SCHiM is an isometric platformer that follows an unusual protagonist’s chase across a monochromatic cityscape. The story is told completely without spoken or written words, so I must infer many details about its premise. I play as one of the titular schims—for what else could the title refer to—a black blob with white, staring eyes that lives in the shadow of a person or object. I see many other schims over the course of the player character’s adventure, but this schim has one particular problem others of its kind do not: It has been separated from the young man in whose shadow it lives. I must help guide the schim across many settings around a bustling city to reunite it with its person.

SCHiM’s hook is built around the player character’s nature. Schims may only exist in shadows. If the player character is exposed to direct light for more than a moment, it vanishes. I am spared the existentially horrific implications of this consequence by SCHiM’s videogame mechanics; if the player character is caught in the light, it reappears in an instant back in the last safe patch of shadow it occupied, ready to attempt the hazardous crossing again. 

To help them move around a world filled with constantly shifting shadows, schims are wonderful jumpers. The character design emphasizes this by giving the player character many frog-like qualities. It has a squat, round shape and powerful limbs that dangle beneath it while it jumps. When it enters and leaves a shadow, it emits a faint sound like a rock gently breaking the surface of water. The player character journeys across the city by leaping between shadows cast by signs, garbage cans, trees, lampposts, cars, bicycles, cats, dogs, people, and any of the other thousands of objects found around a city. Only the city’s buildings seem to be missing their shadows; that would make the schim’s journey too easy.

The player character’s task is made more interesting by the influence it may exert over the entities whose shadows it inhabits. Sentient beings retain their independence; schims can hitch a ride in the shadow of a passing person, dog, or cat, but they are unable to influence that being’s destination. Objects are another matter. While occupying their shadows, the player character may prompt a minor spasm from their forms. Trees shake leaves from their branches. Garbage cans spit up their contents onto the ground. An electric guitar emits noisy, tuneless chords. These incidental abilities add texture to the world but are functionally useless for completing the player character’s goals.

A more significant reaction comes when the player character occupies the shadow of an object with a mechanical function. Instead of a spasm, they gain full control over their mechanisms. Traffic lights may be switched from red to green, pushing cars and pedestrians in directions the schim wants them to go. Gates that block paths may be opened or closed, stretching and contorting their shadows into new bridges the schim may cross. Curiously, the schim responds to objects’ shadows as though they are physical objects. This turns the shadows of sandwich boards and flexible umbrellas into catapults that hurl the schim across huge gaps of light. They can bounce on the shadows cast by clothes wires and use a windsock’s shadow as a makeshift cannon. Anywhere the schim encounters one of these mechanical objects, an interesting platforming puzzle ensues.

SCHiM’s best levels combine these mechanical devices with unusual scenarios. One early level follows the player character’s passage through a delivery company’s distribution center. Crates are carried in all directions along conveyor belts and hoisted by automated cranes, creating trains of shadows the player character must leap between to reach the center’s far side.

Other levels are made more interesting by their lighting. SCHiM’s world is eerily dark and moonless at night, leaving the shadows cast by lampposts and other artificial sources as the player character’s only refuge. One level set during a thunderstorm adds an additional complication to the moonless nights by briefly illuminating paths with lightning flashes. The final level is set in a burning apartment complex that combines the best elements of the nighttime and thunderstorm levels. The depowered environment lit by raging flames that cast exaggerated, terrifying shadows makes for a worthy climax to an isometric platformer.

These scenarios are SCHiM’s highlights. They also account for a fraction of the time it takes me to reunite the player character with its person. Most levels ask them to jump up an ordinary street with no complications. Jumping between shadows quickly becomes routine, then boring. As I near the conclusion, my listless mind is distracted, wondering whether I prefer the long, meandering levels that take several minutes to complete or the short, pointless ones that end in mere seconds. There are numerous examples of both. 

I am astonished to feel that SCHiM, at a mere three hours in length, is too long. This feeling is in large part due to the boring level design. There are too few new ideas introduced in its many spaces to keep the basic premise engaging. The concept is hashed and rehashed until it is ground down into nothing. Even a trip across the floor of a busy grocery store is shockingly uninspired. 

My frustration is also owed to a narrative filled with contrived near-misses. The player character often catches up with its person, then the videogame takes over the action and forces both me and the schim to watch, frozen, while its person wanders off to his next misadventure in the city. The first time this happens, it’s frustrating. The fifth time, it’s comical. By the dozenth time I am shouting for the schim to quit staring at its goal and just jump out and claim it already.

All throughout SCHiM, I ask myself what, exactly, a schim is. Curious if it’s a made up word, I check an international dictionary and find that schim is Dutch for a “shadow” or “apparition, ghost.” SCHiM’s Steam store page gives a more specific answer: A schim is the “soul and spirit” of an “object, thing, or living being.” All of these definitions seem to vaguely fit SCHiM’s player character, yet they only convey a surface level understanding of what a schim is. I don’t know why a schim lives the way it does or what benefit it provides to the person whose shadow it inhabits. The answer should be interesting; “what is the soul” is one of the most enduring unanswerable questions of philosophy.

Despite spending most of SCHiM’s runtime separated from him, the schim’s person plays the significant role in the narrative. The first level introduces him as a boy playing a familiar child’s game: jumping between shadows cast on a sidewalk as though the sunlit parts are burning lava. When the boy runs out of shadows to jump between, he stops to tie his shoes, and for the first time I take control of the schim. I am prompted to make the schim leap from the boy’s shadow into one cast by a nearby van. The boy takes off and the schim must pursue to reunite them; this is SCHiM’s premise in microcosm. For this pair, at least, separation of schim and person seems to not only be possible, but easy and common.

A series of vignettes follows the boy through childhood friendships, teenage disappointments, young love, and ultimately college graduation. But where his peers appear motivated and successful, the schim’s person struggles. Fired from his job, his bike stolen, and missing the bus home, the person’s final indignity is tripping on a protruding brick, spilling a box of his possessions on the ground and knocking the schim from his shadow. The person picks up his belongings but unknowingly leaves his schim behind, prompting the city-crossing adventure.

If a schim is a person’s “soul,” and this person is now deprived of one, then I should get an idea of what a schim provides for their person by his subsequent actions. The main reason the schim’s journey takes them to so many places is because of their person’s continuing efforts to find a new job. In a few short days, they go from brief employment as a moving company porter, a grocery store clerk, and a museum security guard. They are unsuccessful at every job, yet they never stop trying. They go from a soul-filled unsuccessful adult to a soulless unsuccessful adult. They suffer no apparent loss from losing their schim. 

The narrative’s climax sees the person risking his life to rescue a child from a burning building. Only the pursuing schim interacting with the building’s mechanical objects allows them to escape unharmed. The subsequent fame seemingly allows the person to finally land his dream job. The presence of his schim doesn’t make this possible. In fact, it is the separation of the schim from its person and its subsequent efforts to return that makes him heroic. If a schim is a person’s soul, then SCHiM seems to suggest that a person doesn’t need one. It behaves more like a parasite than an integral part of a person’s form. Their person’s shadow is a convenient and comfortable place to live and nothing more.

The schim has no identity, no personality, and no compelling motivation, yet it is the protagonist of a story where something much more interesting happens to the person from which it has become disconnected. SCHiM’s plot is almost literally to separate a person from their schim and have that person go on to have life-changing experiences while the narrative remains focused on their disconnected shadow that does not grow, does not change, and does not even get to witness most of what happens to its owner. Its main action is to jump between shadows like a frog between puddles. SCHiM’s narrative is an abysmal failure.

SCHiM vexes me. I want it to be incredible. A videogame whose player character can only exist in shadows is a wonderful idea for a platformer. Giving it an isometric perspective is an inspired choice to keep the environment feeling three-dimensional without overcomplicating its premise. I find myself disappointed because it fails to capitalize on any of this potential. Videogames are a wonderful medium for storytelling with possibilities that remain unexplored and misunderstood to this day. SCHiM fails to clarify any of them. For a story to be successful, it needs to be about something. The character it focuses on needs to want things, to do things, and to be things. The schim is nothing, and thus the videogame it is the protagonist of is nothing. SCHiM is a boring platformer with an empty protagonist and a wasted story.