🎮 Skin Deep isn’t just an immersive sim (imsim) — it’s a masterclass in creative chaos wrapped in a wacky space comedy. As Insurance Commando Nina Pasadena, your mission is simple: save cube-headed cats from space pirates while avoiding enemies who want you dead. What follows is an absurdly enjoyable and enjoyably absurd adventure that revels in its own unpredictability.

Die Hard in space (with cats): At its core, Skin Deep follows the imsim tradition established by games like Dishonored and Prey, but distinguishes itself through an infectious sense of humor. Rather than the grim dystopias that typically define the genre, Blendo Games delivers a vibrant, slapstick universe where Nina navigates various spaceships with bare feet, liberating feline hostages from pirates.

Each mission follows a similar structure: free the cats, call in an escape pod, then either eliminate the pirate reinforcements or steal their getaway shuttle. The beauty of Skin Deep isn’t just in what you’re doing, but in the countless ways you can approach this scenario. The game expects your plans to fail, and builds its best moments around these disasters.

Skin Deep excels in creating dense, reactive environments that respond to your every whim. Need to eliminate a guard? You could throw pepper at them to trigger a sneezing fit, make them slip on a banana peel, or lure them near an airlock before causing decompression, or bash them with a conduit pipe ripped from the wall. Every item has a purpose (or several), from walkie-talkies that can be smashed to create sparks for triggering explosions to books that can be thrown at security cameras or used to trigger library security gates. The game’s physical system creates moments of improvisational brilliance.

A comedy of errors: The game isn’t without its flaws — the missions can feel somewhat repetitive, as your objectives remain largely unchanged throughout. The elite enemies provide a difficulty spike that can disrupt the otherwise smooth flow of the gameplay, and some players reported crashes during save attempts that forced them to restart levels. The level structure also creates a bottleneck during the endgame sequence of each mission, when you must either defeat all reinforcements (extremely difficult), or find the Ship Authority Key to hijack an escape pod (typically the more practical option).

💯 Rating: 8/10

⌛ Hours of gameplay: 12-20 hours

🔁 Replay value: TBD

👾 Platforms: Steam for PC

💵 Price: On discount for USD 8.5 until 14 May

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