The Shivah – does the God exist?

Sometimes you want to replay the game for one more time when it seems interesting to you. If you like to point and click, then The Shivah is the best game for you to play and replay.

The main character is Rabbi Russell Stone. He is a man who doesn’t believe in anything or anybody. Once in the evening the policeman comes to our hero to tell him that one former synagogue visitor has been murdered. This was Jack Lauder who had left a big cum to Russell Stone. Stone hasn’t any notion of the motives of such a stupid action as they haven’t communicated for years. This is the beginning of a mysterious story.

In general design of the game seems rather ordinary. Maybe it is not as good as other games have though there is something attractive in it. The music is charming as well, it sounds very naturally. You can hear violin and jazz motives on the background. The voices of the heroes are understandable voiced by the professionals, not by amateurs as presented in many games of this kind.

The game line is very simple. You don’t have any objects to deal with or many heroes to pay attention to. You move across Manhattan though there are not many places to visit there. You even do not have to use your brain too often except several times when you need to communicate with some characters to find out some necessary information.

The game has a funny peculiarity that makes it smart – it is based on the Jewish traditions and culture in general. For instance? The title of  the game means that if your beloved person had died you have to keep “shivah” for seven days after his death. This gives some seriousness to the game. The start of the game is impressive – a cantor sings a traditional Sabbath prayer in the synagogue.

Some really important and serious problems are highlighted while you play the game that differs very much from an easy nature of casual games.

For instance, our main hero is in doubts as to his religious views and Jewish consciousness. Rabbi questions himself about the motives of these or those actions, tries to guess whether there is god or isn’t. This emotional crisis tears our character from the inside.

But then suddenly this crisis is supposed to be a real nonsense. Somehow our poor Rabbi gets into the violent situation that contradicts his views and his morality. Though at the beginning of the game we see Stone a religious person doubting his mission, by the end of the gameplay we notice some traits of the military person in him. While these two hours (it’s the time taken for playing) you see how one storyline is changed by the other almost separate one. Some feelings of our hero seem to belong to someone else.

Dave Gilbert who is a game developer created a new mode named “kibbitz”. It means “gossip” where full commentaries are given to the player with the help of sprites from Stone’s head. If you want to know the sense of the plot, use it and you will not be disappointed.

If we analyze the title of the game The Shivah it contains some mysterious unclear air in its pronunciation. In general this game stands on the separate place among the other games due to the problems described there.