Skin Deep

Skin Deep is a genuinely stellar immersive sim, replete with chaos and countless combat options to fend off space pirates. Always funny, never dull, and full of felicitous felines, annoying bugs and an irritating save system don't spoil what is one of this year's must-play indie games.

There’s a lot of fun to be had in Skin Deep, its entertaining and highly amusing story coupled with some clever and creative stealth action. Come for the head popping, stay for the cat love.

Skin Deep is an indulgent masterclass in immersive sim shenanigans, but lacks a standout level you'll be telling friends about for years.

While rewarding creativity like any great game in its genre should do, Blendo Games' Skin Deep also offers a refreshingly lighthearted take on the immersive sim.

So far, 2025 has been one hell of a year for games. Some incredibly surprising games that we weren’t expecting became big hits, like Blue Prince, with its compelling and innovative take on the roguelike genre, Haste’s fast-paced and fluid gameplay, and Ubisoft actually (and shockingly) nailing it with Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. Skin Deep, by Blendo Games and Annapurna, delivers what is arguably this year’s weirdest game so far, and by “weird” I truly mean one well worth checking ...

From the indie mind of Brendon Chung and the team at Blendo Games, Skin Deep is a quirky first-person shooter where you’re a barefoot insurance agent sneaking around starships, rescuing talking cats, and tossing banana peels at space pirates. It’s been a long time since it was first announced in 2018, but the wait has delivered something charmingly chaotic. Like a slapstick version of Deus Ex, Skin Deep blends immersive sim mechanics with nonstop jokes and colourful, blocky art. Sometimes...

Ingenious and characterful, this immersive sim is an absolute delight - particularly when things go wrong.

Before Skin Deep came across my desk, I had never even heard of it. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong, but that I went in completely blind. What is this game? Who knows, let’s just boot this bad boy up and see what happens. That’s probably for the best, because “immersive sims” don’t do a lot for me, and that’s exactly what Skin Deep is when you boil it down. However it’s also weird, scaled-down, relatively simple and fast-paced, and also, weird. It’s almost like someone took Deathloop and tossed it into a blender with a bunch of YouTube cat video compilations.

How is a person expected to do a job with no resources? That’s the question that intergalactic insurance agent Nina Pasadena comes up against in Skin Deep, a miniature immersive sim from Blendo. Pasadena is tasked with protecting spaceships full of cats from pirates, but her corporate overlords haven’t given her much to work with. Banana peels, boxes of black pepper, and soap all become improvisational weapons because there’s not much else to work with. Can’t a girl at least get a gun?

Even outside of those giggling japes, there are endless smile-raisers. The inventive playfulness of Blendo is on full display. There's a James Bond styled opening song that you walk through as the credits roll. Exposition chats are accompanied by an old-fashioned projector that lights up the room with figures and diagrams. Finish a level and the game will sing "Niii-naaaaaaa!" in celebration. It's got so many little flourishes like this. Granted, I'm predisposed to love a Blendo Game, after t...