NO-SKIN from Feardemic and NoEye-Soft is a horror roguelike with experimental art style and storytelling. Learn more in our NO-SKIN review!

 

NO-SKIN from Feardemic and NoEye-Soft is a horror roguelike with experimental art style and storytelling. You’ll be tasked with facing the many horrors that lurk around the house as you discover who the No-Skin Man is. In this Rated M for Mature experience, you’re apparently having a regular day around the house, having a drink – or ten? – when you stumble into the hallway… and find yourself face to face with the No-Skin Man. He tasks you with finding his skin, or else the next time he finds you, it will all be over for you.

You’ll begin this journey by playing as Noire, with more characters unlocking as you manage to take on run after run of this roguelike. Noire is a balanced character with good max HP, a regular knife, and a regular gun. There’s also Root, who will have a regular knife as well as a gun that can mutate when defeating an enemy by dropping its HP exactly to zero. This will lead to being able to select one of four different upgrades that will change how you approach subsequent attacks. There are more characters to unlock, but you’ll need to play NO-SKIN to find out who they are!

 

The controls are simple and to the point, since you’ll be navigating between the options you’re presented along the way by using the left analog stick or the D-Pad. You’ll confirm your action by pressing the X button… and that’s it! You’ll have to select which rooms to explore, so that you can review the events that can play out and their probabilities – more on these in a bit. You’re on a very short timer, so you need to make every action count!

Since this is a turn-based experience, each action in combat you take ends your turn, except for using items from your bag. By looking at an enemy’s flashing HP, you’ll get to know how much damage you will deal with the weapon/item you’ve selected. Say you use a knife. It will have a 90% accuracy and deal a single point of damage. Going with a gun will boost damage to two points, but will lower accuracy to 85%. You’ll also need ammo to load said gun. Maybe you should pray to the goddess to make all damage you take for that turn become 1.

Say you want to visit the bathroom. Before you choose it as the next location you’ll walk to, you could review that there’s a 60% change of facing the Follower of the False God, a 20% chance of observing the cult followers’ meeting, a 19% chance of taking a shower, and a 1% of an unexpected attack playing out. If you’re lucky and do manage to take a shower, you’ll recover 1/3 of your max HP. If you manage to survive your first boss fight, you’ll unlock the talk ability. This will allow you to converse with your enemies. I wonder what they’ll have to say in this madness?

Defeat enemies to collect Fragments as well as Lunar Fragments. Fragments will act as the in-game currency, and you can use them to trade for useful items. Find the Long-Gilled Fish, and you’ll be able to grade Fragments for things such as Strange Pills (restores 1 HP), Nightshade (boosts the damage from melee weapons by 1 point for that battle, with the effect being stackable), Cigarretes (slightly increases the chance to escape from battle), or Ammo (you know, to reload your gun).

If you manage to survive for a bit, you’ll unlock additional rooms, such as the kitchen, which will boost your max HP by one. New rooms lead to new potential interactions… including a battle with the No-Skin Man if you haven’t managed to find his skin! The longer you take to either battle No-Skin Man or find its skin, the worse the curse will get. This means that your enemies will periodically receive a boost to their max HP, thus making them more and more dangerous.

Lunar Fragments are the ones that you can use to purchase permanent upgrades that will improve your odds of surviving when taking on subsequent runs. You could, for instance, unlock the Lighter and Dummy items so that you can buy them from the Long-Gilled Fish in subsequent runs. Another option is unlocing the rare Red Room, so that it can hopefuflly appear at random in the first area. Maybe you’d like to add The Doorman enemy?

As for the trophies, the game does not have a Platinum trophy, which is not going to please trophy hunters. The available list is split into 8 Bronze trophies, one Silver trophy, and 4 Gold trophies. What will you need to do in order to 100% this list? You’ll get trophies by using an item from your bag, winning your first battle, speaking with an enemy, making a deal with the Long-Grill Fish, or defeating the false god, to name some examples.

NO-SKIN is a horror roguelike with experimental art style and storytelling. You’ll be tasked with facing the many horrors that lurk around the house as you discover who the No-Skin Man is. In this Rated M for Mature experience, you’re apparently having a regular day around the house, having a drink – or ten? – when you stumble into the hallway… and find yourself face to face with the No-Skin Man. He tasks you with finding his skin, or else the next time he finds you, it will all be over for you. NO-SKIN is out on PlayStation 5 with a $6.99 price tag. There’s also a PlayStation 4 version of the game available for the same price as a separate purchase.

Disclaimer
This NO-SKIN review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by Feardemic.