“Skin Deep is a wacky slice of immersive slapstick that could have used a little more chaos.”
Pros
Classic Blendo model
Wacky story and world
Emergent slapstick humor
Clever immersive sim techniques
Cons
Some level-killing bugs
Not sufficient methods to sort out ships
Some repetitive targets
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Lo-fi thriller
Micro immersive sim
How is an individual anticipated to do a job with no assets? That’s the query that intergalactic insurance coverage agent Nina Pasadena comes up in opposition to in Skin Deep, a miniature immersive sim from Blendo. Pasadena is tasked with defending spaceships stuffed with cats from pirates, however her company overlords haven’t given her a lot to work with. Banana peels, containers of black pepper, and cleaning soap all develop into improvisational weapons as a result of there’s not a lot else to work with. Can’t a woman at the very least get a gun?
While that premise makes for a enjoyable slapstick comedy about getting the job completed in opposition to all odds, Skin Deep itself seems like an formidable go-getter working with restricted assets. Blendo’s charming undertaking is filled with ingenious immersive sim hooks that boil the style all the way down to its essence, but it surely struggles to construct on that concept sufficient to make every of its spaceships really feel like distinct challenges. It will get sufficient cartoon mischief out of its lethal premise, although, giving it sufficient aptitude to earn it an Employee of the Week plaque.
Lo-fi thriller
In Skin Deep, gamers perform jobs for MIAOCorp, an intergalactic insurance coverage company run by blocky cats. In order to guard the cargo and crew of its ships, it hides cryogenically frozen brokers on board who’re deployed within the occasion of a pirate takeover. Nina is a kind of brokers, who has to pop the heads off of unsuspecting raiders, flush them down the bathroom to verify a lifesaving machine can’t reconstruct their our bodies, and free a crew of cats who’re trapped in locked containers on board. That day job is interrupted when Nina discovers that she has an evil doppelganger, kicking off a wacky spy thriller between gigs.
It’s all fully absurd in a means that matches Blendo’s signature model. Since 2008, the indie developer has been certainly one of gaming’s secret weapons. It’s a grasp of its oddly particular craft, fusing lo-fi visuals with thrilling spy tales to create a comedic model all its personal. Skin Deep very a lot builds on the strengths of each Thirty Flights of Loving and Quadrilateral Cowboy, maintaining all the pieces that made these video games memorable intact whereas increasing out the studio’s gameplay ambitions.
Skin Deep carries the guts of a basic immersive sim, sporting its influences on its sleeve.
For newcomers simply discovering the studio by a high-profile Annapurna Interactive publishing deal, Skin Deep’s aesthetic may be a tradition shock at first look. It’s stuffed with proudly polygonal objects, flat textures, and block headed characters. These have all the time been Blendo’s calling card, but it surely particularly works in a recreation that feels indebted to foundational PC shooters like System Shock. Skin Deep carries the guts of a basic immersive sim, sporting its influences on its sleeve. That’s mixed with its personal visible signatures, because it opts for brightly coloured ship corridors that lighten the temper of these outdated PC video games and reimagines what they’d appear like as comedies.
Don’t mistake that intentional friction for low manufacturing worth, although; Skin Deep nonetheless goes all out to totally notice Blendo’s long-held cinematic ambitions. It has its personal James Bond opening, full with an unique theme. It sports activities an ideal forged of voice actors that includes highlights like SungWon Cho, who has a blast voicing a stentorian enterprise cat. Its greatest moments unfold in interstitial story sequences, like one the place Nina has to interrupt right into a pirate assembly and plant a bug on a sandwich on a seemingly by no means ending tray of them. Blendo scales up in all the correct locations to nail the comedy comedy thriller method it has been chipping away at for properly over a decade with out Annapurna’s backing, but it surely doesn’t forfeit its oddball power within the course of.
Annapurna Interactive
Though that’s spectacular, there are nonetheless spots the place Blendo’s limitations get in the best way of an even bigger and extra sophisticated thought. I bumped into a number of bugs throughout my testing which ranged in severity. Some have been innocent sufficient, like when a pirate’s corpse received caught in a wall and I needed to wait round for his inaccessible head to eject from his physique. Others have been so extreme that I needed to begin missions from scratch, like after I rammed a pirate right into a nook and we each received despatched by the geometry of the ship. Scary error messages would set off after I’d attempt to enter a brand new mission or save utilizing an in-mission touchscreen. Unsightly points like that left me scared to experiment with the sandbox, because it all the time felt like I used to be toying with a fragile recreation that may come aside on the seams if I put an excessive amount of strain on it.
Micro immersive sim
The bugs are fixable, however they communicate to a wider downside right here that’s more durable to resolve. Skin Deep is anchored by a promising immersive sim hook that it could actually’t totally help. The core thought is that every mission tosses Nina right into a spaceship, composed of some interconnected rooms, and duties her with liberating all cats onboard. To do this, she must sneak round guards, discover keys, and exit the ship as quietly as attainable. She doesn’t have any weapons when she exits her cryopod, so she needs to be resourceful to get by a job in a single piece.
Early on, that circulation is a delight to find. I rapidly study that on a regular basis gadgets can develop into lethal weapons that assist me take out guards if I don’t merely wish to sneak previous them. If I toss a field of black pepper at somebody, it’ll stun them and provides me sufficient time to leap on their again, ramming them into sinks and screens. The extra I experiment, the extra I study to get these most out of widespread gadgets. An unassuming cleaning soap dispenser isn’t only a technique to clear myself off after I’ve jumped right into a trash chute and now carry a stench that guards can odor. I also can squirt some flammable cleansing mist from it into the air and toss a lighter at it to trigger an explosion. Interactions like that trigger emergent moments of chaos that may blow a complete room of pirates sky excessive by chance.
Skin Deep has nice techniques, but it surely’s quick on nice options.
Blendo’s knack for invention goes a good distance in the direction of realizing its slapstick imaginative and prescient. To kill an enemy, I have to pop their head off after which get rid of it so it could actually’t float again to a respawn gadget. I can both do this by flushing it down a bathroom, throwing it down the trash, or sending it into the vacuum of area. I uncover that I’ve a number of artistic methods to method that final one, which is essentially the most satisfying choice of the three. Depressurizing an airlock door is a sinister technique to get there, however I’m particularly a fan of tossing a mug at a cockpit window to interrupt the glass and suck all the pieces out. Other techniques are equally playful, giving me loads of little nuances to stay conscious of. If I crawl in a vent for too lengthy, I’ll construct up a sneeze that alerts guards to my presence. Once they know I’m there, they’ll carry out a vent purge that can kill me if I’m nonetheless inside. I all the time have to remain artistic and maintain shifting to complete my job.
While I discover loads of nice items like that early on, they gradual to a halt after a number of jobs. Skin Deep solely introduces a brand new thought right here or there as missions progress, which implies that my choices are extra restricted than they seem initially. Structural repetition units in after I notice that I’ll have to unlock the airlocks or vents in every degree, requiring me to search out a 4 letter code cleverly hidden someplace within the ship. Though there’s loads of gadgets I can decide up, not all of them have a novel use, so I discover myself tossing banana peels and slippery cleaning soap pretty usually to resolve an issue. Every ship is pretty related, with cameras to keep away from and barred doorways to unlock with coloured keycards. There are solely a small handful of artistic challenges to resolve, like one ship that hides a cat in a locked vault that I can both crack by easing the safety system or blow the door sky excessive with TNT. There’s sufficient right here to help a compact recreation with a number of nice missions, but it surely’s stretched skinny over a 10 hour marketing campaign.
Annapurna Interactive
That’s the problem of the immersive sim style; creating an ideal one is a troublesome job. It’s not nearly stitching collectively an internet of robust techniques that come collectively to type emergent moments of bliss. You’re additionally creating a whole lot upon a whole lot of little puzzles that really feel like they are often solved in a large number of artistic methods. This is what IO Interactive’s Hitman trilogy does so properly. There are loads of methods to assassinate a goal utilizing the instruments out there within the sandbox, however there are a number of distinctive prospects tied to every kill. It’s a pleasure while you organically determine find out how to take a man out with an exploding golf ball. It seems like cracking a (very morbid) puzzle with a shocking reply. Skin Deep has nice techniques, but it surely’s quick on nice options.
All of this comes again to Skin Deep’s scope, which is maybe too small and too large on the identical time. It’s a micro immersive sim with a lot grander ambitions that it could actually’t totally ship on. It’s like encouraging an worker to do higher work, however then docking their pay and taking their firm laptop again. There’s solely a lot you are able to do with so little. Skin Deep is resourceful sufficient to stretch the techniques it has right into a delightfully wacky slice of slapstick, however an thought this good deserves a elevate. Let’s name it a “Meets Expectations” job overview.
Skin Deep was examined on PC and Steam Deck OLED.