I'm woefully behind on checking out Skin Deep, an immersive sim by Blendo Games that came out at the end of April, despite the fact that it is an immersive sim and thus the ideal Riley game. I finally started playing last night; while I'm still coming to grips with what feels like its intentionally clunky controls, I absolutely love its opening credits.
(Light spoilers for the narrative setup of Skin Deep.)
Playing the early hours last night, I forgot that we hadn't seen a title sequence until the game smash-cut into an intro. Like a reward for having to suffer through a camera quest, the game suddenly launches into a jazzy, Bond movie-style opening. It has some clever rhymes, some great riffs, and you even get to walk around a bit in an arena of giant props and furniture.
The song tells a little narrative of facing off against a powerful enemy (who is... also you?) and shifts the vibes of the game from a slapstick comedy into something classy and intriguing. It ends, satisfyingly, on the game's title, something I'm always a sucker for. I love how the style of the song paints a contrast to my experience so far of getting myself stuck in dusty vents and running around spaceships desperately looking for a place to dump angry heads before someone else finds me.
In a conversation with Start Menu, composer Priscilla Snow said the current opening was their second take, with the first being a "slinky lounge song." Snow brought on collaborators and added the song's excellent brass arrangement, and said that while the song was “definitely the most difficult track to get through... I went from dreading the theme song and being stressed and anxious about it to being excited about it" through these changes.
The whole soundtrack, or what I've heard of it so far, is a banger. It's 59 tracks, a wild amount for a game that folks say isn't too long. I was charmed to catch a weird electronic wisp of viral sea shanty "Wellerman" that has an incongruous harpsichord-sounding breakdown in it, and I'm excited to hear what else is out there as I play more of the game. I feel like we're in a renaissance of good game soundtracks lately, which I can at least enjoy as I frantically try to chip away at my backlog of Too Many Good Games Recently.
