Summary
I didn’t expect a chill game about a little blob navigating the world through shadows to be quite so melancholy, relatable, and a play on the relentlessness of life, but… well, you can probably guess what I’m about to say next.
I first saw Schim on TikTok, and it immediately grabbed my attention. A game about a little shadow buddy, called a Schim - the Dutch word for a shadow or apparition - hopping around the place as you puzzle your way through some shadow platforming? Sign me up. While it is just as fun and unique as I was hoping, I’m pleasantly surprised that it also wants to tell a story and use what it is to portray something more and unsuspecting - something the indie scene does so well now more than ever.
Using a minimalist art style that plays on solid, bold colours and contrasting shadows only, the world is simple and beautiful, while a single change of colour can alter the time of day, the narrative, or the mood entirely - something that it does often as you go through over 50 levels in this roughly three-hour experience.
Starting off as the Schim of a young child, you begin bouncing around shadows playfully as the child you belong to plays with their friends. Everything feels joyous, carefree, and obliviously whimsical. Time progresses, and through some serenely seamless moments, you’ll watch as this child grows through the stages of their life, seeing high school years, graduation, starting work, and first loves. But these fleeting years pass in just moments, and you have no choice but to watch from the shadows as they take a turn.
Losing your job, losing your love, losing your hope. You watch on as this man goes through what we all do, and the days just keep throwing more heartbreak into the mix. Eventually, as he’s walking home, he trips and falls. His Schim becomes separated in the stumble. From the outside, he tripped, got back up, and went on - but from our perspective, the once-playful Schim is detached, and the colour drains from the man as he pushes on past this significant final straw. Your objective? Get back to your human.
After this tragic end to the opening years, you follow your human around as they continue through life, one day at a time. The core game is platforming, as you hop from shadow to shadow, continuously chasing after your human. What’s impressive is how Schim cleverly uses a very ordinary world to introduce traversal puzzles in a new light. Moving platforms are the shadows of cars, buttons to reach a new location are road crossings, while signs and umbrellas can be used to bounce your Schim across larger distances.
The game stumped me a few times with how exactly I was to reach a location, which was often because I didn’t interact with an object I should have, but it was never too frustrating or unclear. Some levels are particular standouts, from using drones on a construction yard to seagulls across the beach, or even a shopping cart as it takes you to the supermarket aisle you need.
It can feel fairly repetitive, such as when you complete one street level, and then the camera pans across another large street level as your human is still just out of reach. I could feel the frustrations of this Schim trying to desperately reach the human, which is brilliant narratively, but could feel a bit drawn out mechanically. If new mechanics were introduced as you progress, rather than relying solely on the environments, that would be a big help.
There are levels that use interactable objects, flickering lights that cause shadows, and stuff like that - mostly all enivronmental based, but thereissome variation.
But it never really took away from the experience, and each level is only a few minutes long at most - unless you’re looking for the collectibles, in which you’re probably quite happy to look around a new environment anyway.
Either way, it’s hard to complain too much when you have such a chill soundtrack as you hop, pop, and plop from shadow to shadow - yes, those are pretty much the sounds you’ll make - with some lo-fi, background beats to keep everything calm, simple, and eased, while still managing to convey the sadness that the human is experiencing as they give their best efforts to keep going on.
Throughout Schim, you can only watch this man’s life from a few steps behind, and when the time is right, you find him as hope returns and the man finds himself at the same time. There are some beautiful, abstract sequences as the man goes through these stages of depression, development, and betterment, and the lead-up to the final moments are appropriately dramatic and satisfying, completing what is a pure and wholesome experience that casts a bigger shadow than you may expect.
Reviewed On PC
WHERE TO PLAY
SCHiM is a game where you play a soul detached from its person, and must make your way back using only the shadows for traversal. It features a stunning, abstract style and large open-world.
