The docket
Standing business, what is open, what slipped, and the thing your particular desk noticed first.
GAME DOSSIER · COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT SIM · SHALOM DESK
One Jewish year. One very old boiler.
Choose a desk inside a fictional congregation and carry it from Cheshvan through the year. Big decisions arrive inside months full of ordinary work that still has consequences.
ONE LINK◆NO ACCOUNT◆NO INSTALL◆BUILT FOR A SPECIFIC WORLD
A game about invisible work.
Most management games manufacture a crisis every minute. Jewish Community Simulator is comfortable handing you a Tuesday. The building is old. A family has gone quiet. Religious school has a carpool problem. The bulletin still has to go out.
Every congregation contains four staff roles and a building full of work that belongs to somebody. Your own queue matters more when you neglect it, because invisible work still has consequences.
This is a project of Shalom Desk, built by Jacob Sager at Brand New Colors.
The world supplies the mechanics.
The specificity is structural: it changes what the player can do, what each choice costs, and what the ending remembers.
The decision
One call the month turns on. Costs are visible; some choices only appear for the role you picked.
The work
Spend a limited pool of attention on the work your role can actually do. The rabbi cannot file every grant; the office manager is not doing hospital rounds.
The report
Dues, tuition, gifts, payroll, upkeep, attendance—and the community life that happened anyway.
WHY IT BELONGS HERE
Institutional knowledge becomes the world.
This is the hyper-niche game idea at full resolution. A congregation is not a generic nonprofit with Jewish vocabulary painted on top. Its calendar creates work. Its building creates work. Its leadership roles reveal different information, and community memory changes what an ordinary decision means.
That specificity is the game system. The same logic can turn a profession, association, workplace, or community into something playable without sanding away the parts insiders actually recognize.
The congregation already has a past.
Four Jewish movements cross with four kinds of place and a larger set of institutional histories to create 192 congregations. One may be a 1927 building with no parking. Another is a Sun Belt community inventing traditions in real time.
A congregation is not a generic nonprofit with Jewish vocabulary painted on top. Its calendar creates work. Its building creates work. Leadership roles reveal different information, and community memory changes what an ordinary decision means.
BEFORE YOU PLAY
Useful answers, no mystique.
Do I need synagogue experience?
No. People who know congregational life will recognize more texture, but each decision explains the work in front of you.
Which role do I play?
Choose the rabbi, cantor, education director, or office manager. The role changes the work you can see and the attention you can spend.
Is this a trivia game?
No. It is a management simulation about attention, judgment, and institutional memory.
Where does it run?
Free in your browser at Shalom Desk. No email is required to start.
Why it belongs here.
This game demonstrates the studio’s central claim: a real place, practice, community, or text contains better game mechanics than a broad theme pasted on later.
For commissioned work, the game goes with the client.Studio originals remain ours. A commissioned client receives the whole commissioned game and a practical source handoff under the agreement. We keep pre-existing tools and generalized craft; confidential material and distinct client expression stay with the client. READ THE OWNERSHIP FAQ ↗
Other worlds on the shelf.
Follow the mechanics into another place, practice, memory, or shared text.
PLAY OR BUILD
Take a seat at the desk.
The playable build is free. If this makes you think of a world only your people would recognize, that may be the next game.