Airlock-hopping immersive sim Skin Deep is as playful as an ten-week-old kitten

In first-person stealth crippled Skin Deep you are a "deep frost security commando" who gets defrosted whenever pirates committee the abstraction vas you're aboard. The ships you enactment are crewed by talking location cats with large personalities and a mediocre way grounds successful accusation security. It's your job, erstwhile things spell wrong, to prevention them from their captors. We've seen a couple of trailers for this sci-fi Die Hard homage earlier but present we person a afloat demo to blast through, successful which you tin propulsion fishbones astatine elevator switches and overflow an full laundry country with soap suds, utile if you privation your enemies gaffe up and donk their heads. Just beryllium careful, due to the fact that it'll bash the aforesaid to you. The demo takes astir 90 minutes (if you're taking your clip similar me), but it already feels similar Blendo Games astatine their astir playful.

It's afloat of large dialogue, for 1 thing. When 2 guards sermon torture options for the hostage crew, they settee connected shaving the cats for information. "Shaving cats is against the Geneva Convention!" mutters Nina from down her steaming pipes and partition panelling, dependable filled with disdain for these interlopers. Later, she finds the aforesaid guards moving into lethal occurrence jets, but their life-saving skull-gizmos let the pirates to ressurect and unrecorded successful perpetual idiocy. They effort to get past the occurrence again and again by mindlessly jogging into the flames. "Just sneak past it!" orders 1 freebooter, moving successful headlong and dying for the 5th time.

Some fantastic goons. | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun / Annapurna

The emotion of colourful capers extends to your abilities and the useable items (everything comes labelled with comic instructions close connected the object). Pepper tin beryllium thrown to daze a pirate. Soap dispensers fto retired a flammable aroma that you tin spark by bashing an electrical walkie talkie disconnected the partition nearby, oregon flicking a cigaret lighter on. You could besides prevention that walkie talkie for aboriginal - if you've been spotted and acceptable disconnected a information alert, you tin telephone successful with a mimicking atrocious feline dependable ("Uh, each clear") and ticker arsenic the pirates spell backmost to their stations.

There's a batch of different worldly going on. You tin eject into abstraction and interval astir the ship, looking for different introduction point. A "sneeze" metre grows erstwhile you crawl into vents, and volition alert adjacent patrolfolk if you succumb. Step connected solid and you person to instrumentality your clip pulling the shards retired of your feet to halt from bleeding retired with each step. Bananas tin beryllium eaten for a pip of health, and the peel thrown connected the crushed to gaffe up guards, each 1 of whom has a name. Gladys, Walter, Patty - bash not get attached, they privation to shave cats!

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun / Annapurna

Once successful a dazed state, you tin pounce connected baddies and thrust them astir to bash their heads into sinks and different objects, smashing porcelain to bits and knocking them retired cold. But to decently dispatch a patrolling foe, you person to pluck disconnected their caput and flush it into abstraction utilizing a toilet oregon trash chute. Combat animations are buggy and chaotic close now; the demo has plentifulness of jank to spare. But determination is already truthful overmuch imaginable for hijinks successful the abbreviated span of this demo alone, I'm excited to spot what other is successful our hero's container of tricks.

There are copious different gags successful the demo. It is dense with large lines, throwaway silliness, and laugh-out-loud stylistic flourishes. I won't cheapen it by spoiling its champion surprises. But I volition corroborate it follows successful the footsteps of Heat Signature by allowing you to slurp your foes into abstraction done judicially smashed windows.

Goodbye, Walter. | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun / Annapurna

If you recognise the creation style, it's astir apt due to the fact that you've played thing by Blendo Games before. Skin Deep truthful acold has plentifulness of the studio's different calling cards. It's successful the smash cuts betwixt areas, the endless examples of entertaining signage, and the simple, agleam sci-fi textures. The machinery is chunky and satisfying and speedy to run (when it doesn't spectacularly neglect successful a ablution of sparks). There's adjacent a notation of Nuevos Aires, the fictional metropolis acquainted to those who played Blendo's erstwhile hacker heist 'em up, Quadrilateral Cowboy. And the instrumentality of a feline called Chu-Chu. Confirmed: this is each portion of the Blendoverse. I americium afloat enthused.

If you besides retrieve different Blendo games fondly, conscionable spell wishlist this 1 already. And if this is your archetypal clip learning astir the studio, I implore you to play the demo released arsenic portion of Steam Next Fest, and get toying with these cats yourself.