When you boot up Otherskin, you’re not stepping into a typical sci-fi shooter. You’re boarding a one-way mission — a doomed expedition to Vandermire, the corrupted husk of an alien world once home to the extinct Magna species. As Alex, “lucky” Space Crusader number 13, you’re outfitted with a high-tech AI suit and sent on a suicide run to uncover the truth about the spreading Corruption that threatens the universe. The expectation is that you will die. The hope is that you’ll bring back enough knowledge before you do.
It’s a setup that immediately sets the tone: this isn’t about saving yourself, but buying time for everyone else. And that premise carries the entire weight of Otherskin’s action-adventure loop.
The Premise – Life on Borrowed Time
The framing device for Otherskin is haunting. Alex isn’t here to conquer or colonize, but to catalog and endure. Vandermire is hostile at every turn, its alien flora and fauna twisted by the Corruption into nightmarish predators. Even your descent to the planet goes wrong, with your ship crippled and your landing pod crashing far from the intended mission hub. Alone and stranded, Alex has no choice but to fight her way through hostile biomes toward the central tower, the anchor for all further expeditions.
What keeps her alive is the experimental AI-powered suit, which not only supports her body against the Corruption but actively weaponizes it. The suit grants Alex the ability to absorb alien “morphs,” temporary powers harvested from enemies that let her leap higher, glide across gaps, rewind ruined structures, or even unleash explosive organisms at her foes. It’s a system that constantly reshapes both combat and exploration, making every enemy encounter potentially transformative.
Exploration and Biomes – Vandermire in Fragments
Unlike sprawling interconnected Metroidvanias, Otherskin is structured into a hub-and-level format. The central tower serves as your base, with portals leading to distinct biomes: jungles tangled with corrupted roots, floating islands that defy physics, desolate caves glowing with alien fungus, and even the interiors of colossal living organisms. Each region has its own theme, environmental hazards, and morphs to discover.
Level design encourages a mix of linear progression and side paths, hiding collectibles like murals and curiosities that flesh out the backstory of the Magna. Shrines serve as checkpoints and sources of upgrades, while corruption cores block progress until they are destroyed. The variety is impressive — no two stages feel alike, and the morphs tie neatly into their environments, forcing you to rethink traversal and puzzle-solving every time.
However, progress is a double-edged sword. Destroyed cores and shortcuts don’t always persist when replaying levels, meaning you often have to clear entire stages in one sitting to avoid backtracking fatigue. For completionists, that can be frustrating.
Combat – Blade, Gun, and Bio-Essence
Combat in Otherskin is a hybrid of ranged and melee action. Alex begins with a plasma gun and a sword, freely switching between them in battle. The gun auto-recharges, and melee strikes accelerate its recharge rate, creating a natural rhythm between close-quarters aggression and ranged safety. Later, more firearms join your arsenal, including a sniper rifle that becomes a reliable mid-range workhorse once upgraded.
Melee combat feels serviceable but not weighty — enemies aren’t staggered by basic strikes, making encounters feel more about trading blows than dominating them. Boss fights spice things up, with grotesque alien behemoths demanding precision, timing, and exploitation of weak points. While humanoid foes can drag fights into tedium, the creature bosses stand out as highlights.
Upgrades are fueled by bio-essence, a resource dropped from enemies and environmental nodes. These act as currency to expand sword combos, improve weapon handling, or enhance suit performance. Dying costs you a portion of your collected orbs, though they can be reclaimed if you return to the spot of your death — a mechanic clearly borrowing from Soulslike design but softened to avoid punishing setbacks.
Morphs – The Game’s Defining Feature
The morph system is Otherskin’s most inventive mechanic. Absorbing powers from specific creatures isn’t just a combat gimmick; it’s how you solve environmental puzzles and progress through stages. One morph grants wings for extended jumps. Another lets you rewind collapsed bridges back into place. Others allow you to manipulate electricity, deploy sonic blasts, or grapple across gaps.
The catch? Morphs are stripped away when you return to the central hub, resetting your abilities. Each biome provides the tools you need to conquer it, but powers aren’t permanent. This creates a loop where exploration is highly contextual, and no single morph trivializes the entire game. It also reinforces the narrative idea that Alex is temporary — nothing she gains lasts beyond her current mission run.
Storytelling – Isolation with a Voice
Though Alex is alone, she isn’t silent. Her AI suit speaks constantly, providing guidance, snark, and grim reminders of her mortality. The AI also enables sonar scans that highlight objectives, murals, and key landmarks, doubling as both gameplay aid and storytelling device. Murals and curiosities tell fragments of Magna history, giving players who care about lore something substantial to uncover.
The main plot is deliberately simple: survive long enough to gather data and push back the Corruption. But it’s the framing — the knowledge that every Crusader before Alex has died, and she is expected to as well — that makes each step feel weighty.
Performance and Presentation
Visually, Otherskin shines with varied environments and striking alien landscapes. The diversity of biomes is arguably its strongest asset. But technically, the game stumbles. Built on Unreal Engine 5, it suffers from frequent frame drops, especially during heavy combat or in visually dense areas. Some players report experiencing stutters, crashes, or missing key items, which require level restarts. Others note that performance improves in later levels, but overall, optimization is inconsistent.
On the positive side, the art direction covers many flaws. Vandermire feels alive, corrupted, and alien, with each stage offering something memorable to see. The soundtrack leans into atmospheric sci-fi tones, complementing the sense of isolation and danger.
The Rough Edges
For all its creativity, Otherskin carries the hallmarks of “AA jank.” Combat can feel clunky, enemy variety is limited, and weapon hotkeys are oddly absent. Platforming sometimes lacks clarity, leading to frustrating deaths. And the AI companion, while charming at times, repeats itself enough to grate. It’s not broken, but it’s far from polished.
Still, the game rarely becomes unplayable. Most of its flaws are inconveniences rather than deal-breakers, especially if you’re forgiving of ambitious mid-budget titles.
Otherskin: Otherskin is the kind of game that thrives on ambition. It doesn’t reinvent the genre, but it delivers a creative, atmospheric, and mechanically interesting journey through a hostile alien world. Its morph system adds genuine novelty, its biomes brim with variety, and its narrative hook — a doomed soldier collecting knowledge for the greater good — gives it emotional weight. Performance issues, clunky combat, and reset-heavy stage design hold it back from greatness. But if you’re willing to tolerate some rough edges, there’s a rewarding experience beneath the corruption. – Flare