SCHiM Xbox Series X Review

SCHiM Xbox Series X Review – Me and my shadow

The Schim is the soul or spark that makes an object or creature alive. Should the Schim be parted from its owner, it can have grave consequences. And so this game is about the journey of one such Schim in a quirky new puzzle game from its Dutch developers.

The first few chapters are a tutorial, introducing you to a young child and their Schim (depicted as a small black blob with blinking eyes). At first, the Schim is tethered to the child and cannot stray far. It moves between shadows by jumping with the A button but cannot survive in bright light for long. If it is caught, it moves back to the nearest safe (and static) shadow it occupied – which could be a distance back, in later levels. As the child plays happily in the backyard, you discover how the Schim can interact with objects using the X button. This can cause various actions – honking a horn or ringing a bicycle bell, rubbish being thrown out of a litter bin, or an automatic barrier lifting and lowering. At later stages it can even be used to change traffic signals, altering the traffic flow – and allowing the Schim to catch a lift in the shadow of a moving vehicle. Flickering and moving lights also pose a challenge as the shadows can momentarily disappear.

A short while into the game, the young child has grown up, gone to school, graduated, and started a new job. But when they are fired from that job, a disaster happens – carrying their belongings home, the exhausted and depressed human falls, meaning the tether breaks and the Schim is catapulted loose! Now each chapter becomes a quest to try and catch up with the human again, “catching a lift” with something or someone heading in the right direction. Within each chapter, there are also hidden objects. Should the Schim find them, the object is shown larger onscreen and then placed back in its rightful place – freeing another Schim. There are also Big Schim hidden around the levels to discover and interact with. It’s not just objects that you can hide in the shadows of, you can also use the moving shadows of joggers, pedestrians, and animals. Interacting with animals can give fun noises or make an animal move and give a helpful guiding shadow. The target for each chapter is a highlighted vehicle, human or animal waiting at the exit which can be shown by holding the Right Trigger. To help visualise the path, the view can be rotated with RB and LB, and in certain stages, coin-operated binoculars can be used to view the surrounding area.

“As SCHiM progressed, I did find myself wishing for a little more variety; there are only so many times you can travel along the same sort of street using the same array of objects.”

The eye-catching visual style is very clever, a cartoon-style line drawing of buildings and objects that is easy to look at – and it helps distinguish the shadows more readily. Clever lighting effects give changing times of day as well as the helpful shadows, and the atmosphere was greatly enhanced in one level by a shower of rain. The viewing area scrolls smoothly and keeps up with the player’s movements well, rotating at will with the extra controls. The highlight of key people did remind me of the classic “glowing child” in the Ready Brek adverts at times, but it is useful to show your target. As the game progressed, I did find myself wishing for a little more variety; there are only so many times you can travel along the same sort of street using the same array of objects. The springy advertising boards and the parasols help by letting you hold down X and then fling you some distance, sliding towards the next shadow. Bouncy overhead cables and rotating clothes driers are fun to use. The interiors of the factory and the supermarket were also a positive change of pace, tasking you with more interaction and timing. The background music is suitably soothing and atmospheric. I did enjoy the sound effects, particularly the honking cars and ringing bicycles; the animal noises also added another layer of sound and surprised me when I reached the Zoo and interacted with an elephant.

The biggest problem for me was that the game did not seem to decide whether it wanted to be a cosy, easy-going exploration game or a more challenging puzzle game. Initially, you are on an easier difficulty setting, with the “Extra Jump” enabled; this lets you reposition yourself after the first jump out of the shadow, vital if you have misjudged the distance or timing of a shadow you want to reach. On completing the game, the option to switch off Extra Jump becomes available along with the harder Risky Mode. This gives a limited number of “respawns” per level, and indeed there is an Achievement for completing all the levels without respawning that will be a challenge for players to achieve. There are fun Achievements, however, from occupying all the different animal types to spreading pieces of litter.

There is a philosophical, meditative angle to the story and the way it plays out. But suddenly over two-thirds of the way through there is a jarring, almost surreal scene where the human “falls” into their shadow. I assumed this was a metaphor for depression or crisis, with the Schim able to guide the blue-coloured human back to happiness. The minimalistic chapter transitions and wordless revealing of the storyline are an incentive to keep playing to see the ending, but I felt underwhelmed at the thought of going back to play more.

The final chapter was dramatic and cleverly played with the existing mechanics, but at the same time it felt rather different to the rest of the game thanks to its enforced pace of movement.

SCHiM Xbox Series X Review Summary:

The original idea for this game was a platform game where you dodged between shadows, and it was to be the graduation project of its two main developers. What has emerged has a quite different feel. If you can enjoy the clever stylings and philosophical angle, then there is an interesting and distinct experience here which impressed me with the way it told its story without using dialogue. But many players will find the respawning and repeating of sections too repetitive to keep them engaged.