Skin Deep - Blendo Imm Sim!

henke on 25/2/2025 at 18:27

You saying you realized why he called it Citizen Abel made me realize why he called it Citizen Abel.

heywood on 25/2/2025 at 19:41

Finally.

I just played through the tutorial stuff, which gave me a bit of a SS2 vibe. I could do without the self commentary. It's not really grabbing me, but I'll give it more time later.

nicked on 25/2/2025 at 19:44

It's been so long I thought this might have been in development hell or just vaporised, but that demo was great. Charming but systemically deep.

heywood on 27/2/2025 at 15:04

Quote Posted by heywood

Finally.

I just played through the tutorial stuff, which gave me a bit of a SS2 vibe. I could do without the self commentary. It's not really grabbing me, but I'll give it more time later.

I take it back. Demo was good. I'm looking forward to release.

henke on 3/5/2025 at 06:10

IT'S OUT!

It's a chaotic and colorful immsim with a lot of systems and it is also very funny.

Inline Image:

https://images.steamusercontent.com/ugc/13818855137834224595/C20D15FF4DB545666B75637A08A8F57DFF1026A6/?imw=1024&imh=576&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=true

Will post more impressions once I'm further in.

Thirith on 3/5/2025 at 11:25

Can you save the game freely, and does it lend itself to shorter sessions? I'm definitely eager to play it, but if it's best played in longer sessions, I might wait a bit.

henke on 3/5/2025 at 13:06

I've been playing it one mission per session, and the missions have been around 20-40 min. You can save at any info panel, you can usually find one of these in any room in the game. Unless you've smashed a pirate's head into it.

Renault on 3/5/2025 at 15:47

I like what I've played so far, but my main issue is that I hate cats.

demagogue on 3/5/2025 at 17:33

The tone of it reminds me a little of Crimson Skies... comic-bookish, everyone is a little shouty (in a mission; understandable) & the main cat VO is really charismatic & over the top in that style of 1930s & '40s Adventure Movies. Has some definite Blendo features like the jump cuts, cube characters, inside references, and lots of techy "details"... It's playing with the immersive sim genre. Well, I like it so far.

henke on 3/5/2025 at 17:49

Having played the first 9 hours I'd describe it as JUICY, SNAPPY, and CHUNKY. A lot of use of automatic camera focus on important bits, freeze frames and slow-mo helps you keep track of things even when chaos reigns. Nina Pasadena clambers up ledges and pops in and out of vents with the slickness of Batman. There are a LOT of systems but the game does a good job of introducing them while keeping things casual, but after the first few missions things get serious and you really DO need to start taking this cat-savior business seriously if you're gonna win. The difficulty curve has felt very good so far. Ghosting is encouraged, as when you start picking guards off their abscence WILL be noted and security increased unless you cover your tracks.

This is no solo dev effort like Brendon's earlier games. He's got a few collaborators on this one. It does have the cinemantic storytelling and flair of earlier Blendo games but is even funnier, something I'd attribute to Laura Michet doing the narrative design. I'm not super familiar with her work but she did write the very funny (https://paper-nerds.itch.io/words-must-die) Words Must Die.

(https://blendogames.com/skindeep/credits.htm) The full credits for the game are here and whadayaknow, there's some The Dark Mod DNA in this!? :D