The Shivah: Kosher Edition (2013)
Founded by Dave Gilbert, Wadjet Eye Games has been producing entertaining and distinctive indie games since 2006, applying a classic adventure-game formula in personal ways. Released in November 2013, The Shivah: Kosher Edition is a remake of Gilbert’s first commercial project and certainly one of the most unusual adventure games ever made.
The Shivah is not distinctive because its mechanics are exceptional or its execution particularly impressive: it looks like a low-budget resurrection of an early-1990s game. What makes The Shivah unusual is its playable protagonist — a Jewish rabbi — and its themes, which engage with moral questions and matters of faith. Could a game sound less commercial? I laughed in disbelief when I first read its description: “Talmudic combat! Fight the way only a rabbi can.”
The rabbi descends from his ivory tower
In the game, Rabbi Stone leads a Jewish congregation in New York that is on the brink of collapse. The bills go unpaid, and only one elderly woman attends services — and she sleeps through them. Bitter and questioning the meaning of his work, Stone has no idea what to do. In the midst of this despair, he unexpectedly learns that he has inherited a large sum of money from a man who once belonged to his congregation. At the same time, it emerges that the man has been murdered, and the police consider Rabbi Stone a suspect.
Eight years earlier, the rabbi had driven this same man out of the congregation because he wished to marry a non-Jewish woman. Hostility had been declared on both sides. What made the former congregant change his mind — and, above all, will Rabbi Stone change his own? He is forced to re-examine values he once held as absolute.
The rabbi begins investigating the background of the murder himself, not only to clear his own name, but also to find an answer to why the man chose to leave the money to him.
At times, the game’s storytelling is corny and full of clichés, but that only adds to its appeal. The effect is somewhat similar to cult B-movies.
Development
In the remake, the game’s visuals have been noticeably improved, but Gilbert has deliberately refrained from fixing solutions he now considers mistakes or weaknesses, and the original spirit of the game remains intact.
Since the original The Shivah, Dave Gilbert has grown considerably as a game designer, and he can often be heard lecturing on game writing and indie development. The fan base that The Shivah initially gathered has undoubtedly expanded thanks to the Blackwell series, which also features an “unlikely” protagonist. As a producer, Gilbert has left his mark on games designed by others as well — titles such as Gemini Rue, which may be Wadjet Eye Games’ finest release and is well known in adventure-game circles.
Verdict
The Shivah glimmers like a six-pointed star somewhere on the fringes of the adventure-game landscape, and those who discover it feel they have found something truly special — a genuine indie experience. It is as if Gilbert chose something already unpopular and seemingly doomed to fail, and then somehow made everyone fall in love with it.
The Shivah is an example of how a small budget and limited resources can blossom against all odds. For the charmingly rough-around-the-edges The Shivah: Kosher Edition, I give an overall rating of 60 out of 100.
Availability
The Shivah: Kosher Edition is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, as well as for iOS and Android devices. To my knowledge, the original The Shivah is no longer available.