How SCHiM Can Help Your Family Adjust to Life in the Netherlands

There are so many challenges when moving your family to a new country. Over the years, Expat Republic has helped walk internationals through many of them!

To name but a few, there are legal hoops to jump through around residency rights and working visas. There’s the rigmarole of finding a doctor who understands you. And there are the trials and tribulations of finding temporary and permanent accommodation.

But when the dust settles from all that, one of the great, intangible challenges still remains: culture shock. A new environment where you don’t speak the language is disorienting. On top of that, adapting to a new way of life, traditions, and daily routines is a daunting experience. All that goes double for kids, though. Feeling as though they are leaving their friends and family behind can feel like the end of the world.

If you’re looking for ways to help prepare your little ones for a big move, you need all the help you can get. And that’s where a new video game from Dutch developer Extra Nice.

A Video Game?

Video games often get a bad rap. Headlines around the medium have a heavy focus on alleged promotion of violence, or vice. But like any other form of storytelling, games can be a tool to boost social and emotional skills.

Games can focus on deeper concepts of self-growth. They can supply safe spaces for exploration and experimentation. They can develop a sense of accomplishment. And they can help build positive associations with new experiences.

You can find examples of all this in SCHiM – a cartoon platform game set in the Netherlands. We reached out to lead developers Ewoud van der Werf and Nils Slijkerman to ask if this played into the game.

According to Slijkerman, “the game started with the art style and the mechanics”. They then built the world from there. To do this, they made test levels, “some inspired by locations we know in our area”. That’s when they noticed many players – especially expats – liked these test levels.

“They felt exotic to these testers because of these Dutch-inspired locations,” Slijkerman recalled. “Many referred to Amsterdam or other cities they had visited.”

From that point onwards the team started to “emphasize the Dutch feeling in the game more and more”. And this resulted “in a world that feels alive and fun to explore”. But it also presented a great opportunity to introduce people to these environments.”

Settling in with SCHiM

The story follows a displaced shadow (Schim is the Dutch word for shadow), as it tries to reconnect with its body. As the character – a tiny black frog with big, cute eyes – hops from place to place, it spans the Netherlands.

Games can focus on deeper concepts of self-growth, supply safe spaces for exploration and experimentation, develop a sense of accomplishment, and help build positive associations with new experiences.

You can find examples of all this in SCHiM – a cartoon platform game set in the Netherlands. The story follows a displaced shadow (Schim is the Dutch word for shadow) as it tries to reconnect with its body. As the character – a tiny black frog with big, cute eyes – hops from place to place, it spans the Netherlands.

The shadow belongs to a young boy whose childhood we play throThe shadow belongs to a young boy, whose childhood we play through. In the opening chapter, the boy grows up, and introduces us to some important environments on the way. That includes schools, universities, football pitches, canals and train stations. Every scene has something that young minds will latch onto, and identify with. Even from an adult’s perspective, it’s lots of fun to point to things you recognise from daily Dutch life.

Wow, there’s an obscene number of cheese-wheels at the supermarket!

Oh, there’s a bicycle in the canal – typical!

Look, there’s that weird plastic-child residential area used to warn cars to slow down!

Other key lessons include: always lock your bike in the street. Respect the local wildlife (especially geese). And always look before you leap beside a canal.

Gamifying even the mundane aspects of the Netherlands is a great way to make settling fun. The gorgeous two-tone art style and unique story concept will help with that, too. But things kick up a gear when the story develops, following the severance of the young man and his shadow.

Learning the Language

SCHiM supports 31 different languages, including English, Spanish and French. But if you would like to introduce your kids to some (very minimal) Dutch, you can also play the game in its native tongue. There is only a small amount of textual dialogue explaining the game, and it is quite intuitive. “Beïnvloed” pops up whenever you find an item to interact with – and so its meaning (to influence) is soon muscle-memory.

On this basis, the language benefits of SCHiM might not seem like much. Indeed, as a standalone product, it is not enough. But it’s a fun way to get the ball rolling on a daunting prospect. Dealing with the peculiarities of a new language from scratch.

Further to that, each level also has secret items to discover. As well as adding replay value for ‘completionists’, these introduce you to new phrases. For example, “Je hebt een fiets gevonden!” shows both a central feature of Dutch life and the language’s grammatical structure. A direct translation would be, “You have a bicycle found.” Get ready for plenty more linguistic gymnastics like this in the years to come!

Of course, this is not a substitute for actual Dutch lessons. It will not prime you or your children for conversation with the locals. But it will give you a very basic grounding in how Dutch works – and make you feel good about it. Once you plant a seed like that in a young mind, it will soon go in search of further chances to grow.

Getting the Lay of the Land

Like the written prompts, the general gameplay is simple and effective. You use one analogue stick to move your shadow-frog. You use one button to leap between different points of shade. Sometimes, you encounter an item you can use to your advantage. If you mistime any of these steps and spend too long in the sun, you teleport back to your last point of safety.

Like any platformer, there will be periods when you find the quirks of this system annoying. Not every shadow is a ‘checkpoint’. You may miss a jump, only to find yourself back at the start of the map. Sometimes, you will face a long jump. Interactive shadows, like a spinning washing line, can propel you over these. But they are pernickety in the extreme. Often, you will over or under-shoot the target. The only way to prevail in these cases seems to be through thick-skulled persistence.

No amount of the game’s mellow synth soundtrack makes up for this. So, if you are prone to outbursts of words you don’t want your children to learn… some breathing exercises or a stress-toy might be useful.

Once you do get the hang of leapfrogging about the landscapes, though, a rich world awaits. As your shadow looks to reconnect with its body, you gain insight into several aspects of Dutch life. Most prominent of these is the transit system – and particularly NS train stations. Expats who have visitors know introducing them to this is not always simple. You scan your ticket and walk through the gate on your left. How hard could that be? Well, in a moment of panic, quite hard. But normalizing the process through a game like this could help your kids avoid that panic.

SCHiM offers more than hopping between beeping barriers and blue-and-yellow ticket machines, though. You can also introduce your children to places like Dutch beaches, parks, and even zoos. And then there’s the roads. You can only cross some roads if you interact with the lights at a marked crossing. This is a good way to familiarize your family with Dutch road safety – which is important. Cyclists and cars do not yield in the way you may expect back home. And if you do not use marked crossings on roads, you could get a fine for jaywalking.

Going Through Changes

Finally, there is a less tangible but still important reason why SCHiM is a must for expat family gamers. As noted, moving to a new country is very stressful for a child. It is a period of major transition, during which they will need to process all manner of emotional impacts. But SCHiM is a story that could help them through that, too.

On the surface, this is about a cute little shadow frog, plopping from space to space over relaxing music. But the driving force behind that is a moment of emotional crisis. You split from your body at a time when he is drifting through life. He grows apart from his childhood friends. His relationship with his girlfriend ends. He loses his job. That last impact sees him lose touch with a core part of himself – and sink into a depression. The rest of the game’s charming mission is about helping him process those setbacks. To make peace with the past and make the best of where he is in the present.

So, when going through upheaval (in our jobs, relationships, or homes), we could all use a little SCHiM in our lives.

SCHiM is now available for download on Nintendo Switch, XBOX One, PlayStation 5, and Steam.