Skin Deep review – kitty rescue immersive-sim is slapstick fun in a cartoony playground

When it comes to gamer-gatekeeping, determination are fewer genres arsenic snootily guarded arsenic the immersive sim. From PC classical System Shock to the Dickensian Dishonored 2, these system-heavy sandboxes are video gaming’s equivalent to avant garde electronica oregon the films of Darren Aronofsky, adored by critics and genreheads but mostly baffling to everyone else. Much similar those elitist fandoms, the im-sim’s loudest cheerleaders often look down connected linear blockbusters with akin sneer. No, Assassin’s Creed player, you cannot beryllium with us.

While monolithic games specified arsenic Tears of the Kingdom person precocious flirted with elements of the genre, there’s inactive a astonishing deficiency of breezier, beginner-friendly immersive sims. Enter Blendo Games’ Skin Deep – an effort to cosy-fi the genre. Doing distant with the sour-faced sci-fi of Deus Ex, Skin Deep sends you hurtling into abstraction with a premise ripped consecutive retired of a noughties web comic. You play Nina Pasadena, an security commando sworn to rescue feline fleets from raiding pirates. As you reply each well-insured tabby’s urgent distress call, Nina softly sneaks crossed the raided ship, utilizing immoderate tools she tin cobble unneurotic to rescue her kitty clientele.

Stalk your prey with immoderate comes to hand: a publication and a lighter? … Skin Deep. Photograph: Annapurna Interactive

The communicative is incredibly silly – much connected that aboriginal – but Skin Deep’s cacophony of colliding systems deserves to beryllium taken seriously. As I stalk my prey with a publication and a lighter, I softly merchandise a unreality of manus sanitiser earlier bashing his caput successful with a hefty novel. Before helium tin gully his gun, I leap backwards, chucking my flickering lighter into the unreality of sanitiser, engulfing the mediocre pirate successful an detonation of glistening flames. It’s this gleefully slapstick attack that sees Skin Deep astatine its champion – a playground that embraces the absurdity of its simulation with a Cheshire’s grin.

It’s not each plan by worship and tribute, however, with Blendo introducing immoderate amusive gameplay twists of its own. Pirates tin respawn aft being taken out, detachable floating “skull savers” attached to their heads hovering desperately backmost to their lifeless bodies. Nina indispensable swiftly dispose of each screaming caput earlier they tin question revenge. From shattering vessel windows and sending a skull hurtling into outer space, to flushing screaming heads down a toilet, uncovering caller ways to bin each bonce adds a invited furniture of variety. The duplicating “duper gun” is different amusive innovation, allowing players to sneak up to unsuspecting guards and instantly transcript immoderate items they clasp – from weapons to those important cat-freeing keys.

A cartoony playground … Skin Deep. Photograph: Annapurna Interactive

Each afloat mapped vessel exterior besides allows you to leap retired of the airlock and standard the extracurricular of the ship, surveying the vas for sneaky caller introduction points. In 1 mission, I travel crashing done the ship’s outer window. As I onshore connected the span feet first, I propulsion a bloodied solid shard from my ft and fling it consecutive into a pirate’s face, leaving maine grinning similar a cat-loving John McClane.

Blendo Games understands that the champion immersive sims are inherently cartoony playgrounds, sandboxes wherever each point is simply a instrumentality for maleficence. From chucking capsicum astatine a defender and making them sneeze truthful hard they walk out, to riding a pirate’s backmost and charging them consecutive into a wall, you surely couldn’t impeach Skin Deep of taking itself excessively seriously.

Unfortunately, I started to privation that the writers took it each much seriously. As freed cuboid cats leap from their rectangular cages with a sparkle and an enthusiastic MEOWW, and I reply to paw-penned emails asking maine to find quirky VHS tapes, it dawns connected maine that I’m playing Deus Ex for Disney adults. While Skin Deep’s gags whitethorn good beryllium catnip for the close player, the never-ending feline puns and overly-zany code had maine cringing, eliciting much grimaces than guffaws.

If the cat-filled conception wasn’t millennially coded enough, Skin Deep is made utilizing Doom 3’s 2004 id tech engine. Swapping the PC classic’s dimly-lit corridors for brightly coloured environments, it’s a knowingly nerdy-nod to the hardcore. While a chill thought connected paper, successful signifier the archaic aesthetic falls abbreviated of the intended retro chill chic, alternatively looking disappointingly primitive.

Still, if quality is lone Skin Deep, for £15, this is simply a colourful, breezy instauration to an infamously inaccessible genre. The extremity effect is an enjoyable, if muddled game, a deceptively heavy immersive sim that whitethorn beryllium excessively silly for genre fans and excessively low-poly to entice newcomers. This isn’t the genre’s breakout deed past – a slapstick immersive sim utilizing Doom 3’s motor was apt ever destined to beryllium niche – but if you tin tummy Skin Deep’s saccharine silliness, there’s 10 hours of futuristic feline amusive batting its paw successful your direction.