Sneezing stealth sim Skin Deep returns with a new publisher

Skin Deep, the next game from Quadrilateral Cowboy and Thirty Flights Of Loving developer Blendo Games, has been picked up by publisher Annapurna Interactive, the publisher announced today.

Announced back in 2018, Skin Deep is an interstellar immersive sim that pits you as a living insurance policy—frozen inside various spaceships when corporations want to secure their deliveries. When pirates come knocking, the silent alarm rings, and you get to work.

There's a lot of Die Hard under Skin Deep's, err, skin. Broken glass can get lodged in your (upsettingly shoeless) feet, and a sudden sneeze might alert pirates to your presence. But you've also got plenty of tools at your disposal—pistols, rifles, wire-bombs, pepper grinders, a teapot, and a stomping great battlemech for when any chance of a silent approach goes out the airlock.

You'll be using these to skulk your way around non-linear spaceships, messing with systems to cause distractions and rescue the crew of kittens in command of the ship. I've always adored Blendo's particular flavour of pulp spy-fi, and I'm keen to see that filtered through the lens of an immersive sim.

Blendo's Brendon Chung regularly streams development on Twitch most weekdays at 10am PT, and often shows new features and location on his Twitter feed. Skin Deep doesn't currently have a release date, but expect to find it on Steam sometime in "the future".

Disclosure: Skin Deep's soundtrack is being scored by Priscilla Snow, who previously produced the music for my own game Can Androids Pray.

20 years ago, Nat played Jet Set Radio Future for the first time, and she's not stopped thinking about games since. Joining PC Gamer in 2020, she comes from three years of freelance reporting at Rock Paper Shotgun, Waypoint, VG247 and more. Embedded in the European indie scene and a part-time game developer herself, Nat is always looking for a new curiosity to scream about—whether it's the next best indie darling, or simply someone modding a Scotmid into Black Mesa. She also unofficially appears in Apex Legends under the pseudonym Horizon.