SCHiM is a cute platformer on the surface where you play as a little spirit leaping between shadows in a colorful world. While it may only look like that at first glance, it has an underlying story too. This gives life to SCHiM’s simple world that often follows a monochromatic color scheme.
The premise is that every object and person has a spirit known as a schim. This is essentially a little dude that hangs out in each shadow even though there are massive ones too. The story begins by following your human as they grow from a child to an adult. And in doing so, you witness their life play out from a happy child to a complicated adult with their own struggles. It becomes a relatable story that doesn’t use dialogue to move it along.
SCHiM instead relies heavily on short cutscenes to deliver its narrative. As you go from merely relaxing in your human’s shadow, you’re eventually separated and need to get back to them. This provides your motivation for getting through each level as opposed to just going from point A to B. It’s no longer about a simple platformer. It becomes a juxtaposition of a peaceful world with the anxiety of always just being out of reach of your buddy.
What makes SCHiM such an interesting platformer is how it completely relies on shadows. This forces the developers to get creative with the limitations they’ve put on themselves. You can’t simply walk across the street on a bright sunny day. Instead, the developers need to place trees perfectly alongside trash cans that have a shadow facing one direction. This becomes an interesting balance of providing opportunities to get around without making it too easy.
The best moments are when you can create the shadows yourself. For example, raising a forklift’s arms to extend a shadow along the ground. This is one of many ways I love interacting with SCHiM’s world. Even outside of useful opportunities, you can interact with almost everything. Whether that’s shaking the leaves of a tree or getting a dog to bark. It doesn’t often serve a purpose but it’s still fun to do.
A night level in particular really takes advantage of shadows appearing and disappearing frequently. When you don’t have the sun to create shadows you have to work with flickering street lights, car alarms, and even lightning. This can however lead to frustrating moments when lightning is just a quick flicker. Most of the time I could handle each situation well, but I struggled when a vital object to interact with wasn’t clear.
Despite SCHiM’s simple control scheme, there are still moments where it’s easy to miss something important. Many levels follow a linear path with a couple branching out if you want to chase down collectibles. But, to create a normal-looking environment, there are occasionally paths and shadows that go nowhere. This is likely a way to fill the level in so it doesn’t feel barren.
However, it can be detrimental when the path you need to take isn’t as obvious as the dead-ends. In one case, I struggled for several minutes trying to get a collectible before almost giving up. It was during the night level where I thought the timing was dependent on a frustrating level of precision using lightning. But it was just an object I had to interact with to create shadows.
The good thing is that I didn’t encounter many situations where I felt hopelessly stuck. But the ones where I did were always related to an object I didn’t realize I could interact with. Unfortunately, another area where the platforming can be annoying is when relying on cars. I frequently had to wait for them to appear or leap between moving cars with mixed results. Sometimes I’d hit the top of a car I was leaping from underneath and get stuck in the middle of the road. Or leap between cars and fall beneath the map unable to enter a shadow. At least the checkpoints are almost always generous.
Fortunately, the many fun moments outnumber the rare irritating ones. I recall hopping into a person’s shadow who was leisurely walking along a path. It was a perfect opportunity to absorb SCHiM’s world and excellent soundtrack. The developers do a good job balancing the relaxing moments with the occasional high-energy ones. Sometimes you’re peacefully exploring a park and other times you’re frantically hopping between moving conveyor belts.
Every now and then it’s worth spending extra time hunting down the many hidden collectibles. It doesn’t just feel like checking a box for each one you find. While leaping around you’ll occasionally come across a schim panicking. It turns out you’re not the only one that’s been separated from their being. This makes every collectible feel important as you’re reuniting schims with their shadows. And in other cases, simply helping a parent find a teddy bear.
SCHiM Review | Closing Thoughts
SCHiM is a beautiful platformer with a powerful story. It’s almost always a satisfying time bouncing along cables, flinging yourself using umbrellas, and interacting with the environment in fun ways. While also experiencing a story about struggling with depression and finding a way through.
Review Score: 8/10 (Great)
SCHiM was provided by a PR agency via a Steam code.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.