Shivah (2006)

Love the music, writings, voice actings (do listen to the Bloopers! ) and arts. The system gave me one of the best Eurika moments in my experience with this genre of games. The story is mostly a Hardboiled detective one, despite its Jewish cultural background. I wish it was longer so as to make more use of the system and elaborate the plot for a little bit more, the current version starts rushing once past a certain point. btw the final fight is surely a rabbiacal one XD

I really wanted to like this game for its unusual subject material and theme. However, I bounced right off it twice - once when trying the demo on PC and a second time when playing the full game on my phone. While the adjusted UI for smartphones was quite good, I dimply couldn't get all into an adventure game (with lots of clue-hunting and memory tricks) when playing in a mobile setting, with its short sittings and many distractions.

I'm not sure exactly where I stand on The Shivah. On the one hand, it's a point-and-click adventure with reasonable, enjoyable puzzles, a really solidly written story, and a (thankfully sensitively handled) Jewish twist on a classic film noir recipe. You play as Russell Stone, a down-on-his-luck rabbi running the saddest little synagogue in Manhattan. Faced with imminent bankruptcy, you suddenly find yourself inheriting a tiny fortune from a dead former member of your congregation who, by all rights, has every reason to despise you. With the police eyeballing you as their most likely suspect and your faith teetering on the edge of total collapse, you set out to discover exactly what's going on, armed with nothing more than a mean left hook and a knack for answering questions really obnoxiously. I quickly found myself liking the cast and appreciating the effort that went into the voice acting, and you can tell the dev team put a lot of love into bringing the story to life.

On the other hand, it's noticeably short (I finished the game, replayed it, got every ending, and snagged every Steam achievement in under three hours), and it introduces features that get used exactly once before being set aside for the rest of the game. While this is better than a game that runs too long and relies too heavily on adventure game non-logic, I did wind up feeling just a little bit cheated. I'm not saying I wouldn't tell my adventure game-loving friends to try it out, but I think I might wait until it hits a Steam Sale first.