SCHiM [Review]
Shadow platformer SCHiM is novel but lacks spark.
SCHiM. Credit: Extra Nice / Playism
Ewoud van der Werf and Nils Slijkerman’s SCHiM is a laid back 3D platformer where you must leap from shadow to shadow, in a fanciful version of children’s playground game The Floor Is Lava. Despite its short playtime, it lacks enough variety in the use of its core mechanic to make it shine beyond its initial impression.
You are a schim, a spirit of an object or person. One day, your human trips and you somehow become separated. Schims reside in shadows, and can’t survive in light, so you must jump from shadow to shadow on your journey to catch up with your human and rejoin him.
SCHiM. Credit: Extra Nice / Playism
You can do two things: jump and interact. You can move within shadows and must jump to cover longer distances and move to other shadows. If you’re within a shadow, you can interact with what is casting it. Most interactions are just fun details, like making a car honk its horn or a person sneeze, but you’ll often need to activate machines with this ability to open up paths.
Nothing more creative is done with these core game mechanics and it makes SCHiM feel a lot longer than it is. There’s enough here for a demo; beyond the first couple of levels, the gimmick loses its magic. The developers should have taken greater pains to add new spins to the things you can do or how you do them to keep things interesting, to throw more inventive obstacles at the player.
SCHiM. Credit: Extra Nice / Playism
SCHiM’s world is monochromatic, sometimes with an additional highlight color or shadow color; these colors all change from level to level. The isometric perspective and thin outlines on every object make the game resemble a technical drawing and when coupled with the limited color palette have the effect of making SCHiM look very cold, a mismatch for the kind of story the game is telling. The game’s graphics are stylish and solidly executed, but are frankly a bit dull, lacking the spirit of fun or whimsy the gameplay implies.
Within the game’s isometric perspective you have limited control of the camera, rotating it in fixed ranges around yourself. It works decently well, but I’d often end up irritated because my view would be obscured. My expectation would have been that buildings and other objects in the way of seeing the action would have some kind of transparency or temporarily disappear. The lack of that consideration really detracted from the experience and made certain areas difficult to navigate.
SCHiM. Credit: Extra Nice / Playism
SCHiM had a lot more promise than we was ultimately delivered. It’s unfortunate that the game didn’t live up to its potential. SCHiM just doesn’t have enough life.
SCHiM will be available on July 18, 2024, on PC (Steam / itch.io), PlayStation 4/5, and Nintendo Switch.
Overall Score: 5/10
Played on: Steam Deck and PS5
