Schim is a good example of how far you can take a single idea. It’s a platformer where you navigate by jumping between shadows, like a frog between lily pads. It’s very cute and a pretty lean affair, focusing more on playful movement than challenging platforming gauntlets. The first handful of levels showcase the breadth of what you get with Schim – an easygoing trek through a city via shadow with little variance — which is good! Where some games might feel tempted to expand an idea further, saddle it with more systems and mechanics, and risk diluting the core strengths with needless excess, Schim is content to just be a simple game about leaping across shadows. It’s delightful.
You play as a Schim, a frog-like creature that exists in the shadows cast by people and objects. A Schim is effectively the soul of a person or object. Everything has one. They can traverse the world via shadows, able to interact with whatever they’ve taken refuge in. But while this is possible, they aren’t supposed to be separated from whatever or whoever they’re innately attached to. Which is precisely what happens to the Schim you play as.
One day their human suffers an accident that sends their Schim flying from their shadow. Their shadow becomes pale and their very color changes from the same monochrome style everyone else is to a pale blue, signaling something has changed. From there it’s a game of chase as you try to keep up with your human and try to reunite with them before it’s too late. It’s a simple story told wordlessly, relying a lot on pantomiming and the setting of each stage to communicate.
Navigating by shadow is a fun hook, particularly because of how the Schim moves. You’re effectively hopping between pools of water. You can’t stay outside of the shadows for long (you get one good extra jump at best), so you need to plot your route. Depending on the area and what’s available, that can prove to be a bit tricky sometimes. Jumping between large shadows is a cinch; needing to move between small or thin shadows, not so much, especially if it has to be done quickly.
It’s often a game of patience. Waiting for someone or something to come by so you can leap into their shadow and either hitchhike or use them as a stepping stone to where you need to go is a common scenario. The stop and go nature is one that intentionally stops you from just blazing through each level. It wants you to slow down and poke around, luxuriate in the space and play. Each level is a playground more than a platforming gauntlet. Everything you inhabit can be interacted with. Oftentimes it just shakes the object or makes noise, but they don’t need to be anything special to be fun to use.
The levels themselves are often surprisingly big, letting you explore far off the main path to see whatever lies in the furthest corners. The degree to which you can explore is quite far. Felt like I was sometimes reaching spaces I wasn’t sure I was supposed to given how precise the jumps were and how difficult it was to get back. Most of the time I just moved wherever I could, not caring whether it was leading me forward or not. Sometimes it led to finding an object to help a fellow Schim return home, more often it was nothing but the challenge of getting there in the first place. If the movement weren’t enjoyable, that would perhaps be a weakness. What’s the point of poking around the furthest corners if there’s nothing to find? But Schim, like any good platformer, knows that a good jump is all you need.
Callum Rakestraw is the Reviews Editor at Entertainium. You can follow him on Cohost @crakestraw.
