Game Review: The Ghost and the Golem

When I went into Choice of Games’ Jewish shtetl-themed text adventure ‘The Ghost and the Golem’, I expected to do one, maybe two playthroughs and then put it down. I'm now coming up on 10+ playthroughs and I’m still going. Part of this is me being an Achievement hunter, but that alone wouldn't hold my attention; it's the perfectly realised setting and consistently delightful writing that keeps me here. If you've ever read a Sholem Aleichem or Isaac Bashevis Singer translation then you'll be enchanted by how well Benjamin Rosenbaum has captured their very specific style. The narration is laugh-out-loud funny at points and then brutal or spine-tingling at others. 

The historical details I recognised made me grin and the ones I didn't made me want to go down a research rabbit hole; which the game enables you to do by coming with a built-in bibliography! Speaking as someone who's already semi-immersed in this historical setting / literature tradition, I have no idea if the sheer amount of details would be alienating or a good jumping-off point for someone who isn't. However, the option to dial up or down the amount of untranslated Yiddish plus the inclusion of a glossary shows that some effort has been put in to make the history accessible to newcomers.

Somehow even the glossary made me laugh out loud, albeit in the most nerdy way possible. I feel deeply called out, well done.

The options to play as a queer character (including nonbinary, trans and intersex identities) are both welcome and refreshingly well-integrated into both the setting and the narration. Playing as a nonbinary character on my first playthrough, I was concerned that it might end up being little more than a side-note, or otherwise that it'd interact with the setting in a way that felt inauthentic. But at least for me, there was enough thought put into how a person in this setting might conceive of their own queerness and how others might conceive of it.

Without spoiling the possible endings, it's clear there's a certain set of ending conditions that the game is weighted towards. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but it becomes clearer over multiple playthroughs. Still, there's been enough variation in the paths to get to the ending that it hasn't lost my interest yet. I expect to stay grabbed by it for a while (or at least until I can get a few more of those farsholtn Achievements!)

Yes, Narrator. I want my little dollops of praise, already. Sue me.