Never thought that a low budget indie about a rabbi going through a funk would end up making such an impression but, well, here we are. Don't let the religious trappings fool you: Rabbi Stone, our protagonist, is conveniently the head of an empty, broke synagogue at the start of the story, freeing him from his rabbinical duties long enough to let him do some good old fashioned sleuthing. Not being Jewish and never really having played too many of the 90s adventure titles this game is so clearly modeled on, I can't really speak to either aspects of the game. As a grab bag of ideas on how a solid detective game might be constructed though, "The Shivah" is absolutely fascinating. Gone are the usual hand holding mechanics that make such games more into exercises in guessing from a list of answers than doing any true deductive thinking. What's left is a series of clever little puzzles that each make you feel like a master gumshoe when you work them out. My only real gripe is that the game feels more like a proof-of-concept demo than a finished product. The deduction puzzles are fun but rudimentary; let's just say that if the Jewish community is really this bad at picking passwords in real life, they're in for one hell of a rude awakening. For me, the real value of "The Shivah" is that it makes me excited to play the other games developed by Wadjeteye since its release. Whoever did this one had some fantastic ideas. I can't wait to see how they fleshed those ideas out once they had a little more time and budget to work with.
