SCHiM

SCHiM is another one of those games I’ve seen doing the rounds on gaming Twitter for as long as I’ve been back in the fold at VGamingNews, and it’s had my keen attention since day one. Set against a background of cool looking visuals and some really unique platforming ideas, Dutch developer Ewoud van der Werf has been dutifully working on something I’ve been itching to try out for some time.

You play as an adorable little shadow creature known as a schim. It feels like you’re something like a soul, making up an important part of a person and accompanying them everywhere, adding to their sense of self in an intangible but very definite sense. Early in the game you suffer an unfortunate accident and end up disconnected from your human companion, and you spend the rest of the game scrambling to try and join back up and make them whole again. Without you, your human companion begins to meander through life, running into problem after problem, while you silently give chase and do your best to catch up and reconnect.

This, in itself, is the kind of lovely idea that could easily make up the plot of any Disney movie, but it’s actually the game’s mechanics that make it all the more engaging. Schims are literally made up of shadows and so can only travel safely to other shadows, where the light can’t dispel them. That means you have to hop your way from place to place, making the best use of the darkness cast by your surroundings in order to get around. If you jump out of a shadow and miss your target, you’ll be left as a little blob of blackness on the pavement for a moment, with only a quick chance to hop into the safety of some nearby darkness. If you miss again or you wait too long, you’ll be teleported back into the last static shadow you inhabited to either try again or find an alternative route. There’s something quite joyous about SCHiM that’s embedded in nostalgia; it stirs up feelings of jumping around, giggling with friends in the sunshine during school holidays. It’s playful at its very core.

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At A Glance

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It only takes a few minutes to get the hang of the gameplay, and you’ll soon find yourself scooting along slivers of darkness cast by lampposts, leaping into inky puddles cast by wheelie bins, hitching a ride under a passing car, or beneath the feet of a wandering pedestrian or stray cat. You’re rarely going in exactly the direction that you want, but that’s part of the challenge – and a big part of the fun. You have to use what’s around you to try to work out a path not from A to Z, but from A to L, back to E, then from E to Q, before returning to S and then finally making a beeline for Z. This is especially true in the nighttime levels, which you might expect to be much easier with darkness everywhere, but it’s actually quite the opposite. Since there are fewer lights around, you’ll have fewer deep shadows to utilise, and those shadows can be large distances apart and might even be moving, since they’re often cast by car headlights as they drive past. I loved the challenge of the levels set after dark, as both the change in visuals and increased difficulty gave them a very different feel.

In fact, the visuals in SCHiM deserve a huge amount of praise, as the entire game is incredibly stylish to look at. Everything in the game is 3D but has been cel-shaded using swathes of block colour in a way that gives the game a very two-dimensional, artistic look. Each level is set to a unique colour scheme that helps give you a feel for your environment and what time of day you’re exploring. By using only four different colours in each palette, you’re treated to a bonafide clinic on how to deliver light, midtones, and shadows, and the effect is nothing short of stunning. Also, for those players with additional visual needs or suffering with colour blindness (as lead developer, Ewoud van der Werf does), you can select your own colours in the menu screen, easily improving the accessibility, as required.

SCHiM is pretty cosy, in the sense that it’s a very low stakes affair, with no time limit or lives to worry about. This frees you up to hop about with reckless abandon, quickly darting between people as they pass each other in a crowd or attempting leaps of faith as you try to cross a wide road with little in the way of shadow cover. Interestingly, schims actually have some control of the beings whose shadow they’re inhabiting, and this allows you to press the action button to make use of their specific abilities. For many items, this might just be a little animation rather than any practical effect, but in lots of cases you actually have to use these abilities in order to progress. One of the most common examples is diving into the shadow of a set of traffic lights and changing their status from ‘Stop’ to ‘Go’, allowing the flow of cars to move and giving you ample opportunity to hitch a ride in the direction you want to travel. There are some other really great examples throughout the game, but these are best left unspoiled for maximum enjoyment when you give it a go for yourself.

There are some lovely little nuances to the platforming too, with many shadows taking on the properties of the items casting them, and you’ll need to use these to your advantage. For example, shadows of washing lines have a bouncy quality, allowing you to spring much farther than your usual jump; and when jumping into shadows cast by ventilation ducts, you’ll be carried along the length of the shadow, as if being blown by the air flow inside. These ideas aren’t especially groundbreaking, but with SCHiM’s very strict rules around traversal due to the shadow mechanics, they do help to add some fun wrinkles to a format that does threaten to become samey after just a few hours.

I was very impressed with the storytelling in the early goings of SCHiM. The game does a tremendous job of merging the gameplay with the unfolding story and really helping you understand your schim, his relationship to his human companion, and their place in the world. It felt similar to watching Pixar’s Up for the first time; you’re caught entirely off guard by a heartfelt opening montage, and whilst the intro to SCHiM isn’t so heartbreaking (thank god!), it’s absolutely as effective at connecting you to the characters. While there is an overarching story being played out across the entire game, with a silent subplot about the struggles of feeling disconnected with the world, like the gameplay, I thought it lost some effectiveness in the middle. I could slowly feel myself becoming less engaged by the goings on as the levels ticked by, though the impressive finale did a good job of drawing me back in. Each level you play also has its own little collection of internal stories too if you take the time to look for them, though it can be easy to flash past a lot of them as you hurriedly leap onwards towards your goal.

I finished my playthrough in just-shy of five hours, though there’s some stuff to keep you hooked for longer than that, if you fancy it. Hidden throughout the world are discarded items that have also become disconnected from their schims, and there’s the added challenge to reunite them all with their shadowy pals if you want to fully complete the game. Additionally, you’ll unlock ‘Risky Mode’ once you finish the story for the first time; turning this on introduces a maximum number of lives, as well as removing the ability to exist outside of shadows even for a moment, requiring greater precision and upping the difficulty in subsequent playthroughs.

Last, but by no means least, the soundtrack to SCHiM, written and performed by Moonsailor, is absolutely excellent. In a genre I can only (poorly) describe as ‘traditional’ video game music meets lofi, I couldn’t help but reminisce about consoles gone by, with much of the music reminding me (in the best way) of relaxing menu music from years past. Filled with chill piano and laidback synths, the music has a wonderfully calm vibe to it, underscoring the whimsical themes running throughout and perfectly meshing with the stress free gameplay. 

SCHiM is a sweet little platformer that takes a joyous childhood idea and turns it into a heartwarming story that’s engaging and enjoyable. It shows off some great silent storytelling that connects you to the main characters by way of a great introduction and finale, despite losing some steam in the middle. SCHiM showcases an undoubtedly wonderful mechanic against some striking backdrops, and while it doesn’t quite get into high gear, there can be no denying that this shadowy hop-fest is great fun, and that some of the finer details will certainly bring a smile to your face.

In the interest of full disclosure, VGamingNews was provided with a copy of the game in order to conduct this review.

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