New game: "The Roottrees Are Dead"

New game!

I kept postponing playing The Roottrees Are Dead since I thought it would be a very time-consuming game. In the end, I think it took me about seven hours to complete the main story. I'm still working on the follow-up game, Roottreemania, but I'm not going to write a second blogpost about that since it's basically more of the same.

Investigation HQ

I'm a private investigator being hired by a mysterious woman (voiced by Ivy Dupler, sounding more raspier than you've ever heard her) to fill out the family tree of the Roottrees. There has been an airplane crash in which several family members died, and now the inheritance is up for grabs. There's a bit more to the story than that, but I won't spoil too much.

Still loads to discover...

People recommended me this game because I enjoyed playing Return of the Obra Dinn so much. The goal is indeed very similar: of all the members on the family tree you need to find a photograph, a name, and an occupation. Get all those right for three family members, and they get locked on the tree. You already have a list of possible names and they get crossed out when you've used them, so near the end of the game there are fewer possibilities; but then there are other aspects that complicate your quest. Roottreemania works in the same way, except that here you don't have a list of possible names, and you have to combine the first and last names yourself, which significantly raises the difficulty level.

Oh, I know how to use the internet alright!

Your client will regularly provide you with a helpful document or photograph, but all your other research will have to be done through the in-game's web browser. You will have to follow up on leads, look up names, search a library catalogue and back issues of periodicals to gather the necessary information so you can make the proper deductions on who all these Roottrees are and how they fit on the board. Next to the Obra Dinn, it made me think a bit of Spycraft: The Great Game as well, except without all the action and mini-games.

Wow, a dial-up...

The game has a very layered narrative; each family member has their own part of the story. And the user interface is completely point 'n click. Yet this is far from a traditional point 'n click adventure. There aren't any puzzles to solve (certainly nothing inventory based) except for a couple of images you find online that need to be unscrambled (I guess the game does have some silly mini-games in that regard...) It isn't really a true detective game either; at least on the Obra Dinn you could walk around and explore the scenes. All you have to do in The Roottrees Are Dead is a whole bunch of reading, and then matching up the right pieces of information. 

Some picture-related mini-games near the end of the game...

I didn't like how, near the end of the game, I suddenly had to get four correct matches instead of three, thinking the game was pretty hard enough already. I assume this was done to make it harder to brute-force your way through it. But with some perseverance and thanks to the tiered hint system pointing you to the correct piece of evidence where you are supposed to find the next link, I was able to complete the tree and answer my mysterious client's personal questions (and frankly, I had already figured out her identity at least halfway through).

Boo-yah!

I had a blast playing this game, perhaps not feeling the same level of achievement as I did hearing that piratey jingle in Obra Dinn each time I got three people right, but still very proud of myself and my ability to at least figure something out. I do hope Roottreemania will go as smoothly, though I have already discovered there seems to be a lot more text to read and with that changed system for naming the family members, I think it might take me a good while longer.

Once I've finished that part of the game, I'll go back to the 80s for a classic playthrough, one I never played before, about a nerd traveling across the United States to photograph a rock 'n roll legend.

You can find The Roottrees Are Dead (+ Roottreemania) on Steam!