In Skin Deep, cats have recruited you to fight space pirates
Blendo Games' latest is influenced by action films like Die Hard, which doesn't have nearly enough cats
Skin Deep, the next game from Quadrilateral Cowboy and Thirty Flights Of Loving developer Brendon Chung got a new gameplay trailer at tonight's Annapurna Interactive showcase, showing lots more weird and wonderful ness for the "Die Hard in space"-like. It's a game where you've been, uh, "hired" by cats to be their insurance guy during a space flight. So, when pirates attack the ship, they pop you out of a container to fend them off.
Naturally, I had to ask Chung: why cats?
"I mean, a) they're funny and they're cute. And b) we didn't want a mechanic to be like, friend or foe identification," he tells me. "We didn't want it to be like CS:GO, where you're wondering like, 'Is my friend? Or is that some other guy?' So we just made 'em cats."
In Skin Deep, you'll have to fight off space pirates in all sorts of imaginative ways. Stealth, guns, convenient air lock placements - you name it. And if (or when) you die, you just start again (it reminds me a little of Void Bastards' roguelike style). Gradually, your ship will jump closer and closer to the pirate base, so your main goal is to get rid of them before that happens.
The game is influenced by action films like Die Hard (you can sneak in vents), as well as games like Far Cry and 2017's Prey. The aim with Skin Deep was to make an FPS that plays with loads of different ideas, to encourage players to mess with things and ultimately have a bit of laugh. To that end, Chung says he wants it so that if something in his game looks interactive, you can absolutely interact with it.
"One example is there's this monster that has a knife in it's head, and if it hits you, it impales you," he tells me. "But once you spot that impaled in you, you can yank it out and throw it at someone else."
He adds that it's not a particularly hard game - if you die, you can get revived and carry on. He didn't want to make something that was too punishing, he'd rather make people laugh.
"If these things make someone laugh, or bring out some sort of emotion in someone, I think that's something special," Chung says. "I personally feel there are not enough funny games out there, so I want to try and remedy that."
Skin Deep doesn't have a release date just yet, but when it does come out, you'll be able to find it on Steam.