You’re dumped onto a busy city street with a few tools at your disposal. First and most important, you can zap civilians to use their likeness as a disguise. And because getting caught on earth results in dismemberment, you don’t want to get caught. But there’s more to your trip than that. Your goal is to rough up as many people as you can, and you’ll do it through mostly nonviolent means. When you bother them, people drop coins, which you need to collect.

There are eight different levels in Under the Skin, and each affords you a moderately sized area full of earthlings just waiting to be hassled. The game is done in a very cutesy animated style, with big-headed, exaggerated characters and bright colors. Under the Skin isn’t necessarily just geared for the younger crowd, but the mood, presentation and humor will appeal most to those who still have some kid in them.

This is no more obvious than in the tools you and your alien are given to use in accomplishing your mischievous goals. You can throw tacks on the ground, which people will walk on, hopefully. You can sing loudly and without tune, which annoys people enough to make them throw money. Spectacular farts, a stampede of elephants and a plague of giant hamburgers and more are part of your repertoire as you progress.

There are also more direct methods for getting money from the populace, like a punch to the mouth. For that, you can use a boxing glove or a boost that makes your little alien swell up to super size, giving him the ability to fly around and rough up whoever gets in his way. You’ll get access to tons of different options throughout the game.

When you’ve made enough people mad and one of them gets their hands on you, you’re going down. At first, you’ll just lose your clothes and be reduced to your skivvies. Get hit again and it’s back to alien form for you. The screams of the crowd as they see you running around, a little blue alien in a big diaper, are done really well, but you need to avoid the commotion so you’ll have to get used to capturing new human identities as quickly as possible.

There are also environmental dangers, like rush hour, which the aliens refer to as “panic time.” The roads fill with more people and cars than usual, and there’s a good chance you’ll get run over if you’re not careful. The levels are intentionally congested, so it’s a lot harder to avoid traffic than it was in Frogger.

The problem with Under the Skin lies in the fact that no matter how far you advance in the game you’ll still be doing generally the same thing over and over. Once you’ve seen the different methods of freaking out the populace, that’s all there is to see. Enjoying the gameplay depends on enjoying the same terrified reactions of the same pedestrians. Nothing about it really moves along into new territory. The challenges are only new in that they become harder because of having to do more of the same in less time. Making people drop their money by being rude is fun, no doubt, but not forever.