The world of indie gaming, and gaming in general, is becoming a crowded house featuring Neil Finn. Nary an easy task is it, standing out with so many projects vying for attention, jostling for mindshare. Developers often have to find a balance between time, place, a name, nostalgia, budget, art style, and mechanics to create a perfect storm of elements; essentially just to push a little way past that imaginary barrier for being noticed by the wider market. More important than all that stuff for being noticed, however, is a ‘cool concept’. And Schim, an indie title by Ewoud van der Werf, initially generated some buzz (or should that be ‘ribbit’) when it was announced due to its intriguing premise: playing as a frog-like creature that leaps from shadow to shadow. Despite the initial excitement, Schim lost much of that momentum making its way to launch, muttering to itself that perhaps a “cool concept” in and of itself is not actually enough.
At its core, Schim revolves around a unique gameplay mechanic: navigating through a minimalist, stylised, isometric world by hopping between the shadows, much like Cliff Richard does in the Devil Woman music video. The premise is undoubtedly an appealing one for a platformer, and more so for its striking duotone visual design style which marries well with the quirky concept. It is equal parts charming and pretentious, like a foreign exchange student wearing a red backpack, but it’s hard to deny that the minimal design here is really nice to look at and not quite like anything else on the market. That said, except in the case of Lucio Fontana’s Spatial Concept ‘Waiting’, minimalism can also be extended too far.
While minimal storytelling can often be something of a panacea in most titles for modern critics (the logic being that gameplay is unimpeded by cutscenes or dialogue, and further the story can be delivered immersively through the gameplay – separating it from that of film) Schim takes it to the other extreme. Little context or motivation for the player is given. They assume control of this strange creature, but why? What is it? It can jump from shadow to shadow, but why? What does it all mean? There’s a scant narrative thread pulling the player forward, which, while sometimes feeling like it could be aiming for something more meaningful, doesn’t allude enough to an awareness of those questions. Ultimately it leaves the gameplay feeling aimless after a while.
The biggest issue with Schim, however, lies in the execution of its core mechanic, afforded by the minimal approach. On paper, jumping between shadows sounds exciting and inventive, but in practice, it is limited by the angle of the sun and is overall too simplistic. The game often “locks on” onto a nearby shadow automatically, leaving the player with little challenge or room for creativity. It doesn’t take long for the novelty to wear off, as the mechanic rarely evolves or presents new challenges that push one to think or navigate differently.
To counter the simplicity, Schim attempts to mix things up with features such as shifting the angle of the camera or emergent scripted elements, such as moving platforms or shadows. For the former, this feature, while potentially offering new ways to explore and solve puzzles, becomes more of a hindrance than a help, particularly playing in handheld mode. It’s far too easy to accidentally shift the camera while lining up a jump, making some sections of the title more frustrating than they need to be. This is compounded by the level design, which opts for overly large environments, making it difficult to maintain a clear sense of direction or objective, and further compounded still, sadly, by the latter feature.
The emergent or scripted elements could be, for example, interacting with a forklift to raise its fork up thus extending a shadow towards a new path, or streetlights turning on and off to reveal new shadows that were not there previously. They do increase the difficulty and are in theory good ideas but more often than not they manifest in that of either people, animals or objects moving on a scripted loop, over and over between large sections of a stage. Unfortunately, not only do these ‘loops’ mean one can be locked to a shadow with no idea of where it could be going, but the scripting is often unreliable and doesn’t get triggered, frustrating progression in spite of the player knowing what they should be doing next.
