Skin Deep is incredibly ridiculous, and I’m already a fan of it.

      Before I had a proper gaming PC or even a Steam account, I recall a friend sending over some games that were compatible with my MacBook back then. This was over ten years ago, but I still remember the very first game I played from that collection. It was a quirky title called Thirty Flights of Loving from the developer Blendo, a studio I had never heard of. Initially, I was taken aback by its unconventional structure and simplistic characters, but it left a lasting impression on me. Games come and go, often fading into obscurity to make room for new ones, but Blendo games remain unforgettable.

      Fast forward well over a decade, and I'm excited to see that Blendo is still creating memorable games. Their latest release, Skin Deep, is set to launch on April 30 for PC. The project initially piqued my interest three years ago when it was first announced, but I had little information about it until now. Ahead of its release date reveal during today’s Annapurna Interactive Showcase, I had the opportunity to try out its new demo during Steam Next Fest. I’m pleased to say that Skin Deep is just as bizarre and captivating as the Blendo titles that have stayed with me all these years.

      Skin Deep is a first-person stealth action game (if I had to categorize it) featuring Nina Pasadena, a once-renowned bounty hunter who now collects insurance debts. She springs back into action when her company’s ships are seized by space pirates. Now, she must leverage her unique skills to take down her enemies, decapitate them, flush their heads down the toilet, and rescue a group of talking cats trapped in lockers.

      Let’s start from the beginning with the basics. A brief tutorial quickly teaches me how to navigate the ship and utilize my scanner to read detailed instructions on items I can interact with. Before long, I learn to pick up and store various objects that I can swap between with my mouse wheel. I can collect everything from books to apple cores and keycards. In this short demo, my primary means of offense appears to be my throwing arm rather than any firearms.

      After figuring out how to heal and use a defibrillator to revive myself upon dying, I enter a bathroom where a pirate has his back turned. A package of black pepper rests on a countertop nearby. I grab it, aim with one mouse click, and toss it with another. The pirate is momentarily stunned, giving me just enough time to leap onto his back and shove him against various objects in the room, like soap dispensers. Once his health depletes, he doesn’t exactly die immediately, though. When these pirates meet their end, their heads detach and float back to a respawn point to reconstruct their bodies. To finish him off, I sever his head, drop it into a toilet, and send it into the depths of space. I retrieve a keycard from his corpse and open a box to liberate a kitty crewmate, whom I chat with afterward.

      That might sound odd, but Skin Deep is simpler to grasp than you might think. It’s effectively divided into bite-sized rescue missions where I need to deal with pirates roaming around a few rooms, free the cats, and use an escape pod to reach safety. What adds intrigue to that loop is that Skin Deep is, in essence, a small immersive sim infused with slapstick humor.

      In one scene, I incapacitate a pirate by tossing a banana in his path. He, of course, slips on the peel, allowing me to tackle him while he’s vulnerable and then dispose of his head in a trash chute. In another mission, I jump onto a pirate’s back and slam him into a glass window until it shatters, sending him out into space (thankfully, I’m wearing a protective suit that lets me fly outside). The encounters I experienced are brief and involve navigating a few rooms, but they aren’t linear challenges that must be completed in one optimal manner. Instead, I can crawl through vents to sneak into different areas of the ship, collect any items I uncover, and eliminate the wandering pirates however I choose. The ships are also designed as deadly playgrounds, featuring ignitable fuel lines and ways to lure enemies into traps. It would be grim if it weren’t for Blendo’s signature blocky visuals.

      I’ve only had a glimpse of what Skin Deep has to offer, but I’m thrilled to see another delightfully eccentric game that gets inventive with its genre. It feels like Blendo is creating its “mainstream” crossover title here, moving away from the complex hacking of Quadrilateral Cowboy and applying its unique style to a stealth action game. The outcome is an indescribable mix of Hotline Miami and Prey, filled with cats and comedic mishaps. Just as Thirty Flights of Loving still occupies a place in my mind, I can already sense that Skin Deep is going to be its new neighbor.

      Skin Deep is set to launch on