One of the key ingredients in powerful, affecting horror is mundanity. Resident Evil is set around a normal, working town. Silent Hill takes place across a school, an apartment block, a shopping mall. Even though it’s set in the distant future and the furthest reaches of space, Alien Isolation’s Sevastopol feels like a real, lived-in building. You need a recognizable setting, so that when the terror takes off, it feels like it could be happening to you. Mixing turn-based combat and roguelike replayability, new Steam horror game No Skin is a surrealist nightmare set inside an everyday house. Arriving in full on Monday February 17, it’s already earned a 98% positive Steam rating – and it’s only $6.
You wake up from a bad dream. Your friends are there. But everything feels wrong. His muscles, organs, and veins showing, a flayed man appears and demands that you return to him his skin. Now the title makes sense. When you begin a fresh playthrough of No Skin, you choose different objects and modifiers to help you on your journey. Some will make you more proficient in combat. Others increase the regularity of certain encounters and item drops. The horror game presents you with a list of different rooms – garage, bedroom, bathroom – and a list of possible battles therein. It’s up to you where you go and who, or what, you risk meeting.
Things start off relatively simple, but the longer you play, the stronger the skinless man’s curse becomes, and the more twisted and dangerous the house. Enter the bathroom, and there’s a 19% chance you’ll take a shower and recover some health. There’s also a 60% chance you’ll have to fight the Follower of the False God and a 1% chance of something “unexpected”.
Combat itself is turn-based – use your knife and gun to repel the various biological and cosmic horrors before they finish charging their own attacks. The goal, ultimately, is to collect enough skin fragments to make an entire flesh suit, and return it to your malevolent observer.
After gaining notoriety with its demos and early-access playthroughs, the full version of No Skin is finally on Steam. A single day since launch and 98% of all user reviews are positive. It’s also available for just $5.94 / £5.00. If you want to give it a shot, head here.
Otherwise, try some of the best roguelikes, or maybe the best survival games on PC.
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