Robin Ward: The Roottrees Are Dead | Review

The Roottrees Are Dead Review | The year is 1998. A private jet belonging to the Roottree Corporation has crashed. On it were The Roottree Sisters and their parents. Combined, they were worth over a billion dollars. Now, due to the eccentricities of their great, great grandfather, Elias their money must be redistributed to the rest of the family. But who’s actually a BLOOD RELATIVE? That’s where you come in.

Time Played: ~11 Hours
Console: PC / Mac / Steam
Recommended For: Fans of Do Not Feed the Monkeys, The Golden Idol

The Roottrees Are Dead is an updated and upgraded version of a popular itch.io game released as part of a 2023 game jam. It’s 1998 and Carl Roottree, the current president of the Roottree company, has just died and you are visited in the middle of the night by a mysterious figure who tasks you to use the new-fangled ‘world wide web’ to complete the family tree and identify who the next president should be, as well as who may have a stake in the family trust. 

Genealogy Mystery

The Steam page for “The Roottrees are dead” describes this as a “genealogical mystery”, which I think buries the lead. While your task is to complete the family tree, and its many, many branches, there is much more to the game than that, and you soon find it isn’t as straightforward as you’d think.

Your main tool to completing the tree is to use the (in game) internet – using a search engine to research family members. Each result leads you down different paths, unlocking additional names, terms and stories to search. Gradually, you unlock ‘periodicals’ (magazine and newspapers), the library and even a few extra mini games, each of which may provide different results for your searches. 

Using all these resources you need to find photos of each family member, their forename and surname (including maiden names), and their latest occupation. You also pick up various pieces of evidence to investigate, such as photographs, advertisements and even music.

Taking Note of the Roottrees

This all might sound quite overwhelming, but one of the bits I loved from this game was the ability to highlight information and note it down in your book, and then click these notes to jump to whatever web page or article they featured in. You could then organise these notes, rename pages and write your own notes in there too! I know this sounds like a small thing to be excited about, but it meant I wasn’t constantly backtracking or trying to remember things, flicking through hundreds of pages of notes, or resorting to my own IRL notebook. 

This attention to detail meant I could focus on playing the game and solving the mysteries, rather than wasting time trying to remember everything or keep my notes clean. The game also tells you how many clues each evidence points to, removing these as your uncover the family members, so again you don’t waste time focusing on the wrong things.

The Mystery Unfolds…

I loved how the lore unfolded in this game – as you follow a path through, you really get to know each area of the family and their lives. I think the mystery itself is also beautifully designed – there were many times I felt I’d hit a dead end, only to reread my notes or refer back to some evidence and have a ‘Eureka!’ moment. Most of the time, this involved searching for some seemingly innocuous detail or name, leading to new articles or even new periodicals and avenues to explore. 

There are actually 2 games in one – once you have completed the family tree, you are able to start a new game called “Roottreemania”, where you are then tasked with identifying potential illegitimate Roottrees too. I loved the additional complexity, as it placed more focus on the narrative for this second game – building the story around each character and when they may have produced children (as you can’t just search for them). I also liked the little nods to time passing – there were a number of points where I searched for something I’d previously searched for and noticed the page had updated, with a little banner on my screen letting me know I could view an older version of the page if I wanted to.

This second game also increases the difficulty of identifying names – in the first game, you have a list of names to place, but in the second you need to type in the first and last names themselves, and you have many red herrings too.

The Roottrees are Dead Final Verdict

I absolutely loved this, and think everyone should play it. It was easy to play (mechanically) and quite fun to search various terms and see what happened. The lore feels rich, and the additional ‘meta mystery’ puzzles at the end of each game were a lovely cherry on top. Each game felt the perfect length too, and I think the way of piecing together clues to figure out birth orders, names and relationships were just crunchy enough to keep me going.

The Roottrees are Dead can be played on Steam. Head to their website here to get started.