Skin Deep Review

The problem with stealth games is the need for patience, of which I have very little. If you put me in a situation that involves sneaking past guards, I’m likely to rat you out with my dumb need to get into the action quick smart. Luckily for the Anti-Sneaky Andy’s out there, Skin Deep totally understands the kind of frustration that can occur when waiting it out and provides plenty of tools within its madcap cartoon world to give you some leeway if things go south. Just be ready for a lot of madness in-between when it does.

Skin Deep introduces us to the world of Nina Pasadena, a young recruit for insurance companies who remains frozen on the job aboard various starships until needed. When The Numb Bunch inevitably board to steal whatever loot they can find, Nina’s task is to quietly and effectively remove said pirates from the equation, protecting your employers’ investments in the process. One such mission leaves Nina caught between a rock and a hard place, resulting in a new rival that wants her taken care of. Cue a quest to uncover the truth and a whole host of ridiculous, amusing antics. And cats.

If the key art or setting aren’t obvious enough, Skin Deep doesn’t take itself seriously. It’s more like if Die Hard were written as a comedy, where Nina plays the John McClane role of lonesome hero fighting the odds but replace the violent murders of armed intruders with an abundance of slapstick. You’ll be throwing banana peels to trip pirates up, knocking them out with books and climbing on their backs to slam them into dangerous items.

Jerry doesn’t know

Every ship you awake to is a mini, open-ended environment you can explore and use in any way you please, with the main goal being rescuing cats. Yes, your employers are largely of the furry kind who can’t defend themselves, leaving you with the job of uncovering who has the keys to unlock their cages to set them free. Once you’ve rescued all of the cats on the map in a glorious sparkle of ‘meow’ audio, you’ll have to call upon a rescue pod outside the ship to send them home safe, taking care of any pirate reinforcements that may try to stop you.

There are a number of obstacles that will get in your way, and the solutions to them vary between brute force and finding hidden clues. Every ship has air vents, secret compartments, trash chutes that you can use to explore the depths of the map, but the pirates aren’t fools and will lock you out from all of them. The only way to bypass the locks is to find keycodes, which Skin Deep cleverly hides from you unless you carefully take notice of post it notes left around the place. These notes can provide clues, perhaps point you in the right direction as to where to go next or outright tell you the code needed, in ways that suitably fit the context of lackies who aren’t quite all there.

You’ll be using the very depths of the ship to find your way around and stay out of any pirate’s line of sight. If they do see you, they won’t hesitate to shoot and will hunt you down based on where they believe was your last location. Diving into an open vent can at least spare you from a total blunder, but don’t stay within them for too long otherwise you’ll start coughing and giving away your position. Likewise hanging around in dirty locations may leave a smell trail behind that they can also track, though you can always wash yourself and find a health station to get back on track.

If only all cats could talk

Little things like that wonderfully add to the feeling that you’re not just playing a typical game of hide and seek but a genuine attempt to creatively evolve the concept further. Every map challenges you to evolve your playstyle too; you won’t be following the same critical path every round which can lead to some amusing and wild scenarios. At one point I found myself surrounded by three pirates, ducking between tables and doors, a giant spike sticking out of my torso from a turret attack with alarms blaring around me. It can get manic when things kick off, so a little planning and map exploration goes a long way to avoiding death.

Despite the importance of stealth, you can go brawn over brain if you really want to. Later levels give you access to a handful of weapons, and you can use the environment to your advantage by cracking windows or setting off turrets. If ever I got the chance to pop an airlock and throw an enemy or two out into the void of space, I took it with glee. Luckily, Nina can also survive being out in space as long as needed too, though I dare not ask what kind of experiment provided such an ability. It does mean you can venture outside and around the ship at any time, finding another airlock or trash chute to find your way into an otherwise locked area or setting up a trap, a neat touch to add to the otherwise creative number of options you have at your disposal.

In another fun addition, every pirate you encounter doesn’t just die when you take them out. Instead, you’ll have to pop their heads off Futurama style and dispose of it lest they float back to a respawn point. You can flush them down a toilet or down a trash chute, but you won’t always have easy access to them, leading to an amusing moment where half your inventory space is just pirate heads that mumble in your pockets.

Do you think it runs on kitty litter?

Between missions, your safe space provides a chance to run some tutorials on new mechanics, play a few mini-games and check in on some unread emails from every cat you’ve rescued. These adorable, well-written snippets add some extra layers of lore between Nina and her newly found friends and are well worth reading, if only to see Nina’s reactions. Every few missions lead to a story-driven side quest of sorts, a completely different encounter that leans further into the weird world developers Blendo Games has created.

All these layers largely come together effectively, providing an unlimited number of ways to complete any objective in any order. It can get messy though, and as much as it can be fun to get into a scrap, occasionally things can get a little overbearing. I enjoyed the challenge, but it took more than one restart to complete some levels. If you get into a similar situation, you can lower the difficulty a tad which allows you to one hit any pirate. It’s an invaluable approachability option, otherwise the challenge may be too great for some.

That exasperation is amplified by controls that can be a little touchy at the best of times. I fumbled occasionally in my attempts to be creative, only for my cunning plan to fall sideways as my aim faltered. I’d argue Skin Deep is better with a mouse and keyboard than a controller, in that respect, as there are other elements both in gameplay and the UI that feel more attuned under a mouse than a thumb stick.

You’re probably wondering why I’m here…

Final Thoughts

It’s an abundance of well written humour that bridges the gap between Skin Deep’s surprisingly deep gameplay and storytelling, despite a few hiccups along the way. I chuckled consistently as each new interaction played out in violent, amusing bursts, popping a few heads and scrambling around the outer hull to surprise an unexpected pirate or two. Sure, it’s not a Sam Fisher scenario, but if you’ve been hankering for a stealth experience with a twist, I can’t recommend this enough.

Reviewed on PC // Review code supplied by publisher

Click here for more information on WellPlayed’s review policy and ethics