Inky blobs with cartoon eyes are cute. This is an objective fact, I don’t make the rules. SCHiM immediately ticks that box for me, but there’s much more to this shadow-hopping puzzler than meets the eye. The game's Steam Next Fest demo takes us through a snippet of life in the shadows (in a relaxed, not at all stabby or scary, way).
A SCHiM is a frog-like shadow spirit - blobby souls that inhabit the shadows of objects and living beings. Playing as a SCHiM, you partake in some childhood whimsy at the start of the demo; the very life and soul of a young boy with big dreams. You both experience the brief joys of youth as you play with other children and drive around on a tricycle - never straying too far from each other and remaining attached by a stretchy tether. So far, so simple.
The first major piece of shadow-platforming has you hopping back down an idyllic residential street to the boy, who’s gone further ahead. Using other shadows, you can hop, plop, and swim in them as if they were inky pools. There’s no fail state and it remains fairly forgiving - if you plop down outside of a shadow, you can make a second, far less sprightly, leap that may get you to the comfort of the shade - much like me scrambling for cover during summertime. If you don't make it, you are returned to a previous checkpoint several steps back. No harm done.
I’m struck by its use of colour in SCHiM's visually minimalistic world. Moving through the year's seasons, the blocky palette shifts according to the mood, time of day, and weather, demonstrating how expressive shadows can be. They're constantly in flux as an active participant in life rather than a passive one.
Through this passage of time, the boy faces the highs and lows of growing up while the SCHiM helps him navigate environmental blockers on the way. When you hop into certain shadows you can control the object that's casting it, like hopping into the shadow of a traffic light that allows the boy to cross the road safely. But as time goes on, the connection between the boy and his SCHiM begins to weaken, as he makes tough choices and faces hardship. After straying from pursuing his firefighting dreams, he is let go from a nondescript, soul-crushing office job. When it rains it pours; everything that can go wrong, does go wrong and he becomes separated from his SCHiM.
This cute blob game just got surprisingly deep. Underneath the joyous nature of the bounding SCHiM, lies an evocative, wordless story that explores what happens if you lose yourself - the very essence that makes you, you - during life’s challenges. All of this was communicated purely through environmental storytelling in the space of five to ten minutes. This snippet alone is extraordinarily effective and I’m curious to see how the devs expand on it beyond the demo.
As an untethered SCHiM, your goal is to reunite with your human, let loose in a bustling European-style city exploring the breadth of shadow-based opportunities. While SCHiM is seemingly simplistic in style and overall gameplay, it shares some DNA with Capcom's Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective and lightly scratches the itch for games that explore creative methods of traversal and puzzle solving. Much like Ghost Trick, you can move between and ‘possess‘ inanimate objects, becoming an active participant in the environment. Some have functions - like stretching the shadow of a sign to propel you across areas flooded with light - and some are just for fun. Who doesn’t love incessantly making ducks quack and postcard roundels spin, or giving people a fright as you shake the bench they’re sitting on?
These incidental interactions breathe life into the environment, as you have a tangible sense of impact on life’s backing track. In an active world, timing is important when dealing with shadows in motion. You can’t freeze time like Sissel in Ghost Trick and you’re not up against the clock, but you have the power of people watching. You can hop from one place to the next by hitching a ride in the shadows of vehicles, runners, and (most importantly) cats. If you ever need a hint on where to go, you can focus on your objective at the press of a button and the camera will fly along the route. You can also rotate the camera on a fixed axis to get a new perspective.
On your journey, you’ll encounter other bouncing sprites desperate to return to their thing, but you’ll need to find the item first. Those you find en route to your objective may help bridge a gap between shadows, as your fellow sprite rewards you by placing their object in your path to help you get from A to B. It’s also worth exploring beyond the critical path to find excitable SCHiMs in secret areas too. It’s fun to reunite a SHCiM and its object and speculate on the stories behind these objects. How did this teddy bear get here? Why is there a bike in the lake? I found myself imagining various scenarios and becoming immersed in what was happening around me. The mundane is rarely so intriguing as it is here.
Overall, SCHiM is shaping up to be a delightful adventure, one that doesn’t set the heart rate thumping or have you scratching your head in confusion. But if you do want to up the ante, SCHiM lets you tailor your gameplay with a few toggles. Risky Mode enables a fail state, capping you at 20 attempts to clear each level. This alone increases the difficulty, but if you're after even more of a challenge you can turn off the extra jump and remove checkpoints. I wouldn’t recommend an initial run-through with these settings, but on a second playthrough, these options are a way to truly test your shadow-hopping skills.
SCHiM is brilliant as it brings attention to the everyday facets of life - ones we frequently overlook. If you enjoy looking at the world with a different perspective à la Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, or just love cute wee sprites (totally valid) then it’s worth taking a dip into SCHiM's shadows this summer.
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