Skin Deep: An Airlock-Hopping Immersive Sim with the Playfulness of a Ten-Week-Old Kitten

In first-person stealth game Skin Deep you are a “deep freeze insurance commando” who gets defrosted whenever pirates board the space vessel you’re aboard. The ships you work are crewed by talking house cats with big personalities and a poor track record in information security. It’s your job, when things go wrong, to save them from their captors. We’ve seen a couple of trailers for this sci-fi Die Hard homage before but now we have a full demo to blast through, in which you can throw fishbones at elevator switches and overflow an entire laundry room with soap suds, useful if you want your enemies slip up and donk their heads. Just be careful, because it’ll do the same to you. The demo takes about 90 minutes (if you’re taking your time like me), but it already feels like Blendo Games at their most playful.

It’s full of great dialogue, for one thing. When two guards discuss torture options for the hostage crew, they settle on shaving the cats for information. “Shaving cats is against the Geneva Convention!” mutters Nina from behind her steaming pipes and wall panelling, voice filled with disdain for these interlopers. Later, she finds the same guards running into lethal flame jets, but their life-saving skull-gizmos allow the pirates to ressurect and live in perpetual idiocy. They try to get past the fire again and again by mindlessly jogging into the flames. “Just sneak past it!” orders one freebooter, running in headlong and dying for the fifth time.

The love of colourful capers extends to your abilities and the useable items (everything comes labelled with funny instructions right on the object). Pepper can be thrown to daze a pirate. Soap dispensers let out a flammable aroma that you can spark by bashing an electrical walkie talkie off the wall nearby, or flicking a cigarette lighter on. You could also save that walkie talkie for later – if you’ve been spotted and set off a security alert, you can call in with a mimicking bad guy voice (“Uh, all clear”) and watch as the pirates go back to their stations.

There’s a lot of other stuff going on. You can eject into space and float around the ship, looking for another entry point. A “sneeze” meter grows when you crawl into vents, and will alert nearby patrolfolk if you succumb. Step on glass and you have to take your time pulling the shards out of your feet to stop from bleeding out with each step. Bananas can be eaten for a pip of health, and the peel thrown on the ground to slip up guards, every one of whom has a name. Gladys, Walter, Patty – do not get attached, they want to shave cats!

Once in a dazed state, you can pounce on baddies and ride them around to bash their heads into sinks and other objects, smashing porcelain to bits and knocking them out cold. But to properly dispatch a patrolling foe, you have to pluck off their head and flush it into space using a toilet or trash chute. Combat animations are buggy and wild right now; the demo has plenty of jank to spare. But there is already so much potential for hijinks in the short span of this demo alone, I’m excited to see what else is in our hero’s bag of tricks.

There are copious other gags in the demo. It is dense with great lines, throwaway silliness, and laugh-out-loud stylistic flourishes. I won’t cheapen it by spoiling its best surprises. But I will confirm it follows in the footsteps of Heat Signature by allowing you to slurp your foes into space through judicially smashed windows.

If you recognise the art style, it’s probably because you’ve played something by Blendo Games before. Skin Deep so far has plenty of the studio’s other calling cards. It’s in the smash cuts between areas, the endless examples of entertaining signage, and the simple, bright sci-fi textures. The machinery is chunky and satisfying and quick to operate (when it doesn’t spectacularly fail in a shower of sparks). There’s even a mention of Nuevos Aires, the fictional city familiar to those who played Blendo’s previous hacker heist ’em up, Quadrilateral Cowboy. And the return of a cat called Chu-Chu. Confirmed: this is all part of the Blendoverse. I am fully enthused.

If you also remember other Blendo games fondly, just go wishlist this one already. And if this is your first time learning about the studio, I implore you to play the demo released as part of Steam Next Fest, and get toying with these cats yourself.