Travelling the world in "Roots in the Sky" aka "The Hand of Glory 2!"

Yay, Alice is back!

After eight hours of playing Roots in the Sky: The Hand of Glory 2, what I've been looking forward to the most has finally happened. I'm sure it's not a surprise - she's on the game's cover and main menu art, after all - but of course I'm talking about the return of Alice Sharp! Oh, how much I enjoyed her presence in the first game... And now she and her computer skills are back to assist Lars once again!

How Sherlockian!

Not only will you have to tinker around with a variety of computer interfaces, Alice has also further developed her Sherlockian kinesics skills and can determine a person's hidden thoughts just by looking at them and making deductions. As she talks to people, some of her comments will trigger a reaction with them, which could be a tapping foot or an averted glance. You click on those aspects on time and when you get enough in a row, a deduction screen pop up where you can offer explanations for each of those reactions. Get them all right, and you will have a new approach to deal with that character. If you fail, no worries, you can keep trying until you get it right, so it's only your own pride at stake.

Motel rooms, always good for one clue or other...

Roots in the Sky automatically switches between Lars and Alice as the playable character when the story requires it, though later on there are puzzle situations where you can (and have to) switch manually. Each of them has their own inventory then. There were some puzzles where I resorted to taking a picture of the screen, because I had to replicate a pattern or code if you will in a different location, and I'm bad at remembering such details even for a short while.

My digital backer reward!

And of course I have been searching the game for my personal digital award as a Kickstarter backer: a newspaper article! There are several newspapers to be found in the game, each with a couple of backer stories, so I made sure to read every one of them!

And now we have left Rome, the main location of the first part, for some adventure game globetrotting in search of a killer and of course their motive behind it all. First stop is an archaeological dig in Jordan. What mysteries will we uncover this time?

You can find Roots in the Sky on Steam, GOG and itch.io!