So far, 2025 has been one hell of a year for games. Some incredibly surprising games that we weren’t expecting became big hits, like Blue Prince, with its compelling and innovative take on the roguelike genre, Haste’s fast-paced and fluid gameplay, and Ubisoft actually (and shockingly) nailing it with Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. Skin Deep, by Blendo Games and Annapurna, delivers what is arguably this year’s weirdest game so far, and by “weird” I truly mean one well worth checking out.

I’m more of a dog person myself, but you can’t hate this.

You play as Nina Passedena, a meowcenary for the MIAO insurance corporations. She specialises in infiltrating space ships in the case of a pirate takeover. Her job is simple: take out the pirates and rescue the cats in charge. Along the way, Nina discovers that the pirates have personal motivations against her from a past mission. It’s a story that doesn’t take itself seriously at all, and takes all the best things about spy movies, cramming them into something ridiculous. It’s complete with espionage, plot twists, betrayals, and, of course, the most crucial element of this story—cats! Don’t expect something as grand as Metal Gear Solid or Splinter Cell, but you’ll have a good time with it.

To put it bluntly, Skin Deep is a cat-rescuing simulation game. That’s all you should need to know to be convinced. Your objectives are pretty simple: get onto the ship, rescue the cats from the apawling pirates that have commandeered it, and get out using whatever means necessary. If that isn’t enough to convince you to check it out, it’s also a surprisingly fun Immersive Sim with intense stealth gameplay and great level designs. Like a good immersive sim, just about everything feels responsive to your own actions.

A cloud of gas can be detonated with a lighter, a banana can be used to trip up guards (or yourself) and sitting in vents for too long causes Linda to sneeze. One of the first levels is a prime example of the chaos that can unfold. After a botched infiltration that had me getting detected by my own stupidity, I ended up slipping on some soap, which ended up cracking a fuel pipe alongside another guard, blowing up completely out of proportion. It all worked out in the end, but this set the game’s tone: a purrfect balance between your best laid plans turning into an absolute cat-astrophe. There’s just so much that can happen at any moment, and learning these mechanics in the roughly 10-hour story is a blast.

Spending too much time in vents will cause Nina to sneeze, putting a nice spin on stealth and giving Skin Deep more personality.

It’s this level of reactivity and chaos that makes Skin Deep such a compelling gameplay experience. Each mission takes place in a self-contained spaceship. These small ships are typically comprised of a couple of rooms connected with hallways, vents, rubbish shoots and even breakable windows that take you (and any unfortunate pirates) in and out of it. Nina can really zoom in on anything in her field of vision, allowing her to read and memorise notes to look back on at any time, as well as understand the mechanics of the game. Just about any interactable has something to read on it. Giving you codes, clues or some funny tidbits.

I don’t want to spoil too much of the minute-to-minute gameplay, as there’s just so much to discover in how your actions have reactions. Your ultimate goal is to find the cat keys and then rescue the cats, all in a single, almost puzzle-box-like environment. Scouring high and low to find a wide variety of items and notes to help you with your objectives. The enemy pirates that scatter the ships don’t have the best perception, but with the smaller environments, this feels reasonably balanced. Getting caught out in the open will absolutely trigger an alarm, which can then be disarmed using a guard’s radio with infrequent check-ins afterwards to keep the pressure up. 

Once you’ve rescued all the cats, more pirates board the ship, and your objective changes again to clearing out the ship or getting the override key. Much like before, how you do this is entirely up to you. Do you prepare an ambush and take out an entire crew in one sweep, or separate the boarding party’s captain and steal the key without as much as a whisper?

The banana is mightier than the autopistol.

It’s a unique experience unlike any other immersive sim that I’ve played. It has a great catch and gameplay loop that never gets boring, with strong replayability as you discover the secrets in each level. As the game gets more complex and adds new mechanics, gadgets, and tools, it opens up for something unique. It gives you dozens of options in such confines, and there are tons of secrets to find.

The visual design for Skin Deep is simple but effective. It features cartoonish visuals that perfectly match the gameplay and writing style. The sound is just over the top as well, with frequent and often hilarious comms between the pirate crewmates as they try to hunt Nina and sublime voice acting for the cats throughout the game. There are also some meowsic that can play around ships to disguise a lot of your sounds, and a great 007-inspired opening theme.

Skin Deep is a one-of-a-kind experience. It’s an immeowsive-sim game that doesn’t take itself seriously at all, leading to a unique and exciting stealth adventure. The responsive system drives the game, giving you a ton of flexibility in otherwise limiting scenarios, which leads to some hilarious shenanigans. Also, cats!

Skin Deep is available now on PC.

Reviewed on PC with an RTX 4070, Ryzen 7 7800X3D and 32GB RAM.

A copy of Skin Deep was provided by the publisher.