I truly love slice of life, real stories of just us… the average human being living the difficult life that we live. Being fired, buying pizza, getting lost in the rain, finding yourself. At the center of SCHiM this is what you really get. It starts feeling zen, simple, relaxing with a minimalist monochromatic like a moving visual novel with a cute platforming mechanic and for a few levels it really feels that way. The difficulty goes up a little, but not by much as you also feel your heart strings get pulled as the story told moves along.
Then suddenly you are in a platformer. You are timing jumps, getting lost, getting turned around, you don’t know where to go or what to do. Every time you think you’re that much closer to happiness it gets swept away and you’re chasing it. I honestly was caught off guard by how quickly the challenge upped. I was gleefully jumping along from position to position and then… the world just changed. Lights flickered, shadows moved. This is NOT a bad thing, it made SCHiM something totally different than what I was experiencing though.
One of the most fun things though is interactive with the world and discovering what you can interact with and how it reacts. The dog barks, the cat meows, the bird flies, garbage drops out of cans, balls bounce, cars honk, ducks too… it’s so much fun and this is where the zen exists and stays existing. To have this dichotomy of such a zen experience that also becomes a difficult and challenging platformer is what I feel makes SCHiM so worth the time and energy you’d put into it.
Here’s the launch day accolades trailer:
Be aware that while SCHiM is available NOW on Steam, Xbox One/Series X|S, PlayStation 4/5, and Nintendo Switch for $24.99 (regional prices will vary) with a 10% launch discount on Steam & the Nintendo eShop for a limited time it also will be getting a physical release from iam8bit on PS5, PS4 and Switch.
