Shivah is a Yiddish word for the period of mourning after the death of a family member. I learnt that from the game The Shivah, which contains a small Yiddish dictionary.
The Shivah is an adventure game of the classic point-and-click variety. The player is a rabbi called Russell Stone. He has a hard time dealing with a diminishing number of visitors to his small New York synagogue and a growing pile of unpaid bills. A police officer visits him to inform about the murder of Jack Lauder, a former member of his synagogue, and Stone is the main suspect. Curious about the murder and about why Lauder entrusted Stone with a large sum of money in his will, Stone starts a small investigation himself about the murder.
This is a solid criminal drama, but it feels a little bit short and most of the problem solving activities in the game are quite straight-forward. I felt that some almost silly situations within the game did not really fit into its overall mood with the themes of moral choices and lost faith. I am such a serious person.
The music in the game is soft and non-intruding and the voice acting is unusually well done for a game of this type. The graphical design does not look particlarly good, but I can call it a pastiche of older games to be nice. I am not only serious, I am nice too.