Skin Deep Review — Peril, Pirates, Pussycats

Immersive Sims aren’t usually known for their comedic spin, despite being a genre rife with opportunities. Self-serious games such as Dishonored, Deus Ex, and Prey still have had whole groups dedicated to pulling off the most stylish and creative Rube Goldberg style kill chains, all while remaining completely undetected. Blendo Game’s new wacky title Skin Deep gets this, having you sneak around barefoot, saving Cats from hijacked Spaceships. While it sometimes misses the mark both in gameplay variety and writing, I appreciate the effort of bringing new light to a well-established genre.

As Nina Pasadena, top MAIO Corp insurance agent and former intergalactic criminal, your skillset includes infiltration, rescue, dispatch, and more. Nina’s clientele consists of Blocky-head Felines, some with outlandish names like ‘Chu-Chu or ‘Fortinbras’.

Through email exchanges, you get to know this cast of Cats’ quirks, interests, and aspirations, like Fun Factory’s penchant for sending chain emails that promise a curse on whomever fails to forward the mail to five other people. It’s not a lot, but it’s a nice pinch of worldbuilding outside of the regular gameplay missions. After finding the leader of a new gang of Space Pirates called The Numb Bunch, you’re thrust into a mystery involving old comrades and evil clones.

Venturing from Ship to Ship and sneaking around vents, windows, airlocks, along with other security measures while hunting for imprisoned Kitties, you’re provided with a nice array of tools to help trip up and take down your adversaries. Combining certain items and environmental hazards can net some great stuns and takedowns, and most pickups are multi-use. Walkie-talkies are primarily used to call off combat alarms or remain incognito after taking out a pirate, but it can also just as easily be broken against a wall and used as an ignition spark for a blast when combined with a gaseous cloud. You could say there’s a depth to combat, that it’s not just… Skin Deep.

If you face a dead end or start to feel a little cornered, then you’re always free to break a window and soar free in the void of space for a while. Space Walking almost seems like cheating sometimes, allowing you to (mostly) safely break out of bounds and worm your way back inside somewhere completely different, provided none of the access points back in are locked.

In a little comedic parallel, enemies have their own form of insurance, the Skull Saver. If you take down a do-badder and walk away, expect their head to pop off and float to a respawn point. The only way to truly get rid of the Numb Bunch is to destroy their heads once and for all by throwing them into outer space or hitting them with enough force.

Each map tempts you with 3 bonus missions that usually involve something ship-specific and finding a well-hidden cassette tape. These vessels grow larger and more intricate as you get closer to the truth of the mystery, which can sometimes come across as bloat rather than an evolution of the game’s formula. While there’s a nice pace with the additions you’ll find as you further the campaign, there is very little enemy variety, and future missions add limitations that mildly reduce the player expression prevalent in earlier stages.

Ships can have unique rooms or puzzles for you to toy around with, like a laundry room that you can flood with slippery soap bubbles or another with a literal fast-food drive-thru for space-faring citizens. Later levels cordon off access points like trash chutes and vents, forcing you to do a little sleuthing and figure out the code to unlock them.

These passwords can be found on little sticky notes around the place, or on digital notepads found on the hips of roaming rascals. If you have trouble remembering a code, there’s an incredibly handy “Memory” function that lays out any notes you’ve read that run. I loved reading all these hidden correspondences, reminders and diary entries, although it was a little disappointing to realize these memos were the only hints of personality I’d see from these pacing pirates, as the models don’t say or do much unless they’re either on alert or dying.

An important thing to know when going into Skin Deep is that you need to make your own entertainment. It’s easy to misunderstand what Blendo Games is doing here, as I did for almost half of my ~10-hour runtime playing this game. For the best experience, it’s important to lean into the wackiness of the game, just as the developers have. The game’s consistent comedic tone across both gameplay and story doesn’t translate well if played too seriously. While it may not be aggressive in its approach, the game constantly eggs you on to be a little a little sillier, something I truly appreciated by the end of my time with Skin Deep. The game is at its peak when you’re trying to craft those Rube Goldberg moments I mentioned earlier, and you’ll appreciate it evermore when a plan comes together.

Skin Deep’s art direction matches its tone perfectly, while the sound direction can get a little much at times. The mashup of colourful, clunky environments and low-poly characters is charming and silly. Items you can wield have tiny disclaimers and warnings on them, doubling as instructions on how to use said tool. Eliminating an enemy produces cinematic black bars on the top and bottom of the screen and freeze frames, outlining exactly how this enemy is about to expire.

The game will swap to a corny spy thriller at times, a voice message playing over a simple projected picture of a Cat and leading you into story moments told through playful vignettes. These story beats are simple and straight to the point. During an interactive cutscene, you can skip to key moments in the story instead of leaving in faff like walking from point A to B. This smash cut style is incredibly effective in keeping this fast-paced and lighthearted tone, and is one of the most noteworthy and memorable gimmicks of the entire game.

As long as you remain undetected, Skin Deep’s soundscape remains atmospheric. The echoing sound of clunky footsteps, vents shuttering as you enter and exit them, the occasional cry from a Cat close by. It’s quite peaceful and is a great boon when planning your next move. The instant you’re caught onboard the ship, however, you can be inundated by the droning sirens and heavy gunshots ringing through the halls. Thankfully, combat alerts are easily disabled with Walkie-talkies, and each level can very easily be restarted with no penalty if you feel like you’re in a lost situation.