The Roottrees Are Dead – Free Game Recommendation

A few months ago I got the exciting opportunity to playtest an in-development game by solo developer Jeremy Johnston. Despite having no idea what I was signing up for, I ended up really liking the final product and heartily recommend it to everyone! The Roottrees Are Dead is free and playable in-browser on itch.io, and currently has 5/5 stars with 189 user reviews!

Taking place in the dial-up era of computer history, The Roottrees Are Dead stars a genealogist who’s hired by a mysterious woman to assemble a family tree for the Roottrees, a famous pedigree who made their fortune through an iconic candy brand. The core gameplay loop involves using an in-game search engine to scour news articles, blog posts, magazine/newspaper archives, and other sundry publications to place each family member on an extensive branching chart, complete with pictures where you can find them. Overall the gameplay is highly reminiscent of Her Story and Return of the Obra Dinn, so if you like that sort of genre then you should absolutely check this title out.

(One thing I want to note, if you watch that above-linked video playtest, that was an older developmental version and there are several improvements and updates to peripheral systems. Most notably “Importance” was renamed and refluffed into “Intuition,” which had been my idea ^_^ )

One thing that really impressed me with this game was how prepared it was for any avenue that the player may tackle their investigation. There are a ton of different ways to obtain the info you seek, you don’t need to worry about becoming completely stuck and everyone’s playthrough will be different. I’m intentionally staying vague on details because you really should go play it if you want to experience it for yourself. And, if it’s not clear enough, I encourage you to!