Skin Deep

2026-04-04
Taking the im-sim formula and condensing it down into a set of bite-size levels serviceable by a small team is an interesting idea and one I fully supported on paper. But when I actually played Skin Deep, it dawned on me pretty quickly that when you take an im-sim and squish it down you lose too much.

I want sprawling levels with options. Options in how I build my character, options in how I can overcome obstacles, options in how I interact with people in the world. Here your options are: do you sneak through the ductwork or sneak through the window? Do you throw the pepper at the space pirate to stun them or make them slip on a banana peel to stun them? Every level plays out basically the same and it's more puzzle box than sandbox. There is a sequence of keys to gather, a sequence of doors to open, and the same process of freeing prisoners, and escaping the ship every time just in different configurations.

"Um actually you can choose stealth or assault which entirely alters the approach to each level," says the person I just invented to argue with me. Sure, but not really. You have the vast arsenal of a 1st grader: pepper, soap, deodorant, a banana. Enemies take 1 damage from almost everything except for the couple real guns and grenades you might find. Which are so rare and so light on ammo they only serve to kill one or two enemies on levels where there are sometimes 10+ to tango with. So that means you have to sneak up and sneeze or slip the pirates into temporary paralysis where you rodeo ride them into headbutting the requisite three objects to knock them out so you can pop off their head and stuff it in a bin to "kill" them. Every enemy. Every time. The style at least reaches heights the gameplay never does.

Most of the game you're working for cats, who appear to be the ruling species in this very comic-twee universe. The biggest character is Little Lion and when you show up to his residence, his two human man-servants welcome you in via a large human-sized door. Which then opens to reveal a small cat-sized door on the ground. You get down on all fours and crawl through to reveal a beautifully carpeted and furnished cat-sized hallway adorned with a personal history of Little Lion told through portraits and infographics over the years. At the end of this lavish entrance is a portal which you exit and fall a good 10 feet down into a giant room where Little Lion's diminutive form looms over you perched on a massive sofa chair. He says "take a seat" and a tiny sofa chair comes up out of the floor for you to sit in. It's pure show-don't-tell world-building and it's genuinely masterful and hilarious.

Eventually it came time to leave Little Lion's lair and return to yet another ship that needed pirate heads flushed down toilets and trash chutes. I sighed. Looks like the blue key is next. Listlessly I tap on the map screen to find the next pirate whose head needs popping. Staring out one of the ship's windows I couldn't help but wish I was playing Prey instead.