SKINS

TLDR; I thought we didn't need skins. Turns out we did.

If you've read any of my previous entries you might have picked up that we strive for a sort of elegance when designing SNØ - meaning that we trying to make the most with as few elements as possible. On the surface, skins don't fit this idea. They don't add anything to the core gameplay, or create gameplay synergies or whatever. It's cool - but not strictly necessary.

But people kept asking: Will there be skins? Will I be able to customize the player? Will there be hats, a fishing mini game and a dog to pet? And I'm like: No, we're keeping the game simple! Elegant! Very design philosophy. Such artistic integrity. I was adamant.

Until one day we couldn't decide on whether the skiers' goggles should be white or gold...

Hmm, maybe skins might not be such a bad idea after all 🤔

So one weekend I started testing with the simplest form of custom skins: Just randomizing the player colors - true randomness. I suspected it would be horrible - and it was. Without color direction the system produced mostly "støgg mainnskit" (ugly color combinations):



^🤮

So I added swatches for the different body parts, making sure we only select between nice, vibrant colors, and a couple of muted ones, inspired by colors found in both modern and retro hiking gear.

I made some additional rules for picking and distributing the colors to the different body part types to ensure a good color composition. Some simple ones, from the top of my head: The skier's base underwear color can only be colored white or black. It should take a back seat role, since the jacket and the gear are the most interesting body parts. Also the skier's gloves and boots are not recolored to ensure there is always something black providing good contrast to the snow.

This is becoming TLDR - so the next steps quickly:

• Use the already existing "catch the rabbit" mechanic to unlock new skins
  
• Pick the skin colors deterministically based on the current mountain seed
  
• Add rad patterns!

The skin patterns are simply black and white repeating textures, where the black and the white can be recolored individually. The white gets the base body part color, and the black gets a contrasting color - typically black, white, or in some cases (depending on the b/w balance of the pattern) one of the other colors in the current skin pallette.

As a final touch, we made it possible to define a custom size and position for the patterns being applied to the glider - Because we needed 👇 this 👇 particular glider design to exist!



^That right there are two muskoxes colliding btw. For the record.

So, to sum up: Skins are awesome! And while they might not affect the core mechanics of the game, they do enhance almost every aspect of SNØ! They make you feel extra stylish when pulling off rad tricks, they make chasing those down those rabbits even more exciting and rewarding, and well... skins + photo mode = 🤩🤩🤩

Thanks for reading!

(Should I write these things shorter? Nah.)

Best
Alex
SG