Blendo Games is one of those “if you know, you know” types of indie developers – one whose name is legendary with those who’ve followed the independent development scene for decades, thanks to wonderfully creative cult classics like Thirty Flights of Loving and Quadrilateral Cowboy. That’s why I had high expectations for Blendo’s next game, Skin Deep, and within about five minutes with its Steam Next Fest demo those expectations had been completely shattered. Folks, this one is something special.
Skin Deep has been described by journalists in the past as “Die Hard in space,” and you might equally call it a slapstick comedy Dishonored or a Hitman game with even more delectable, in-depth gameplay systems to mess with. In the most basic terms, it’s a first-person stealth game where you play as the delightfully named Nina Pasadena, an insurance inspector how pops out of cryofreeze to “handle the situation” whenever a ship is taken over by space pirates.
Let’s say it’s just you and an unaware pirate alone in a room. You might pick up a metal bar – perhaps the one that was securing the door you just unlocked – and run up to bash him, but that’s boring. Maybe instead you should grab a box of pepper, toss it at him to start a sneezing fit, and then hop on his back to repeatedly ram his head into nearby objects and computers. Be careful when you do though, because you can easily destroy information terminals with essential intel or helpful health stations in the struggle.
In one instance, I smashed out a window to send an enemy shooting out into the vacuum of space. I closed a security shutter to seal the hole and restore gravity, but suddenly found I was taking damage because I was walking through the shards of glass from the broken window. I peeled that glass out of my feet – those Die Hard comparisons are apt – and suddenly I had a glass shard I could use as a weapon against further enemies.
In another sequence, I set off an alarm and was being harassed by a flying robot that attacked by firing its needle-like body directly at my torso. I had just enough health to survive the attack and peel the bot’s body back to, again, be able to use it as a weapon through the rest of the level. Damn near every object in the game appears to be a multipurpose item equally capable of taking out bad guys as it is causing your own doom.
The demo is pretty short with some fairly small stealth sandboxes, but I’m already imagining a dozen more ways I could’ve completed each area. This is a capital-S sandbox, with more interlocking gameplay systems than you can count. You can throw objects at distant buttons to open doors and activate other pieces of machinery. You can squirt hand sanitizer to create a flammable cloud of fumes. You can crawl through vents, but they’re so dusty you have to manage a sneeze meter that can alert enemies.
Those enemies can also keep respawning unless you figure out a way to shoot their floating skulls out the airlock – wait a minute. I could probably use one of those skills as a distraction and drop everybody’s head down the trash chute at once, couldn’t I? Hang on, I need to go try another run real quick…
For now, you can check out the Skin Deep demo for yourself on Steam. The game launches in full on April 30, and I can’t wait to see more.
