The ‘immersive sim’ genre can cast a pretty wide net: for different people it can mean a few different things. The keyword is obviously ‘immersive’ – the idea that the game will anticipate what players will want to do, and has systems in place that acknowledge and allow for that. Too many instances where the player tries to do something and the game doesn’t let them, and their immersion is broken, and with it their enjoyment. That’s not a comment on whether Skin Deep from BLENDO Games succeeds in immersing its players (spoiler: It very much does) but to say that, regardless of your exact definition, making one of these as an indie studio seems bordering on madness – at least from the outside. It feels like the amount of systems that need to be implemented to adequately create that environment would be, to put it bluntly, next-to impossible without a much larger team behind it.

*Image: BLENDO Games / Annapurna Interactive*

Developer: BLENDO Games
Publisher: Annapurna Interactive
Release: 30 April 2025
Retail Price (Steam): 18,49€/$19.99/£14.99

There have been a few attempts at indie immersive sims in recent years, one of which was one of my most anticipated games in a long time, but, without naming names, they’ve typically fallen flat. For me, it added credence to the idea that pulling one off requires more resources than an indie studio can typically muster, and that, while the ambition is to be respected, it’s something of a fool's errand. Brendon Chung, BLENDO’s Founder and Creative Director, clearly disagreed: and so we find ourselves with Skin Deep. And boy, am I glad to be proved wrong.

If we restrict our scope down considerably further, and look specifically at the first-person, stealth im-sim (which, to me, feels like the ‘truest’ archetype of the genre), there’s a distinction that can be made between those which allow for a more head-on approach and those which either punish it, or flat-out don’t allow for it. Skin Deep is typically the latter: there are few occasions where going in all-guns-blazing will work out, due to the limited resources available. We’ll get onto those resources in more detail later, but if you just run up to an enemy and try to take them head-on, you’re not going to be able to do much at all: the exception being at the end of each mission where your rescue capsule arrives with all sorts of goodies designed to help you more efficiently remove your enemies' heads from their bodies.

That’s not me being gratuitous: that’s literally how you deal with your adversaries in Skin Deep. If you don’t pop their heads off and chuck them out into deep space, they’ve an annoying habit of floating back to the nearest aptly-named regeneration pad and, surprisingly enough, regenerating. Good luck finding a regen pad in the endless expanse, though. There’s a few ways to get those skullsavers out there: through a window, down the toilet, out a trash chute – or perhaps most satisfyingly, by opening an airlock door and lobbing the thing through it to hit the valve on the other side, flushing it into outer space while keeping yourself snugly inside the ship.

It's not really a problem if you do join the head out there, of course: Nina has a third lung after all, allowing her to float around in space, offering some more creative ways to approach situations. That’s you, by the way, Nina… Pasadena. You’re a security officer who’s been broken out of her cryosleep to deal with the space pirates who have hijacked the ship you’re on and locked up the crew (who are, of course, all cats). If you don’t get at least a small smile out of her name, then God help you when you discover what the universe’s ever-present soft drink is called. I’m barely scratching the surface here, but if you’re not entertained by finding ways to dispose of heads-in-jars while they insult and threaten you, nor by silly naming conventions, nor by the idea of saving space-cats from a hijacking, you might find the humour in Skin Deep isn’t to your tastes.

The way you eliminate your enemies is also a large source of that humour. What I will say is that, with a few exceptions, I found myself dealing with enemies in much the same way over and over again. Perhaps I lack imagination but if they’re – for want of a better word – mountable, I’d throw a banana, some pepper, or some soap at them to stun them, before hopping on their backs and slamming them into things. All three objects serve, as far as I can tell, an identical purpose, albeit with the pepper sending them into a sneezing fit, rather than having them slip to the ground. The animation may be different, but mechanically it’s the same, and it’s one of the first things you’re shown how to do in the game’s tutorial. For me at least, it became a trick I ended up constantly relying on.

If the enemy was too sturdy to jump on, a feature that becomes increasingly common in later levels, I’d usually find something flammable (deodorant or air freshener) and throw it at them along with something that can cause a spark (a lighter or a dinged-up electronic), burning them to death in the ensuing fireball – or close enough to it that throwing an additional object or two would finish them off.

I won’t pretend there’s not more fun ways to deal with enemies, including but not limited to breaking airlocks, hacking turrets, or sending broken ‘swordfish’ drones whistling into them, but the set-up for my main two methods felt much easier to pull off – if I wanted to get through missions safely and efficiently, those were the ones I kept returning to: it might have been nice if other methods were more incentivised. While avoiding spoilers, one mission did offer a welcome change, through an object that should look familiar to anyone who played BLENDO’s previous game, Quadrilateral Cowboy.

On that, in much the same way as Nina does away with pirate’s heads, BLENDO have done away with the cube-headed characters of previous titles, the game’s cats excluded. The game mightn’t be so quadrilaterally BLENDO, but remains quintessentially so: if you enjoyed Brendon Chung’s previous titles, chances are you’ll be a fan of Skin Deep. It’s not the be all and end all, I’d argue that it has considerably wider appeal than the rest of BLENDO’s first-person games, so even if you struggled with their other titles, it’s definitely worth a play, particularly for those with even a passing interest in the stealth immersive sim.

There are some caveats. There’s a quality in BLENDO’s games which could be, perhaps harshly, summarised as ‘charming jank’. Endearing, typically intentional jank, but jank nonetheless. The flavour I’d highlight in Skin Deep is is jarring jump cuts – reserved for the tutorial and ‘story’ missions (i.e. those where you’re not saving cats on a ship), so you won’t be interrupted while sneaking around trying to pickpocket a keycard – but they’re so unusual that the first couple of times they happen, you could be forgiven for thinking you’ve encountered a bug.

It becomes quickly obvious that those aren’t bugs, but I certainly encountered my fair share during the playthrough. Bear in mind that I was on a pre-release build, so some of these issues might well be ironed out by the time you’re reading this, but the most egregious were all surrounding the game’s save system.

Firstly, for whatever reason, all the auto-saves from each session seemed to be logged at the exact same time, which was, strangely, the next time I loaded up the game. What this led to was, upon settling down for my second playthrough, a panic that a huge amount of what I’d played had somehow been erased. Upon further inspection (i.e. loading up each of the six files with the name “Nina’s Habitat”) I found the correct save, but it feels like something that shouldn’t be present, and without digging into it I might well have concluded that my progress had been lost.

Speaking of which, that’s unfortunately not where it ends with the save system. You can, ostensibly, save during a mission by approaching an information station and pressing a button. The only time I tried this was right at the end of a mission which I’d spent a good forty-five minutes on, with just one pirate left to dispatch. Instead of saving, it caused my game to crash, and the save file generated was corrupt. Running through the mission a second time with the knowledge I’d just acquired didn’t take quite as long, but it was still, as you can imagine, incredibly frustrating.

I’m no programmer, so perhaps nailing down a functioning save system is more difficult than it appears from most other games, but when Skin Deep is able to understand some pretty niche interactions in-game, it seems like it shouldn’t have been quite so much of a challenge. I’d argue that it would have been better not to have the button altogether: not being able to save during a mission might be a little old-school, but far better than a button which doesn’t work and instead kills the game.

I also have to mention the price, because I do think it’s a little ridiculous. I typically only mention game prices within the reviews themselves if they’re of particular note, and far be it for me to tell BLENDO (or perhaps the game’s publisher, Annapurna) how to do their business, but Skin Deep should arguably be a good five euros, dollars or pounds more expensive.

In terms of value for money, even within the indiesphere, you’d do incredibly well to find better than what you get from Skin Deep. In a world where there’s games I’d enjoy far less for literally four times the release price, it does become something of a no-brainer. I’ve got a good dozen or so hours out of it, and there’s definitely room for replayability: ranging from incomplete optional objectives, to trying to complete the whole game with a different approach. Perhaps the game could have telegraphed it a little better, but it only occurred to me embarrassingly deep into my playthrough that there was nothing saying I had to take out all of the enemies. The mission is to free the cats and escape: that can be done without killing (or even stunning) anyone. How fun that would actually be remains to be seen, but there is a part of me that’s very tempted to jump right back in and see how well a full-stealth, non-lethal, run would shake out. If that’s not the mark of a successful immersive sim, I’m not sure what is.

Skin Deep proves that not only is an indie immersive sim viable, but that they can offer something novel to the genre. The more comedic theme in a niche which is typically occupied by much more dour settings is a welcome change, and, in retrospect, feels like a pairing which makes an awful lot of sense. Skin Deep pulls it off well, and is awarded ★★★✮☆ by IndieLoupe.com.

The reviewed product was provided by the publisher.

Video review: IndieLoupe.com

Skin Deep - ★★★✮☆

Skin Deep

Blue Prince - ★★★★★