The Shivah

User Rating: 4 | The Shivah: Kosher Edition PC

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.