The Roottrees are Dead

This has been my favourite game in a LONG TIME! Got it for myself as a little treat during a rough time and it has cheered me up immensly (sort of... it's kinda sad, but oh well)! It's a good balance of tricky, but definitely doable without hints (I tried my best to not use that little duck but UGH when I did, the answer seemed SO obvious). The main story ending (haven't gotten to the Roottreemania one yet - excited!!) was so satisfying and came together so well. If I ever get amnesia, someone put this game in front of me (and then take me to a hospital xx)

Formally, it is a detective game. In reality, it is late-90s online stalking simulator, but make it family genealogy-ish. You are not investigating a murder, but reconstructing the family tree of a rich candy dynasty using fake old-style browsers, newspapers and books, and suspiciously tiny details hidden in plain sight. The main skill here is close reading: catch the important bits, compare names and dates, and use your imagination just enough, but not too much. Basically, English exam training, but more fun. The hint system is also great. If you get stuck, it points you in the right direction instead of just handing you the answer, which I appreciate, honestly. Let me feel smart, but not abandoned. As a detective story, though… eh. After Return of the Obra Dinn or even Do Not Feed the Monkeys, this feels much weaker. The mystery kind of breaks on a narrative level: the mysterious client asks you to find things they basically already know, and some conclusions rely less on evidence and more on “well, I guess this must be it.” So in the end you are mostly digging up a family skeleton just to keep the gossip machine running. Weirdly enough, the DLC is better, because the task is cleaner: figure out who actually belongs to the family and who is faking it. That gives the whole thing more structure. But yes, you have to crawl through the main game first. And then there is the art. My god!! The visuals look so aggressively AI-generated that my first instinct was to go complain about the lack of an AI disclosure on Steam. The funny part is: the original game jam version actually did use generated images, but for the Steam version the developers hired an artist and redrew everything. Somehow it still looks even more AI than real AI. The devs even had to post the artist’s portfolio in the Steam discussions as proof, which is honestly hilarious. So yes: recommended, but with a big subnote. Play it if you want fake internet archaeology, genealogy puzzles, some family drama, and the joy of writing names in a notebook like a total maniac -- like me. Just don’t expect an Obra Dinn-level detective masterpiece.

Somewhere between Hypnospace Outlaws and The Case of the Golden Idol, this game exists. A excellent puzzle that made me really invested into the Roottree family.