Jun 29

Jun 29 Preview | SCHiM - What We Play In The Shadows

Have you ever played that childhood game where you can only step on shadows? Best played on sunny days, you have to get very creative to get from point A to point B if there’s no obvious safe route; you’ll have to find alternate paths or a way to create new shadows to use as stepping stones.

Well, that’s SCHiM in a nutshell. Except you’re an adorable frog-like being called a schim that can both jump from shadow to shadow and is a shadow itself. You belong to a human, but not every schim belongs to a living being. In fact most are attached to objects, and sometimes you’ll have to help these silly creatures get back to their object when they’re lost or fix said object if it’s broken. Your main objective, however, is always tied to your human.

The big schims are my favourite, they look so silly!

I thought this was going to be a simple puzzle game with no plot, so I was pleasantly surprised to see a story being told in such an interesting way; not only visually but also mechanically. At the beginning of the game, your human is still a child and you can control his movements while you’re in his shadow — very helpful for reaching far away places under the burning midday sun. If you stray too far from your human and stay in the light for a while, he will come to collect you, and you can go back to playing games with their friends. But as you progress and your child grows up, he will go from playing pretend as a firefighters to getting his first girlfriend and his first job. The more he grows, however, the more your connection with him seems to lessen and grow weaker until eventually, he’ll stop coming to collect you if you find yourself in the light. You’ll see your human being exposed to many unfortunate circumstances, you’ll see him sad and depressed as a result and you’ll feel helpless, wanting to comfort him but without any way to do so. Eventually, after one too many unlucky events, you’ll find yourself completely detached from him as he runs away back home, leaving you behind. You’ll have to find your own way back to him using all kinds of clever solutions, taking advantage of everything the environment has to offer.

The visuals are quite simple, thanks to minimalistic monochromatic leves, but that stylistic choice is engaging as it plays with light and shadows spectacularly. Each level has a different colour that’s used all throughout the environment, conveying a specific emotion tied to the current point in the story. Every visual element contributes to make you feel what your human is feeling. You can feel his joy when he's playing hopscotch with his friends thanks to the warm colours that make everything almost glow like a happy memory; in the same way, you can feel his heartbreak when he breaks up with his first girlfriend surrounded by moonlit gloomy hue.

I’m excited to see how the story moves forward in the full game. What’s going to happen to our human? Will he ever catch a break? Will our bond grow as strong as it once was?

We’ll have a chance to find out on July 18 when it releases on Steam, Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series S/X, and Xbox One.