The Shivah

Rabbi Stone is in financial trouble, but one day a police man confronts him about the death of Josh Lauder who has suspiciously left Rabbi $10,000 in his will, making him the lead suspect. Rabbi Stone then turns detective to clear his name.

It's presented as a point-and-click adventure, and there's objects in the scene that you can right click to examine, or left click to interact, but there's nothing actually to pick up. It feels like a prototype/demo since when it really starts going, you are at the end.

It is a short game, taking no longer than 2 hours, and the "puzzles" often involve typing search terms into the computer. It's worth noting names down on paper to piece together a few connections; otherwise you will be stuck. The other problem is that you have to brute force your way into a couple of computer accounts which seems a bit unethical for a Rabbi to do, but it also seemed unbelievable that both people choose very simple passwords with a single word.

So the story mainly progresses based on these coincidences, as well as finding a major character in a pub and only identifying him by asking him about Joe even though you would have no reason to really do so.

There's a couple of confrontational scenes that seem a bit unbelievable. It turns out that Rabbi Stone is a skilled fighter but then in a second confrontation, I expected to be able to use force early on but it wasn't the correct option at that point.

When you fail (which is usually death), you can replay from your autosave, so there’s some trial and error.

The voice acting is mainly fine, but a couple of lines are delivered too loud, and a few lines have a bit of a crackle.

The shivah is the first game from Wadget eyes, the current masters when it comes to delivering old school point and click adventures. For a first game, this one already featured a lot of their best qualities, and on top of that it is free to anyone who wants to pick it up.

You play as a rabbi as you try to encover the murder related to your synagoge. Its very well written, and thats really the main appeal of the game. The characters are multifaced and you are never quite sure on whose side they are. This makes the story much more gripping and enjoyable to progress through. There are a lot of strong themes in the game, as well as the relationship beteween the murders and religion which i felt that they were well explore. Well, as well explored as they can be for a 1 hour game.

As far as gameplay goes, its a point and clicker. There are a few puzzles to solve in this game, but they are all straight forward and dont really require much thought. Nothing close to the boneheaded logic of old Sierra games. There are also a couple of action moments, and these are quite clunky to play, but thankfully these encounters are brief.

Visually the game has a nice pixel aesthetic, which is quite charming.

Overal its a solid title, which is entertaining throughout its duration. Its not amazing, or a mindblowing experience by any stretch of the imagination. But due to the pedigree of this developer and the strenght of the story i can recommend this one to fans of the genre.