Schim review: plopping between shadows as a polterfrog makes for a very comforting puzzler

Lots of games use frogs as a means to appeal to those who believe they are cute, me being one of those people. The humble croaker dominates the wholesome category, where they take centre stage in farming sims or as detectives or as green lads who hop over platforms and hurt enemies by lashing them with their tongues.

Schim is 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 charming puzzler of 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.

Schim’s beautiful two-tone palette is a wonderful visual representation of its universe, one where you’ve got ordinary people going about their lives and a spirit realm that co-exists alongside them. Shadows in the spirit realm are puddles of ink, in which reside the friendly Schim: cutesy frogs who use their strong hind legs to fire themselves between pools and minimise their time in direct sunlight, lest they get frazzled. Some, it seems, are Nomad Schim who plop around willy nilly. Some are BIG SCHIM who reside in the Olympic-sized pools granted by shipping containers. You? You’re a Schim who’s grown up in someone’s shadow – literally – and due to unforeseen circumstances, you’re suddenly disconnected from them. I suppose that makes you a Homing Missile Schim.

The tutorial is the best bit of Schim’s story, a linear series of vignette-style stages that sees you reside in the shadow of a little kid aboard his adorable trike. And as time goes by, you see this kid grow up. One of my favourite sequences is sitting in his shadow as he strolls down a street, the colour palette switching as time skips forwards. He’s made some college friends, got himself a job, a girlfriend, maybe had a tough day. In these moments you’re taught how to bounce between shadows with small presses for little hops, long presses for big hops, and to interact with certain shadows to turn traffic lights off, lower barricades, and generally protect your human. Everything points towards an emotional rollercoaster, perhaps a series of levels where plopping between shadows leads to a deeper understanding of your pal’s life.

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.

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 is completely absent 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.

This review is based on a review build of the game provided by the developer.