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Schim review: plopping between shadows as a polterfrog makes for a very comforting puzzlerHop to it
Hop to it
Image credit:Extra Nice/Playism
Image credit:Extra Nice/Playism
Schimis different: you play as a frog of the shadows, not some green attention-seeker. And in a mundane world of vibrant colour, you’re to bounce between patches of shade in search of a human pal whose shadow you’ve been unwittingly severed from. What ensues is a charmingpuzzlerof both freedom and flow, which genuinely has you view everyday environments through the googly eyes of a phantom amphibian. It’s a lovely thing, if perhaps not as emotionally charged as it implies early on.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Extra Nice/Playism
Schim ran really well on my Steam Deck, with only the very slightest of hitches. No complaints. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Extra Nice/Playism
The game doesn’t really end up going in that direction, sadly. Instead, levels become small open-ish zones where you’re simply trying to catch up with your human. Who is, for the most part, forever just out of reach because he’s commuting to work or wandering through a supermarket, browsing the frozen aisle for a suitable pizza. In the end, you learn a bit about his job and his quiet existence, but the creativity of the intro left me wanting more from the story proper.
Then again, I am a glutton for an emotional tale and despite Schim not quite delivering in that sense, it’s still a wonderful time. In the pursuit of your pal, you’ll contend with all sorts of ordinary places turned into pools of shadow and, in turn, obstacle courses to bound through. Gardens where families picnic and children run around, carefree. Mazelike traffic on busy intersections. Rainy streets where folks stride under umbrellas. There’s lots of variety and, crucially, little in the way of pressure.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Extra Nice/Playism
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Extra Nice/Playism
What I really like about Schim is its chill approach to plopping around as a lil' froggy guy. Those gardens and streets are to be explored at your own pace, and if you ever mess up a shadow hop and land in direct sunlight for a bit, you don’t permanently die or anything. Instead, you respawn back to a fairly forgiving spot and crack on like nothing happened. Even as someone with a notorious lack of puzzlesolving nous, I found everything pretty easy, so those looking for serious headscratchers might find the levels tend to blur into one after a while.
That doesn’t mean that pressure iscompletelyabsent as you’re bouncing around. Schim’s about flopping between manmade inconvenience, like you’re an invisible salmon surging up the dark spots of some scaffolding. It’s about flicking the mouse or shoulder buttons to survey the area before you take those big leaps, seeking opportunities to quickly bridge gaps, or gently squeezing the material world to benefit your spiritual one. These moments always feel a teeny bit magical, like when you hop into the shadow of a Vespa and turn its light on, creating a shadow from whatever its beam lands on. You can make people sneeze, transforming them from moving vessels into well-positioned stepping stones. I particularly enjoyed one level set in a factory, where you could raise forklift arms to either extend thin strips of shadow or tip over boxes, granting you precious rectangular checkpoints in lengthy sequences of industrial Frogger.
And while I wouldn’t say the tricks (or the levels themselves) develop a great deal over the course of the game, these are small gripes in the grand scheme. It’s just really nice to inhabit the world of a shadowy amphibian and observe our everyday world of material objects as spots to hunker in or paths to exploit. I don’t think the relative ease of the puzzling should put people off, either. Instead, it’s a journey worth embracing and a comforting reminder that there’s always something watching out for us: frogs.
