This review was originally written on 08/15/2018.

Technical Information

Developer: Wadjet Eye Games
Publisher: Wadjet Eye Games
Release Date: Nov 1, 2013

The Shivah tells the story of a rabbi who is about to close his synagogue due to debt. On top of that, he’s completely unmotivated to continue his spiritual journey, as if his work no longer has value or meaning. Then, to make matters worse, Russell Stone (the protagonist) is visited by an investigator because he is the prime suspect in a murder. An acquaintance of his was found dead and, as if that weren’t enough, left $10,000 in his name. Suspicious? Very much so, except for the fact that Russell hasn’t spoken to this person in years.

Final Thoughts – Analyzing the game as a whole

Graphics and UI

The attention to detail in the pixel art is noticeable, especially the characters’ faces during dialogue. But I also think the animations left a lot to be desired, especially from the middle to the end of the game.

The HUD does its job well, but since there are few items to be acquired throughout the game, I felt there was too much empty space in the inventory. This could have been better thought out, perhaps by using a smaller, centered HUD instead of one that takes up the entire top part of the screen.

Soundtrack and Sound Effects

The dialogues are good and the game shares a bit of Jewish culture with us, it even has a mini-dictionary with some words and their meanings, which in itself is worth the purchase. Games with a cultural background, no matter how small, always add a touch of care and detail to the work.

Gameplay

The sad part for me was finding out the game is short. I think even with a linear story, they could have worked more on the interactions, added more characters to make the story richer. Having more back-and-forth between scenarios, key items, you know? That kind of thing ends up drawing us in more and making us curious to find out what’s going on behind it all.

The gameplay is easy, but unfortunately, I ended up running into a pretty annoying and easy-to-reproduce bug: the dialogues started skipping way too fast and the avatars would flicker. I had to close and open the game again to fix it. The sad part is that there are dialogues that don’t happen again, so I ended up leaving them behind. :/

Another negative point is that when a character finishes speaking (via audio), the next text follows immediately. People who don’t have much practice with English might struggle with this.

You can have several saves and name them, and for games of this genre, that makes things a lot easier.

Replayability and Game Retention

Since the game is short, the replay value is high! Both for seeing all the endings and for getting all the achievements.