Breaking news – a private jet has crashed, killing candy company owner Carl Roottree, his wife, and his three beautiful daughters. Thanks to a law put in place long ago by the company’s founder, anyone related by blood to the Roottree family is about to get very, very wealthy. You, a genealogist, have been hired by a mysterious client to piece together the sprawling, complex Roottree family tree (or is that family-Root-tree?) But, as you do, you might just unearth some secrets “America’s Sweetest Family” was desperately trying to keep hidden.
Developed by Jeremy Johnston and Robin Ward, The Roottrees are Dead began its life as a free game on itch.io. The official Steam release features updated art and music, a new, more intuitive UI, more evidence to find, fully voiced cutscenes, and – best of all – Roottreemania, an entire second mystery to solve once you’ve completed the base game. Even if you previously played the free version, the changes and added content absolutely make the full release worth purchasing.
Gameplay draws inspiration from classic mystery titles like Return of the Obra Dinn and Her Story, with a fun genealogy-focused spin on the typical formula and a delightfully accurate and nostalgic ’90s aesthetic. In your pursuit of a completed family tree, you’ll search the Internet, comb through periodicals, find books via your local library’s extremely out-of-date Web site, and even listen to a few tunes. With your mysterious employer dropping tantalizing hints every time you’ve locked in enough blood relatives on the family tree, you’ll very quickly be drawn into this utterly addictive game as you insist that you’ll stop after “just one more” – over and over and over again.
With about 50 blood relatives (or, as the game styles them, BLOOD RELATIVES) to find, you get a nice variety of difficulty levels. Some Roottrees can be located via a simple SpiderSearch, while others will require combing through every bit of evidence you have, investigating names or phrases that stand out to you, and, sometimes, re-examining what you thought you knew and approaching an existing train of evidence from a new direction. The central mystery is far from easy to solve, but it is extremely rewarding, especially the “Booyah!” notification that pops up every time you’ve confirmed three (later four, as you get down to the last few) Blood Relatives.
The Roottrees are Dead is one of the best mystery games to come out in the last few years, and definitely earns a place alongside such genre luminaries as The Case of the Golden Idol or the aforementioned Return of the Obra Dinn. It combines clever, addicting individual challenges (to find each Blood Relative) with a compelling overarching story (find the truth hidden within the “Top Secret” section of the family tree). Each clue you find and name you lock in is satisfying, and the reveal when everything comes together is shocking in the best way.
One area where mystery games often struggle is the hint system – some give away too much, others too little, and others have good hints but charge you way too many coins for them (I’m looking at you, Professor Layton). The Roottrees are Dead has finally reached that elusive happy medium. You get hints by asking your helpful rubber duck, who starts with something vague – “why don’t you look into this person more?” – and then, if you ask for more hints, gradually becomes more specific – “search [name] in [periodical].” I was so happy to finally get a good hint system – and the game gets quite tricky as you go on, so you’ll definitely need to take advantage of your helpful rubber duck a time or two!
The base The Roottrees are Dead game is already a great, solid mystery – and then the Steam release gives us even more in the form of the all-new Roottreemania mystery. After you correctly assembled the family tree and made many lucky people very wealthy, people all around the world are coming out of the woodwork claiming to be “secret Roottrees” born from extramarital affairs. It’s up to you once again to prove who’s lying, who’s telling the truth, and who might be concocting an elaborate scheme to get their hands on that sweet, sweet candy money.
Roottreemania is another extremely well-written mystery, with new evidence and new characters that build on the same core gameplay loop as the original. The difficulty level has definitely been raised – you will need to carefully examine every piece of evidence, go back to some you already discovered, and truly rely on your own sleuthing skills and deductive reasoning to find out a truth that may be even bigger and more scandalous than any you previously found. I really liked how this secondary mystery built on the idea that “a seemingly minor or throwaway name or phrase could be the key to solving the entire thing.” I audibly gasped more then once at some of the reveals in Roottreemania!
I came out of The Roottrees are Dead with only two minor complaints. The first is that, at one point during the first game, you are challenged to unscramble some photographs of potential Blood Relatives. One of these unscramblings is an extremely frustrating slide puzzle that requires you to manipulate individual squares on a grid. This puzzle took me twenty minutes to solve, and I became extremely frustrated because the hint system did not have anything helpful and there was no “skip puzzle” or even “return puzzle to default state” button (I definitely made things harder for myself by getting pieces even more scrambled up then they were at the start.) This puzzle sent everything grinding to a halt at a point when the investigation had really started to heat up, and it was frustrating to stall out here with nothing to do but keep trying when all I wanted to do was go back to hunting down those Blood Relatives.
The second complaint is that, near the end of Roottreemania, you reach a point where the hint system is disabled and the rubber duck tells you “I can’t help you any more, you need to solve this on your own.” I got well and truly stuck – in particular, there was a photograph I needed to find, and I simply could not figure out the right search, and the game wouldn’t let me submit a guess without a photo of the last missing Roottree. I get wanting to have a high-difficulty challenge at the end, but I think there need to be a few vague hints that players can access at this point if they get stuck for hours like I did.
I spent most of this review talking about the gameplay and story – the most important elements of a mystery – but I do want to give a quick shout out to The Roottrees are Dead’s aesthetic and music. Everything is delightfully 1990s, from “Got Milk” ads to outdated library Web sites. The small 3D “living room” in which the player resides while sleuthing, which is decorated in a lovely 90s fashion, really adds a sense of grounding and reality to the game that I loved.
There is a ton of music to listen to throughout the game, and it varies a lot from catchy pop tunes to slower and more melancholic pieces. One thing I really loved is that, when you are investigating some Roottrees who are musicians, you can actually listen to some of their songs. This was a really cool immersive touch that added a lot to the game. One particular “one hit wonder” track that you can find early in the game is a particular ear worm, and I kept going back and listening to it again. Some of those Roottrees weren’t the best of people, but man, could they sing!
Overall, The Roottrees are Dead is an excellent mystery game that will hopefully take its rightful place among the best of the best. It has unique genealogy-focused gameplay, a good blend of difficulty levels, a compelling story, and a fun aesthetic. Whether you are a beginner sleuth or someone who has been devouring mystery games since the days of Nancy Drew and Laura Bow, I implore you to pick up The Roottrees Are Dead. Because the only thing more addictive than a classic piece of Roottree Candy “5Pieces” is the thrill of locking in another set of BLOOD RELATIVES on the family tree!
Editor’s Note: The slide puzzle referenced in this review can now be skipped via a “Skip” button. More hints have also been added to the final section of Roottreemania, after the “Top Secret” section has been revealed.
Kate played The Roottrees are Dead on PC via Steam using a provided review copy.
