling into an onboard mic, and some give legitimately emotive deliveries no matter how deranged their lines are. This sort of wonky dissonance is key to the experience, as much a part of this genre’s film DNA as filtered lighting or fake blood, and I wouldn’t dare suggest it be smoothed out. Belle and Steve in particular give solid performances, but I enjoyed everybody, even the characters we barely if ever get to hear but read plenty of text about. I cannot get over there being an employee whose government name is Fatty Cakes.

Skinfreak takes its time to resume the scares after its prologue. The game’s much more interested in ramping up tension while getting you acquainted with the building and its denizens, and you’ll absolutely need that familiarity once the power saws start getting switched on. Depending on how quickly you navigate its item puzzles and tasks this section can feel slow, or at least it did for me. In terms of mechanics Skinfreak opts for a structure similar to that of other Black Eyed Priest games but with a heavier lean into point & click adventure exploration and item management. You’ll be backtracking frequently and clicking on everything because any given random object could be deemed important enough for Belle to stuff into her pockets. This is frankly a bit of a pain in the ass to do in first person, especially when moving from location to location involves walking back to the elevator, waiting for it to show up, hitting the button, listening to the soothing muzak, watching the door open, realizing you hit the wrong one because a lot of these floors look the same, repeat.

There won’t be story spoilers in this writeup, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to say that the final act of this was a letdown. The Skinfreak themselves just isn’t the oppressive menace I’d like them to be. Most of the sequences are highly scripted, and the ones that aren’t (the cubicle section in particular) almost felt like an action section in Garten of Banban complete with occasional instances of inconsistent functionality that can force a restart. I’m sorry for that comparison, truly, but I see a mazy area with big red buttons and calls ’em like I see’s em. There was also one bit right before the finale where the titular ‘freak just kind of got…stuck in a hallway? Watching the killer harmlessly do donuts while revving a saw is certainly not the intended experience, but I’m glad I had it, if only because it was the most memorable one.

I can tell you that I don’t love Skinfreak, that much I do know, but I’d be lying if I said I had a bad time. As is tradition for horror I brought a friend along for the whole ride, and this game made us damn near delirious with laughter at points. Some of those laughs were definitely at the game’s expense, but laugh we did! What we weren’t was scared. Look, we’re horror vets, that bar is already incredibly hard to clear, and horror is intrinsically intertwined with comedy. I’m still not sure I know which sections were intended to be which, but that’s some of the fun of engaging with the genre in the first place. If you’re looking for a slasher experience to chill your bones on Samhain this ain’t it, but if you’re a schlock-enjoyer and don’t mind this being more on the Bloodwash side of the spectrum as opposed to Sniper Killer, you may just be the target audience for a little skin freakin’.

6/10

Review code provided by developer. Game completed on launch version.