Twelve skins that actually move
We audited our own themes and found an embarrassment: nine 'skins' that were one identical worm in nine palettes. Here's what replaced them.
Materials, not colors
Each theme is now an animated material painted along the body: a tidal ribbon that flows like current, a gold gleam that sweeps a crowned hull, sonar blooms, marching war-chevrons, ghost crescents drifting through opacity tides, flame licks, a lightning bolt that jumps between stretches of hull, a rotating barber-pole twist. Three more elaborate materials — ink, embers, iridescent plate — belong to a premium trio in the works. In live rooms every captain's material is visible to everyone; skins are how you recognize a rival before you remember their name.
The rules every material obeys
Three laws, enforced by tests: every mark stays inside the worm's real collision silhouette (a skin must never lie about the lethal edge); at motion zero every material is a perfect still (players who set reduced motion get calm water, not a slideshow); and each material spends at most a few batched draw calls, because it runs for every visible worm on every frame of a crowded arena. The frame budget is not negotiable and skins don't get an exemption.
The player controls
The Skin Studio grew a motion panel: Full, Subtle, or Off, plus a lantern-glow toggle — per device, because a five-year-old phone and a gaming desktop deserve different defaults. Your choice changes how YOUR screen paints everyone; other captains still see your theme, painted at their own settings. Private photo skins stay exactly as private as before: on your device, never uploaded, never visible to others.