Skin Deep

A wonderful and uncharacteristically short and tight immersive sim — a collection of small (30-40 minutes each) levels centered on achieving objectives via the typical imsim combination of stealth, vents and workplace hazards. Comes with funny writing and a smart approach to getting game mechanics across. Does get a bit repetative in the second half (there are only so much ways to dispose of enemies and the levels are not [i]radically[/i] different), but the game still manages to keep things interesting enough over the 10-12 hours of gameplay; towards the end there were moments when I couldn't keep a smug grin from my face upon a successful exit. Definitely recommend a try to all immersive sims fans, though keep in mind that it won't be nearly as challenging as the highest difficulty modes of its bigger cousins.

A very well done stealth imsim game. Throughout its set of bite-sized levels it delivers a feeling of freedom and progression. All wrapped up in a engaging and humorous story with fun characters.

What a fantastic, enormously fun, silly little game! It's a culmination of tons of my favorite things - Immersive Sim, which also means heavily stealth-focused, cats, free-form gameplay, and comedy. Being an immersive sim, the game tosses you into each map and gives you free reign to beat it with the tools at your disposal, as well as the environment around you. You can literally rip objects out of the walls and use them in your makeshift arsenal, combine objects to make lethal, explosive scenarios, pickpocket, and pretty much anything else to your heart's content, that's in the abilities of the game's engine. The gameplay loop is fairly thin - Get on a ship, rescue the cats, and take out the pirates or escape on their boarding ship, but with all the ways you can dispose of the pirates and get to the cats, the loop never once felt stale to me. One of the most interesting things about the game is the enemies can respawn if you don't discard of their head in space, which can be done by tossing them in trash, down toilets, or literally chucking them out a window or airlock. There's so many ways to take out enemies, and even once you get stuck in your cozy means, you may end up finding a new way even toward the end of the story that you never realized before. The only negative I have is some mechanics are a little wonky - For example, objects have durability, but that durability only matters when smacking it against another object. If you hit a pirate, every object will break on the first hit, and all objects do the same damage. So hitting a pirate with a metal bar is the exact same as hitting them with a bar of soap or banana peel. While I understand why this is (especially since metal bars will litter the space ships toward the end levels), it's still a strange choice, and it would have been cool if Nina could swing the more weapon-like things she picks up instead of just bashing them. Other than that one nitpick, I didn't really find any issues with this game, and I enjoyed it a ton. You probably will beat it a lot quicker than me, as I take things slow and there were many times I just had the pause menu up while I ran off to do something else quickly. So I'd say the average mileage for this game is closer to 10 hours. All in all, I highly recommend this game. It is an enormously fun and positive addition to the Imsim genre, and it's a wonderfully silly and lighthearted game with a goofy "artsy" story that made me chuckle quite a few times. Also Nina Pasadena and her kitty cat clients and "sidekick" are all incredibly wonderful (and their voice actors are all fantastic), and I love every single one of them so darn much! Lastly - Don't underestimate the Autopistol, it's a thing of beauty!