Image credit: Em Stonham for Kyusai/Tainted Pact/Assemble Entertainment
Developed by indie horror darlings Tainted Pact and published by Assemble Entertainment, The Skin Stapler is the latest addition to the world of grindhouse gaming – and it’s just as dark, immersive, and blood-soaked as I’d hoped when I saw the demo pop up for the first time.
As a big horror geek, I don’t often find myself getting too unsettled by slasher games anymore, but The Skin Stapler managed to get under epidermis, and I had a wonderful time with it. Here’s Kyusai’s first impressions of The Skin Stapler, tried out on PC and written up with no story spoilers.
I don’t often include content warnings in my horror reviews, but it’s worth noting that The Skin Stapler is fairly gruesome, despite its retro, pixelated aesthetic. If you’re bothered by blood and guts, it’s not the one for you.
Gruesome, gory horror show
The Skin Stapler is an indie horror that pays homage to icons of the slasher and grindhouse genres, presenting a gnarly figurehead in the form of the titular Skin Stapler.
As the name suggests, this killer is particularly fond of skin, mostly when they’re able to remove it and staple it to the nearby walls to taunt the underfunded and underwhelmed police of Carrion City. So far, so chewy.
The main characters of The Skin Stapler are Detective Dick Slater and his unwanted partner, Robbie Knox, who are set on the gristly task of tackling the eponymous serial killer. Slater is burnt out, fed up with life, and written to be the most cliche b-horror cop of all time, while Knox is a golden retriever in comparison.
The two have a unique dynamic, but the game doesn’t take place exclusively through their bloodshot eyes. Instead, The Skin Stapler takes place in a variety of locations and with a slew of different perspectives, making for a horror anthology-adjacent style of play.
I loved swapping between characters and getting to explore new locations as the story unfolded, as it added a nice amount of variety to the gameplay and made each chapter feel unique.
My favorite was Fefe, the girl you start off the game playing as; she’s alone in her apartment and wakes up during a thunderstorm for midnight matcha – nice band name? – before things go quickly awry. I won’t spoil what happens, but make sure to wear headphones.
The sound design is a big highlight of this game for me. Every single character is voiced, which is admirable in itself, and I found the performances to be believable. The sound effects are the right mix of crisp and clunky in places, and the music adds to the tension throughout the game nicely.
Unsettling, but comedic in places
Games that nod to slashers and giallo movies can often feel too cynical and dismissive of the genre that they’re pulling from, and I had worried this’d be the case with The Skin Stapler.
I adore slashers, giallo movies, and b-horrors, and I’m of the opinion that getting their silliness and scariness levels right is no easy task. Slashers can be stupid, sure, but games that lean too much into this can feel like they’re jeering at fans instead of lovingly poking fun at a genre.
The Skin Stapler got the balance just right. From the very beginning, I was sitting at my desk thinking about how the team behind the game must like horror films and other indie horrors a hell of a lot; it felt like a gory love letter to behemoths of the grindhouse world.
The gameplay loop in The Skin Stapler is generally what you’d expect from a story-led horror; it’s not overly mechanically heavy, with a lot of emphasis placed on exploring and interacting with the world. The Steam page tags it as a walking simulator, though, which I’m not too sure is correct.
The Steam page tags it as a walking simulator, which I’m not too sure is correct.
I’m a big walking simulator fan, so I don’t say that dismissively – I love Layers of Fear and Project Songbird – but this game felt a little more hands on than typical entries in the genre list.
The visuals are gorgeous in The Skin Stapler, with a retro, PSX style and plenty of splattery, splintery gore to enjoy. Each character had a unique model and design, and I loved getting to explore new areas of the map, seeing what the world had to offer.
I would’ve liked a few more secrets or achievements scattered around the world, admittedly, to make exploration more rewarding, but this is a minor quibble.
In terms of performance, The Skin Stapler ran well during my time with it and didn’t throw up any visual quirks, bugs, or glitches. I have a fairly low-range PC and it did struggle on the highest graphics settings, but this was to be expected; once I fixed this, it ran smoothly and didn’t experience any issues.
I did appreciate that there was a dark keystroke around the subtitles for accessibility’s sake, but there were a few instances where I still struggled to read the subtitles against light backgrounds. I would’ve loved to see higher contrast here, or even a way to adjust subtitles if possible.
The Skin Stapler is a beautiful homage to retro horror and fans of the niche will have a blast playing through it. I found the game to be genuinely tense and unnerving, with some fun scares and nasty gore, and there was a brilliantly comedic story woven into its bloody guts. If you choose to play, make sure to always look out of windows and down hallways. You never know who’s watching.
FAQs
The Skin Stapler was developed by Tainted Pact and published by Assemble Entertainment.
The Skin Stapler came out on August 6, 2026.
Yes, The Skin Stapler is a scary game, although not quite as intense as a game like ROUTINE or Visage.
The scariest horror games include Silent Hill 2, MADiSON, Visage, ROUTINE, Alien: Isolation, and Dead Space.
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