Sometimes you just need an excuse to talk about a good game. Skin Deep is extremely good, and these patch notes are a good enough excuse.
I wrote about Skin Deep's deft mix of slapstick humor and immersive sim clockwork level skulduggery earlier this year, but since then, it has come out, gained official mod support, and gone on sale. There’s also a new patch, which is illustrative of Skin Deep’s whole thing: systems interlocking with systems interlocking with systems to form an intricate latticework that occasionally freaks out and shocks everyone, including those who made it.
As pointed out by Derek Lieu, the professional video game trailer editor behind Skin Deep’s own, the game’s third major update includes some very enjoyable patch notes. For example:
Fixed: mech glass wound bug
Piloting a mech and stepping on glass shards would sometimes result in getting glass stuck in Nina's feet. This was not intended, as Nina's feet are fictionally safe inside the mech. Using the mech to stomp on glass no longer applies glass wounds to Nina. Nina is now safe.
And:
Fixed: pod departure logic
Under certain circumstances, the player was able to deposit all of the cats into the cat pod and then force the pod to leave before Nina could enter it. This resulted in what felt like a soft-lock where the pirate boarding ship never appeared.
Technically, the player was able to proceed by summoning another cat pod and entering it. However, this was confusing. So in this update, after a complete cat deposit, the cat pod is now not allowed to leave until the player has entered it.
Additionally:
Fixed: swordfish consumed by trash chute
If the player had a swordfish impaled in their body and then stood near a trash chute, the trash chute sometimes "ate" the swordfish. This was not intended. It sort of made sense and was an interesting systemic behavior, but the interaction was a little too confusing. In this update, the trash chute now ignores impaled swordfishes.
And finally:
Fixed: inaccessible keys inside laundry machine
Throwing or dropping keys inside the laundry machine would sometimes result in the key no longer being accessible. There's an invisible "interaction cube" that surrounds each object, and the laundry machine's interaction cube was taking priority over keys' interaction cubes.
This was [a] delicate bug, as the interaction system is pretty complex and changing it at this point would potentially create other bugs. The fix chosen was for the laundry machine to eject/"poop out" the keys out of itself if the player climbs into the laundry machine.
This is what it’s all about. Don’t you want to insert yourself into that volatile ecosystem and see what chaos ensues? Of course you do. Just make sure to watch your step (unless you’re piloting a mech).
