The Shivah

I've spent time with a lot of short adventure games that apologize for their length by packing in padding. The Shivah does the opposite. It clocks in around two hours, knows exactly what it wants to say, and ends before it overstays its welcome. That kind of discipline is rare, and it's the first thing you notice. You play Rabbi Russell Stone, a conservative Jew presiding over a near-empty synagogue in New York City, whose sermons have grown as hollow as his congregation's attendance. The inciting event is a murder. A former member of Stone's flock, Jack Lauder, has been killed and left him over ten thousand dollars in his will, despite an ugly falling-out eight years prior. Stone becomes both suspect and self-appointed investigator, working across Manhattan to untangle what Lauder's death actually means. The noir bones are classic, but the spiritual scaffolding underneath is what makes this one worth your time. Stone is constantly asking himself why he is doing any of this, whether God is watching, and what obligation he owes to a man he failed. Those questions land because the writing is sharp enough to earn them. The mechanics are almost entirely dialogue-driven. Forget inventory puzzles. You accumulate clues in a separate tab and combine related ones to form deductions, which you can then press characters on in conversation. The standout system is the Rabbinical response option in every dialogue tree. Rather than giving a direct answer, Stone responds to a question with another question, a classically Talmudic technique that becomes a literal combat mechanic in confrontation scenes called Rabbinic Duels. In these moments, provoking doubt in an opponent through well-timed questions can determine whether Stone lives or dies. It sounds gimmicky written out; in practice, it feels completely native to the character. There is also a "Kibbitz" commentary mode, where developer Dave Gilbert appears on screen to walk you through design decisions, a lovely touch for anyone curious about how a game this focused came together from what started as a competition entry. The weaknesses are real and worth naming. The pixel art in this Kosher Edition remaster is serviceable rather than beautiful, and a handful of the voice performances are uneven. If you miss a crucial piece of dialogue or fail to examine the right object, progress stalls without much feedback. The three endings are meaningfully different and reward a second run, but some players will find the moral logic of the branching choices a little blunt on closer inspection. This is, at its core, an early work, the seed from which Wadjet Eye's later and more polished games, including the Blackwell series, grew. For anyone who gravitates toward story-led adventure games that treat their subject matter with genuine respect, The Shivah is a compact argument that games can hold their own against literary fiction. The soundscape is muted and deliberately melancholy, the pacing patient without being slow, and the central question, whether a man of faith has any business playing detective, is never quite resolved the way you expect. I will defend a two-hour game that earns every minute of it, and this one does.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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