It’s easy to see why a PSX-inspired visual style meshes well with grindhouse vibes. Chunky models and pixelated textures are basically the video game version of scratchy film or VHS grain, so the low-poly aesthetic puts me in the right mood for a scuzzy B-movie. And boy, would The Skin Stapler, the latest game from Flesh Made Fear developer Tainted Pact, fit in perfectly on a VHS shelf of 80s exploitation films. What it lacks in gameplay depth it makes up for in a singularly grimy style, even if that style can be a bit one-note and juvenile most of the time.
While you’ll play as several characters throughout the two-and-a-half-hour runtime of The Skin Stapler, the main character is Dick Slater, a jaded detective on the case of the increasingly violent titular serial killer. Saddled with a rookie partner he resents, he follows a trail of bodies to his inevitable confrontation with the sadistic murderer, who seems to be oddly obsessed with him. It’s a pretty basic setup, but there’s plenty of personality with its over-the-top detective flick tone riddled with sexual humor.
The game plays out over a series of fourteen short chapters that are either part of the investigation or depicting The Skin Stapler’s killing spree. Both styles of chapter are pretty light on gameplay, mostly asking you to walk around a small area and do a series of tasks, but they definitely each have their own feel to them in ways that provide a bit of narrative variety, even if mechanics are a touch repetitive.
My favorite parts of the game were playing as the eventual victims of the killer, acting out their final moments before The Skin Stapler springs his trap and viciously murders them. These sequences do a great job of painting the setting of 1984 Carrion City, a rotten town populated by absolute weirdos. Everyone you play as has just enough personality in both their character design and performance, mining various tropes for all they’re worth.
After the opening sequence of playing a victim killed in her apartment, which is probably the most outright tense chapter in the game, the game casts you as characters going about their daily jobs, interacting with the dregs of the city that visit them.
Everyone’s a Victim
What makes this cool is that each job has its own little task you perform while working there as the shift gets more and more sinister. You’ll be making hot dogs at the convenience store, filling donuts at the donut shop, or rewinding tapes at the video rental store. Each of them has a multistep process that needs to be figured out and performed correctly, oftentimes involving a quick time event that’s required to progress.
It’s never super mechanically complex, but I’ve written before about how I like process games that require you to follow directions, and this evokes that just enough. It does feel like each of them lasts one customer too long, wearing out their welcome due to their relative simplicity, so I wish there was a bit of escalation or variation to make it more fun throughout.
The job sections of the game highlight one of the game’s biggest features, its sense of humor, which will probably be a deciding factor in how you feel about this game. Pretty much every customer that comes by will say something that’s absolutely drenched in crude innuendo, and the game has no shame about its crassness. The humor is definitely full of low-hanging fruit, everything from jokes about wanting wieners or needing to get their hands on your hot cream filling.
Despite knowing what type of game this was going to be, I was still rolling my eyes at many of the jokes, but by the end I came around to it, finding it funny how direct they were with the sex puns. There were still plenty of jokes that didn’t land for me, but I found myself charmed instead of annoyed, and your tastes may vary on this drastically.
Following the Killer’s Trail
I don’t think any of these sequences build tension as well as the opening scene, but they do a good job of setting up the web of characters in this part of the city. Usually the character you’re playing will have a friend come in to talk to them during their shift, and then you play as that character or meet them again later down the line, efficiently creating the sense of a larger world. If nothing else, the scenes where you play as the victims have some sort of jump scare or creepy speech, effectively showcasing the over-the-top methods of The Skin Stapler.
After someone gets brutally murdered, you’ll come in as the detective to investigate the crime scene. Each time, the killer leaves a strange message for you that’s locked in some way, and you need to pick up objects around the scene and search for evidence hidden on them to unlock it. This usually involves just interacting with the item and rotating it around a bit to check if it’s hiding a photo slide or a tarot card or whatever themed clues he’s hiding, so once again it’s not mechanically complex, but it does do a good job of forcing you to fully investigate the scene and take in the brutal handiwork of the killer.
It’s great to see the same spaces after they are turned into a slaughterhouse, with large pieces of skin stapled to the walls near a body displayed in all its gruesome glory. A few of these scenes feature some very light puzzle solving, but they are mostly just used to push forward the game’s narrative.
Straight-to-VHS Presentation
To my surprise, the game was fully voice acted, and everyone involved understood the assignment. It’s clear they were trying to evoke the cheesy voice acting of bad late-night horror movies, but fortunately that’s something I find charming rather than offputting. I was also shocked to see that several of the cutscenes were actually well-directed, with interesting angles that made them feel more manic and off-kilter in the exact way the best B-movies do. It’s not perfect; some of the performances work better than others, and there was a weird issue with the subtitles disappearing before the characters were finished speaking, but sometimes it even felt like the flaws were feeding into the so-bad-it’s-good tone.
I wish the narrative had a bit more to it, but it doesn’t really seem like they were going for anything particularly deep. The Skin Stapler himself was a pretty standard “crazy killer” type, even if he had a couple good lines here and there. Overall, the story is definitely just a vehicle to get you from one location to the next and then splattering gore all over. Feels like something you’d tune into late night while surfing cable and initially scoff at, but end up sitting down and watching the whole thing anyway.
Its charm is in large part due to the presentation, which perfectly utilizes that low-poly aesthetic to make every area look awful in the best possible way. The gnarly gore never feels too graphic, thanks to the indistinct look of the PSX-style visuals, making it feel more playful than mean-spirited. There’s also a great John Carpenter-esque soundtrack throughout with some great squishy sound effects that punctuate both the violence and the gross tasks in equal measure.
To add one final cherry on top, there are some great VHS-style FMV sequences peppered throughout, which is something that always works for me.
I think you’ll know if The Skin Stapler’s brand of late-night grindhouse humor is going to work for you just from watching the trailer. While it could use more mechanical or narrative depth, its full dedication to the bit is undeniably charming. It’s a gruesome good time that fans of games like Sniper Killer or Rewind or Die will enjoy, but it’s an acquired taste that might not be for everyone. Depending on how you feel about jokes like “you’re looking a little stiff, Dick,” you could probably raise or lower this rating by one skull.
Review code provided by publisher. The Skin Stapler is available now on PC via Steam and GOG.
