SCHiM – One of the most interesting phenomena of today's modern game market is the frequency of projects appearing with extremely low budget and human resources, but extremely high level of meticulousness and interest, with extremely special and innovative ideas in game making style, gameplay and artistic value.

These particularly interesting phenomena in the gaming industry seem to contrast with the reality of the big game makers, when large, sophisticated games lack meticulousness and new ideas, requiring too much time, effort and money from players – and in the midst of an increasingly saturated and uncertain future of the gaming industry, “small” games that have enough “power” to attract everyone's attention in about 10, 15 years today increasingly prove the special artistic and storytelling potential of games.

So when SCHiMa simple, lovely game from two young artists from the Netherlands, Ewoud van der Werf and Nils Slijkerman, caught the eye of PLAYISM and become a small phenomenon on social networks, there must be something really special hidden in this project, right?

So what is that special thing, and can these two young artists create something truly extraordinary? Let's find out with MarkGame in the article below.

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Jump Into… The Darkness!

At first glance, it is difficult to imagine how the game is played. SCHiMbecause the environments are too detailed, the silhouettes are too complex and unpredictable, and the space-time progression seems to have no consistency with the “play” of the game.

But in the reality, SCHiM is an extremely simple game, the player will control a frog, called SCHiMto “jump” into the shadow of a certain object or character, depending on the situation, this frog can control the movement of that character, as well as activate a certain action with another button.

Basically, SCHiM is a two-dimensional platforming game, but the player moves only on a single plane.

Not only simple in mechanism, SCHiM is also a game with almost no obvious challenge. If our frog jumps out of the light for too long, he will immediately return to the previous shadow without any penalty, other than… wasting a few seconds. The game has no “fail” state, and the puzzles are very simple, mostly just how to make the shadows “connect” together or help our frog jump further.

The game mechanics are fun to look at and play, but they lack any depth. The entire experience of the game instead relies entirely on a particular feeling that the game brings through the game’s story and storytelling techniques. The frog SCHiM is actually… the shadow of a young man, both an inseparable part of him and an objective perspective on his life. After an incident, the frog was separated from his owner, and now the frog must find a way to return to the young man.

Plot and narrative of SCHiM as simple as the gameplay, but what makes the game attractive is the atmosphere, the feeling of the game captures a feeling similar to the way people follow the people they admire and love.

This is the feeling that makes people, even though they are not directly involved in each other's lives, still feel sad and worried when they see those people having difficulties, happy when they achieve good things in life, and pensive when the uncertainties in life surround that person. SCHiM delves into how people can love and empathize with each other unconditionally simply because we love our fellow human beings, or see ourselves in them.

A big part of what makes these emotions so effective is the game's distinctive graphic style. The objects and characters in SCHiM are simple, silent figures, but through their gestures, the way they appear in life and interact with each other in a game environment, although depicted in a monotonous way, but with skillfully changing colors according to the character's psychology and life, as well as extremely detailed animations, everything in the game is turned on in an extremely lively and lovely way.

What makes the game so engaging is the atmosphere, the feeling of the game captures a feeling similar to the way people watch the ones they admire and love.

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Just a “feeling”

Although it creates a very good gaming feeling, the simplicity of the game certainly won't appeal to everyone. The game relies heavily on evoking the player's empathy through the way the game tells the story with images and sounds, to the point that sometimes the writer has to admit that if… the “ball jumping” mechanism is removed, the story will be… SCHiM still doesn't take the weight off at all.

Not only that, this potential ball jumping mechanism is only limited to a two-dimensional plane with extremely simple puzzles. If the game applied its “unique” mechanism in a more diverse and skillful way, perhaps many plot knots would be “unlocked” in more interesting ways, like the way the game The Pedestrian did a great job.

And this monotony and shallowness is not small or worth ignoring at all, easily making many players disappointed when finishing the game.

If the game applied its “unique” mechanism in a more diverse and skillful way, perhaps many plot knots would be “unlocked” in more interesting ways.