You are Nina Pasadena, Insurance Commando. It’s your job to stop pirates from robbing the feline-crewed spaceships cruising the infinite, and you’ll quickly figure out that you can achieve this in some of the most absurd and drawn out ways possible. Welcome to Skin Deep, an immersive simulator that has captured my heart with its witty humor, likeable protagonist and fantastic level design that provides nearly 10-15 hours of insanity.
To begin with, Skin Deep features one of the best title drops I’ve ever seen in a game, seriously. Ever. I can’t understate how much I was laughing once a certain plot point was revealed and the music began to play, the clear homage to spy thriller movies is such a lovely touch and it set up the rest of the game brilliantly. The aesthetics are a treat. Morse code cat escape pods? Come on. Flying sword robots that impale you? Dude. The amount of times this game got a genuine giggle from me at the absurdity of it all is bonkers, and there’s absolutely no doubt that’s in large part due to the game being an immersive simulator (and a really, really good one at that).
Essentially, an immersive simulator or ‘im-sim’ is a type of game where game play is pretty much shaped by player choice, whatever that choice may be. In Skin Deep’s case, this means that you can devise whatever plan you deem necessary to whack some space pirates as there’s a LOT of different ways you can do that. I’m happy to say that it uses its genre to great advantage, keeping you interested enough to want to play “just one more level” to see what on earth it’ll throw your way next.
Improvising weaponry in Skin Deep can come from the most unlikely objects: deodorant cans, lighters, bars of soap, banana skins, monkey wrenches; I’m not kidding when I say the amount of different approaches you can take to clearing out a station is rather high! In fact, once I did actually unlock the use of traditional firearms like your sub-machine gun or auto pistol, I stuck to my roots of picking up the most random items I could find and dispatching the boarding parties with those instead. It’s just too fun not to!
The level design serves to keep you constantly moving, letting you traverse different rooms with relative ease (so long as they’re not locked behind a keycard or something like that), which kept the flow going. I would have maybe liked to see some larger space station designs but I realise you can’t have both, so, with that said, the maps that are included are ace. There are a couple of blockers that are introduced fairly naturally too, with things like lockboxes that hide access to window controls, vents and trash chutes needing passwords to open them up and allow use.
The goons that you’ll be dispatching, space pirates, have no qualms with introducing you to their high-caliber weaponry nearly as soon as they spot you on board a station. I’d recommend avoiding direct confrontation until you’ve at least got something to either stun them or knock them out of commission for good. The neat part though is their respawn system. You’ll have to get rid of their heads before they can float back to a resurrection pad, so thinking on your feet to either flush a head out of an airlock or down a trash chute happens often.
Without revealing too much about the story because I firmly believe it’s one you should experience for yourself as the way that information is fed to you whether it’s through funny cut scenes, scattered notes left by crew members or even through your company emails, it’s a story that kept on delivering moment after moment of hilarity. So, I’d say that if you’re looking for an im-sim that has funny writing, interesting game play, tight level design and perhaps most importantly of all: low poly cats, you’ll definitely have a great time with Skin Deep. I know I did!
You can grab Skin Deep right now on the Steam Store!
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