Skin Deep is a stealth shooter that simulates sneezing and the dangers of bare feet

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Blendo Games, the indie studio nom de guerre of Brendon Chung that's given us games including Atom Zombie Smasher, Thirty Flights of Loving, Quadrilateral Cowboy, and Flotilla 2, is working on a new project called Skin Deep. It's an "immersive first person shooter," but perhaps not in the way you might expect: Highlights, as seen in the announcement trailer, including sneezing at inopportune times and picking broken glass out of your feet.

The underlying fiction, according to the listing on Steam, is that you are "a walking talking insurance policy." When corporations want to their in-transit cargo safe, they freeze you and ship you along with it. If pirates board the ship, the silent alarm is triggered, you're automatically defrosted, and you go to work.

"Stalk through a vast non-linear starship and sneak, subvert, and sabotage to survive in this stellar sandbox," the Steam page says. "You're outnumbered, outgunned, and have no shoes."

Decent shoes seems like something your corporate masters should have thought about before they popped you into the freeze-dryer, but maybe there's some kind of Terminator-like tech limitation that's specific to footwear—or maybe Brendon Chung is just a big fan of Die Hard. There's not enough detail on either the Steam page or the Skin Deep page at blendogames.com to say for sure at this point, but a game about an under-dressed deep space hitman with an allergy problem? I don't really need to know more, that's just something I want to play.

Skin Deep will be out in "the future."

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.