Blendo Games’ Skin Deep may appear to be an odd combination for game developers. It’s set in an offbeat, kooky world that evokes games such as Quadrilateral Cowboy and 30 Flights of Loving, but it’s also an “immersive sim,” a category based on hard cause-and-effect gameplay. While mainstream immersive sims such as Dishonored and Deus Ex engage gamers by offering superhuman abilities based on logical repercussions, Skin Deep flips that concept on its head.
Reality warps in Skin Deep. You are an “insurance commando” in a world where cats fly spaceships, and mundane objects such as deodorant, pepper mills, and soap are essential devices — sometimes more effective than a gun or grenade. Each device can be used to initiate intricate, uncontrollable chain reactions that can disable a guard or bump the player out an airlock. Fortunately, the player’s character possesses a third lung, so space exposure won’t be lethal.
How does creative director Bendon Chung and narrative lead Laura Michet make this chaos comprehensible and entertaining? They keep it hidden in a mix of traditional game design with a healthy amount of “cartoon logic,” leveraging simple in-game indicators such as warning labels and lengthy event logs.
Warning Labels Teach Players the Rules
Suppose you have to steal a key from a space pirate. In Dishonored, you would sneak up and pickpocket or disguise. In Skin Deep, you would toss soap at the pirate, hit him with powdered deodorant, and set it on fire — while the pirate slips and gets burned.
But things had the potential to go crazy in an instant. An explosion could trigger a fuel leak, sending a basketball into your skull. Or a passing guard could slip on a banana peel, sounding an alarm and sending a lethal robot after you. It’s a disorienting domino effect that can spiral in an instant.
“We need to be quite lenient,” Chung states, alluding to the game’s numerous bizarre interactions. For instance, if you get blown out of a spaceship window, the guards simply assume you are dead while you float outside calmly. It’s a Looney Tunes philosophy that allows players to expect consequences without irritation.
Chung describes that gamers’ awareness of these unpredictable results begins with in-game warning signs—a novelty in immersive sims. Press a button, and you’re treated to a box of deodorant’s warning of flammability, say. These bludgeoning, oversized warnings embrace cartoon sensibility over realism, but they provide essential hints to players about the ways that objects interact.
Maintaining the Mayhem Under Control
The crazy Rube-Goldberg chain reactions that occurred naturally in Skin Deep nearly made the game feel unplayable at times. Michet remembers that early on during development, “the game was too chaotic.” Player actions would trigger chain reactions so long and convoluted that by the time gamers witnessed a guard get knocked out in another room, they’d have no clue what had happened.
To correct this, the team introduced explicit “signposting.” When an enemy guard is knocked over, the game pauses on impact and visually points out precisely what happened — arrows are drawn to the main objects responsible, so players immediately see what occurred. The mechanism makes the cause-and-effect simpler to comprehend and simplifies the chaos to follow.
The engineers also implemented an “event log” that monitors interactions. Players can see a simplified form of it on the go and a complete one when paused to help them connect the dots along the way. The engineers have an even more detailed log behind the scenes to debug hidden or subtler interactions.
Lastly, the team built in cutoff points to stop chain reactions once they grow too unwieldy, preventing confusion and keeping the experience fun.
Embracing the Fun of Controlled Chaos
In the end, Skin Deep isn’t about replicating spaceship battles exactly. It’s about experiencing the fantasy of being an offbeat, highly skilled insurance woman with caring friends who like her more than she knows, according to Michet. The game invites people to go along with its goofiness and test out harebrained solutions.
As players progress and gain confidence, they’ll discover just how wild and creative they can get — and how much fun it is to unleash chaos in a world where cartoon physics rule.