We’re back to running from serial killers in the Black Eyed Priest Games title, SKINFREAK.
It’s the night shift, and someone has to drive the elderly, the drunk, and the commuters home. But Max’s job as a cabbie isn’t the only thing that’s on the line tonight. His life is in danger, for a prolific serial killer remains at large, looking for their next victim. While the police haphazardly hunt for the dreaded Skinfreak that wears the skin of their victims, Max wonders whether the very people he’s driving around could be the Skinfreak.
Here is the full story and lore of Jordan and Matt King’s SKINFREAK.
Spoilers ahead.
SKINFREAK story, summarized
SKINFREAK starts with Max clocking in for his night shift as a cabbie. With strange customers and a persistent reminder that a killer is at large, Max is haunted by visions of the Skinfreak. He returns the cab for the night after completing his shift, desperately trying to avoid his tactless boss, who reminds Max at every opportunity that he will send him back to working on the corner (if you catch my drift). But Max isn’t alone. Someone followed him here.
A tall figure wearing a black wide-brim hat, trench coat, and the face of another to hide their identity, ambushes Max, skinning him alive. The perspective switches to Belle, who was Max’s last customer. She’s filing a report with the police about an intruder in her motel room, adamant that it was her abusive father, who still gives her nightmares. Belle is called into work after hours by her boss, Mr. Baun, to install the latest software update on all office computers.
It’s the “night of the creeps” as Belle says, as she has many strange and creepy encounters. The delivery man offers to stay with her, while weird blow-up dolls stalk Belle’s every move, and someone stuck the keys she needs inside a vending machine. Luck is not on her side tonight. It isn’t until she starts installing the new software that things truly escalate.
Radio broadcasts describe the sinister and brutal way the Skinfreak kills through torture and skinning his victims alive. A lockdown initiates, where Steve tells Belle to get to the seventh floor to override it so she and Lucy can escape. Lucy’s cries are heard on the speaker system. Belle can choose to head for the basement or go straight to the seventh floor. Going to the basement is a trap, but escaping the rigged Saw-like invention means you can save Lucy from a gruesome acid bath. Belle heads for the seventh floor alone, where she meets up with Harold, the man she believes to be the Skinfreak.
Ending explained: Who is the Skinfreak killer?
SKINFREAK uses red herrings on the killer’s identity. Harold was framed by Steve, who’d changed the details of the police investigation to paint himself as the good guy. Steve seemingly made this up to scare Belle and make sure she continued to trust him, seeing as Lucy didn’t know about Harold either. Harold was working overtime that night, so it couldn’t publicly be known that he was the killer. His office was ransacked, and a trench coat and hat lay at the center of the room. The evidence pointed towards Harold, but it was too obvious, like it was all planted. While Belle is hesitant when she finds Harold, you have the choice to question, shoot, or work with him.
There was another, albeit brief, red herring of the elderly man who lives in Joe & Sons. This character has dementia as he mistook Belle for his late wife, Natalie.
Turns out Steve was the Skinfreak after all, and had killed Max, Lucy, and Harold. Belle can save Lucy in time if she goes to the basement, but Harold will either die at the receiving end of Belle’s handgun or Skinfreak’s chainsaw. The signs of the Skinfreak’s true identity were there. Steve kept leaving the front desk. He let Lucy sneak in, likely knew Harold was on the seventh floor, where Steve could pin the lockdown on him, and stopped the delivery man from leaving. The radio broadcast he interrupted would have likely revealed that the police had identified Steve as the lead suspect, first searching his home and then his place of work. Steve hid in the basement as the police searched the building, where he survived the standoff against Belle because of his thick skinsuit.
Steve felt like he had a special bond with Belle and wanted to wear her skin so that she’d always be close to him, removing the “ugliness” from within. Belle managed to escape and throw Steve off the rooftop, stabbing him in the eye with her exposed forearm bone as a final farewell. But losing her hand and witnessing the horrors of a serial killer broke Belle’s psyche.
Belle was institutionalized at the Pleasant Insane Asylum after hallucinating the Skinfreak’s grotesque face, and was later given a bionic hook as her new hand. She disappeared to avoid the persistent press who wanted nothing more than to sell her story. Belle didn’t want the Netflix treatment and rightly so. What’s interesting about SKINFREAK‘s post-credits conclusion is that someone robbed Steve’s body a year following the game’s main events. The police believe it’s a childish prank, but I theorize Belle got her payback using Skinfreak’s infamous technique.
A hand for a skinsuit sounds like a fair deal to me.
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