A game of magical shtetl realism

A game of magical shtetl realism

“YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE.”

These were the opening words of “Colossal Cave Adventure,” which invented the genre of text-based computer games. Text-based, because it ran on a terminal connected to a PDP-10 — a room-sized computer.

Half a century later, the genre is also known as interactive fiction, and it plays on your computer or phone.

And with the recent release of “The Ghost and the Golem,” you can play a game that begins like this:

“Akh, bubbeleh, you want to know about the shtetl? What’s to say? You had to be there. No one knows a lemon is sour, or a date is sweet, unless she tastes it herself.

“Fine, fine, stop nagging already, you can be there. So go, be reborn, like a gilgul! See how you manage, then. Better than me, I hope…”

At which point, you are confronted with your first interactive choice:

Wait, what? What’s a gilgul?

You bet your tukhas I will!

How much Yiddish you want in the game — and how much background on 19th-century Jewish life — is the first choice players will make. Being that it’s 2024, you’ll also be able to choose whether to play as male, female, or non-binary; cis or trans; intersex or not; gay, straight, bi, or asexual.

And depending on the choices you make, you’ll perceive the supernatural events of the story — which features magical amulets and demons — as a believer or a skeptic.

The game takes place in May 1881, when the assassination of the czar has launched the wave of antisemitism that will send many of our ancestors from Russia to America. (Sholom Aleichem’s “nudnik of a dairyman, Tevyeh” makes a drive-by appearance in the first chapter.) And it asks the question: Can you save the shtetl…or do you long to escape it?

Game creator Benjamin Rosenbaum, a novelist and short story writer, has been a finalist for the top science fiction and fantasy awards. It turns out that an interactive game is longer than a novel — he clocked 450,000 words in “The Ghost and the Golem,” to handle all the potential twists in the plot and perspective.

Be warned: If you’re allergic to talmudic citations, this game is definitely not for you.

You can buy “The Ghost and the Golem” on Steam, or direct from the publisher (whose version will let you play on your phone) at choiceofgames.com/ghost-and-the-golem/, where you can also sample the first two chapters for free.

 

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