My favorite moment in Skin Deep, an immersive sim and stealth game about rescuing cats and fighting your evil clone in deep space, was always the one immediately after a thoroughly developed plan inevitably went sideways. The skittish way that I was forced to sprint and crawl under a table or into a vent. The manner in which my strategy devolved into simply batting things off of shelves in order to incapacitate a roaming guard or noisily distract them from looking in my direction. The way that I leapt onto a guard’s back, dug my claws in, and careened them into surfaces in order to knock them out. If you were to close your eyes, I’d argue you could almost hear that distinctive, feline yowl mid-action.
In short, I think Skin Deep best captures the experience of being a cat, even if Nina Pasadena, the game’s protagonist, is decidedly not one. And for this tremendous feat, I am rewarding it with the honor of being the best cat game of 2025. Long live Skin Deep.
In a typical Skin Deep mission, I often tried to keep to the shadows, as is the norm for a game in its genre. I would relegate myself to the ventilation, the pipework surrounding it, and the undersides of tables. Like Batman, I skulked around the perimeter looking for a precise opening that’d enable me to punch a hole in the level’s defenses while keeping my cover. Of course, in Skin Deep, it almost never worked out in my favor. Because I am not, in fact, Batman. I’m just a (cat) girl.
Eventually, I’d be made in the silliest way possible. I’d linger in the dust-covered vents a little too long and let out the world’s loudest sneeze, alerting the guards to my exact location. I’d throw down a bar of soap on one end of the room, be discovered while pickpocketing a guard on the other, and slip on my own trap as I ran back the way I came. Or, as is most often the case, I crouch-walked through a door or vent without first peeking into the room, jumpscared the first guard I saw, and threw the apple core I was holding in my hand at them. When you’re crouched like I often was, the camera’s perspective is so low to the ground, I almost always felt like a kitten traipsing through the halls and vents of a home I didn’t belong in. And just like a flustered orange tabby, my priority became to zoom to safety at the risk of endangering everything and everyone in my warpath the second I was found out.
I could sooner count the number of times a plan has gone right than wrong in Skin Deep, primarily because the former is a far lower number. Most of my successes stem from slapdash plans developed on the fly and from the wreckage of another plan. And yet, despite the failures, it has been more fun to improvise in Blendo Games’ deliberately slapstick sandbox and cosplay some kind of fumbling cat lady than come across as some calm and collected black-ops agent. To that end, I found I enjoyed leaning into the bit.
I much preferred stalking high and narrow walkways with a charming assortment of irreverent items (a bolt, some ground pepper, a banana, etc.) to looting a weapon. And when I was looting, I, like many cat owners can likely attest to, loved to snatch something I was really not supposed to have–in this case a walkie-talkie or key card–before scurrying back into the shadow and making off as if I got one out from right under those guards’ dumb noses.
Of course, when I was found by the guards for sticking my nose a little too close to the sun, I did combat like a cat too. Even in the most harried of situations, ones where I was backed into a corner and forced to face off against Skin Deep’s roving guards–an intergalactic goon squad straight out of pulpy sci-fi novel called the Numb Bunch–I still felt like a lithe and frenzied cat warrior rather than another human combatant. Melees were won not by hard blows but by swift strikes. A quick flick of the wrist launched one of my collected throwables at a guard. Disoriented, I climbed on their backs and sent them smashing into sinks, toilets, screens, pipes, etc. Anything that carried a high risk of causing CTE, really. Once they were conked out, I hurriedly popped their heads off (since these could fly towards respawn stations and revive a guard) and, like a cat secreting its stolen goods, I hid or threw them down a toilet or garbage chute, permanently incapacitating my foe.
Fights in Skin Deep were rarely decided, you see, by sheer willpower and force. It was always about thinking on your feet paws. It was about pulling a fast one on your unsuspecting combatants. It was about being a cat in a world filled with boorish humans and their brute dogs.
I found Skin Deep’s interpretation of cat-like design immediately refreshing. The industry is no stranger to cat games, many of which are charming in their own ways. However, I typically found that when I engaged with them, they were more preoccupied with the aesthetics of cats than the ways in which their mechanics could convey the feeling of being one.
In Stray, I performed and looked like a cat, but never quite felt like one. In Skin Deep, the inverse is true. It is as if, untethered by the expectations of having to make an aesthetically pleasing feline protagonist, Skin Deep was more free to recreate environments a cat would thrive and play in and design systems that rewarded that fantasy. By my estimate, it nailed it. Across its frenetic combat, slapstick stealth, and skittish movement, Skin Deep more wholly realizes the idea of being a cat than any other game I’ve played. For sticking that landing, it deserves 10/10 toe beans. Or y’know, however many cats have.
