A “shim” is a type of spirit or soul that every living being or object in this world has. They live in our shadows and are usually seen as small frog-like creatures that peek out from time to time.
Being separated from your Schim can have disastrous consequences, but that is exactly what you experience at the beginning of the game, where a man loses his Schim through unfortunate circumstances and his life will never be the same from that moment on. Therefore, you must take control of this abandoned Schim and make sure that he somehow returns to the master without his Schim.
Schim is a simple puzzle platformer where you jump from shadow to shadow through 65 levels of varying sizes set in all sorts of places, construction sites, playgrounds, factories and supermarkets to name a few. A Schim can only exist outside of a shadow for a short time, so it’s all about creating the shadows you need by manipulating objects in the environment.
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For example, you might need to turn on street lights to create light, also create shadows, use various machines to create shadows when moving, or perhaps move over long distances without darkness, for example by jumping into the shadow of a pigeon or a car to move around with.
Sometimes shadows are used in very clever ways, like if you stand in the shadow of a toaster you can take advantage of the bounce of the bread, and if you stay in the shadow of an office chair you can swing quickly and dart out of the room.
In reality, most scenes can be manipulated, and it’s not just things you need to create shadows out of thin air. It’s quite relaxing to have the cars hopping around, the dogs barking, the coat racks spinning, and the trash falling out of the bins.
The game can be completed in about five hours, and once you complete it, you can play it on a different difficulty level that doesn’t have save points or doesn’t allow you to jump more than once, instead of the usual two or two hours. You can even activate the risk mode where you only have 20 attempts to complete a level, which might sound like a lot, but you’ll see that it’s not.
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The five hours of gameplay are actually a more than sufficient duration, since it is not a very varied game. Most of the time you will spend finding your way around and jumping from shadow to shadow, although there will be some places where this mode changes slightly. Without going any further, the levels during the night, where there are not too many shadows, just darkness, or in a burning house, where shadows and lights are abundant and can require moments of creativity.
Schim was essentially developed by two Dutch developers and designers and is quite an interesting and visually appealing concept. The visual side is very abstract and consists mostly of colored line drawings, using a maximum of three to four colors, which gives the whole thing a pretty cool and minimalistic look.
Schim is a very nice little puzzle game that will make you relax while playing. It won’t stress you out at all and you can explore the scenarios as you please. Sometimes there are very different things to look out for. You might miss a little variety and maybe a little ingenuity in the use of light and shadow, but overall it’s a fun puzzle game with a good atmosphere and a pleasantly minimalistic visual style. So if you’re looking for a short and fun puzzle game, Schim is a good option.
