The Roottrees are Dead review – The sleuth is out there

Feuds. Scandal. Overachievers. Black sheep. Judgemental relatives. Intergenerational conflict. Dirty secrets. Regardless of who you are, or where you sit on the social ladder, chances are that when you look at your genealogical tree you’ll spot all of these things. It’s simply the messy nature of family. And family is the central theme of casual puzzle game The Roottrees are Dead, which comes to PC today, 15 January, through Steam.

Set in 1998, complete with a retro 2D and 3D aesthetic, plus player tools of the era, The Roottrees are Dead kicks off with the death, in a plane crash, of popular models The Roottree Sisters, and their company president father. The Roottrees are part of a massively successful candy empire going back five generations, and with their passing, their billion-dollar fortune must be equally split between all blood relatives in keeping with the wishes of the family’s founding patriarch. A mysterious figure recruits you, a brilliant genealogical detective, to do just that, locking down the identities of everyone on the 50-person Roottree family tree. That means trawling the in-game Internet, periodicals and public library for clues that will allow you to piece everything together.

On that note, it’s a smart move setting the game in the late 90s. With the time period pre-social media, and in the early years of the World Wide Web’s mainstream uptake, players are using a more focused data set, cleverly chained together. While you’re likely to find things on the “notable” Roottrees, gleaning information on side figures demands eagle eyes and creativity with keywords to navigate the various search engines.

The Roottrees are Dead should appeal of fans of similar deductive games with a throwback look, like Her Story and The Case of the Golden Idol, where every piece of evidence is loaded with clues to help you unravel the mystery. Featuring a laid-back jazz lounge score, it’s an ideal game to sit quietly musing over with a glass of wine during the evening. Or evenings, as the compelling puzzler can take you upwards of 18 hours if you don’t give in to the temptation of the optional hint system.

Personally, the base game took me seven hours to complete, using hints to point me to relevant documents as my solution progress slowed dramatically in the final third of the playthrough.

If the name The Roottrees are Dead sounds at all familiar, it’s because this version of the game is a commercial remaster and expansion of an older title. Designer Jeremy Johnston released The Roottrees are Dead for the Global Game Jam in 2023, and it ended up on itch.io as a free browser game. However, the first version used AI-generated imagery, and remained in prototype form.

That changed with the involvement of developer Robin “Evil Trout” Ward. The paid version of The Roottrees are Dead out today features original commissioned artwork by board game veteran Henning Ludvigsen; interface tweaks to make navigation sleeker and more logical; professional audio; and even Roottreemania, a full-length expansion that provides players with a new infidelity-centred mystery to solve. Roottreemania unlocks after completing the original game.

The only real gripe about The Roottrees are Dead is that gameplay does feel a bit one note. That’s to be accepted with this type of game, but the sudden inclusion of puzzle variety right at the end spotlights what could have been peppered throughout, helping to alleviate research fatigue which naturally increases as answers becomes harder to find. It feels like a missed opportunity.

Still, The Roottrees are Dead is a slick, cerebrally rewarding experience, and it achieves this effect on multiple levels. For the record, the game isn’t a murder mystery. It’s entertainment value doesn’t even lie in the telenovela-esque revelations around the Roottree family trust, which has a very convoluted set-up. Rather, it’s that in the hours you spend getting to know the members of this family – the academics, the rebels, the most recent generation of fresh-faced kids – the message comes through strongly about how decisions made decades previously can shake every branch of a family tree, harming descendants even as they proport to protect them. That’s a realisation worth bringing over to, and contemplating, in reality, and invests The Roottrees are Dead with extra resonance.  

On launch, the revisited version of The Roottrees Are Dead will enjoy a 10% discount. Thereafter, its normal Steam store price will be $19.99 USD, or your local equivalent. The original game prototype will remain available for free on Itch.io.