Take My Skin
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
Haimori, rural Japan. Autumn 2006.
Tenji is the only cop on the night shift in a village swallowed by the forest. A missing American teacher. A colleague who keeps coming back a little different. A doctor nobody has seen in months. A phone full of messages he never answered.
Something in the woods has learned to wear people.
Take My Skin is a retro-style psychological horror visual novel, inspired by early-2000s Japanese sound novels like The Noose. Text fills the screen over grainy, flashlight-lit photographs. No sprites, no choices: just the night, and what's left of Tenji.
- About 1h30 of reading
- Available in English and French
- Japanese voice acting, original sound design
- Free, and it will stay free
The story doesn't explain everything. Pay attention.
Content warning
Gore, body horror, suicide, depression, flashing images and sudden loud sounds.
Translations
Want to play Take My Skin in your language? I'm open to fan translations. Just send me a message on Instagram: @yassdevs (https://www.instagram.com/yassdevs/). Translators are credited in the game and on this page.
About AI
I want to be upfront about this. The images and the voices were made with AI tools, then retouched and filtered by hand. AI also helped me polish the sentences and translate the text. The story, the characters and the direction are my own. I plan to replace the images with real ones in a future update.
Credits
Story and direction: yassdev
Brazilian Portuguese translation: zenith55 (https://zenith55.itch.io/ · Instagram: @zenith3ds)
Music: DISMAL, "WHO/AM/I?" (CC BY 4.0, dismaloff.bandcamp.com) and FELDUP, "The Sleeping Girl"
Sounds: Pixabay creators (Dragon Studio, Universfield, SoundReality, freesound community and others)
The Bureau's message: SAM, Software Automatic Mouth
Engine: Ren'Py
Download
Development log
Comments
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10/10 I am not a fan of Japan culture but this game is incredible
Absolutely loved the story! I wanted to also make a Let's Play but I did not want to talk and cover anything... great ambience, music, sounds and the mood.
Here is my modest gameplay:
I completely second this. Played it for a second time today, and it was just as compelling as the first play through. There's such a flair for writing and mood here that goes beyond a typical visual novel.
If Yassdev wants to make his own Ringu / Ju-On style visual novel franchise off the back of this work then consider me hooked lol
Thanks, I'm really happy to hear that. Honestly, I've always wanted to shoot a film like that—maybe it'll happen someday.
Hey! May i ask you how you made such BEAUTIFULL background pictures??? Thank you for the answer in advance! XD
Hi, i can tell you that in instagram: yassdevs, but thanks you !
You must surely be as much of a J-Horror fan as me!
Everything from the blue undertones, the missing person storyline and the tech usage is just so reminiscent of Takashi Miike's work and films like Kairo, Ringu etc
Immediately caught my eye, its so authentic to Japanese media of that period. Fantastic job in that department! AI or not, the art direction is solid and authentic.
Going to follow up with a full review of the game shortly, I just wanted to fanboy a bit at this lol
Thank you so much, this made my day! I’m a huge J-Horror fan too, so hearing it feels authentic means a lot. Can’t wait to read your full review!
Absolutely loved this, from start to finish. I'm not particularly a visual novel guy, but I am a J-horror guy and there's plenty here to enjoy.
The tone and atmosphere is incredible, and hits the same story beats you'd expect in a J-horror movie. Expanded, it truly could be its own feature film. The story moves at a good pace, I don't think it ever felt like it dragged on at any point, and there's plenty of little details in the writing to really make you 'feel' the scene.
Some minor criticisms I had:
- Felt like some parts could use some sort of ambient track, to really make the more tense parts hit harder when its silent (Think I heard Day of Night from SH2 at the end there, a man of good taste I see)
- Possibly a bit of over explanation towards the end, during the basement part with the Doctor's corpse, and ending scene with Yumi. But saying that, it's always better to over explain rather than risk someone not understanding!
- Forgive me if this is a thing and I just didn't notice, but I felt like it needed an auto button to move the text along automatically. It's so cinematic, I almost just wanted to watch and read rather than click at times.
These are minor nitpicks, in what's an otherwise really solid story. I had a feeling I'd love this when I first saw it, and it lived up to expectations!
Had the pleasure of living in Japan for years, working in the porn industry (has shockingly close ties to mainstream movies over there). This might be the best interpretation of Japanese culture/media from a non-Japanese source in a long time.
Thanks a lot man, really glad you liked it! Good points, I’ll add an auto mode in the next update, you’re right it’s missing. And noted for the ambience and the ending, I went a bit heavy on explaining because some people got lost, but I’ll see if I can tone it down. Means a lot coming from a J-horror fan who lived there 🙏
No problem my friend. It's entirely subjective, I don't think there's ever a 'right' amount of explanation so I'd take that point with a pinch of salt! It's a great game, and definitely going to be used as a source of inspiration for my upcoming projects.