Skin Deep - ★★★✮☆

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.