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.
