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Developer: Ewoud van der Werf, Nils Slijkerman Publisher: Extra Nice, Playism Release: July 18th 2024 On: Windows From: Steam Price: TBC Reviewed on: Intel Core i7-12700F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3080, Windows 11 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 will.

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