The Roottrees Are Dead is a deduction-based mystery game that uses the clunky world of 1990s internet as its mystery-solving vessel. This is both a great strength and weakness of the game. On the upside, the way you gather information, follow rabbit holes, and jot down quick notes is all very organic feeling. There usually aren't any weird text boxes or questionaries to fill. Just you and the leads you find through obsessive googling. The actual core mystery behind The Roottrees Are Dead isn't the most compelling, but the process of solving the entire family tree very much is and I was enthralled the whole time.

However, I did have a handful of frustrating moments because of the free-form way of finding your information. The Roottrees Are Dead does not have enough of its quirks ironed out to avoid some very gamey awkwardness. I had multiple times where not searching the exact right thing or not searching in the exact right place led me to believing my leads were false. This is coupled with the fact that the game is a rather difficult mystery game with many intentional ways to trip you up. The annoyances never outweighed my joy in chasing leads, but the game might be a bit more clunky and obtuse than some players will want to bother with.

This game is SO good. You know how when cats are figuring out a puzzle or are really excited and they start wagging their tails? It's like that. I've been playing with my sister and I highly recommend playing it with a partner. Not only do you get to bounce ideas off of each other but you can high five every time you lock things in. We just have the very end of Roottreemania to finish but I've really enjoyed it!

I liked a lot about the puzzle set-up and investigating things, although there were a few places I felt the game cheated a little with certain evidence needed specific wording to find that no other clue indicated was even an option to attempt.

Obra Dinn, Golden Idol… If you know, you know. And it's awesome.

Extremely fun game and you should absolutely play it if you enjoy games like Return of the Obra Dinn, The Case of the Golden Idol, etc.

For The Roottrees Are Dead, I don't think I have any complaints. Unraveling the story was a cool experience because of all the evidence you get. Obviously the family is supposed to "feel" real, but I was so into the lore of the Roottrees I want another game with them even though I don't know how they'd pull that off.

Roottreemania can get a little bit frustrating with some clues. I might have just been burnt out after playing so much but sometimes it felt like the logic trails were less obvious. The mode was probably supposed to be harder but it felt unnecessarily frustrating at times when TRAD didn't.

Either way both modes were a ton of fun and I need more games like this in my life.

Also, FamilyDoku! is peak and I wish there were more levels.

CGP Grey Simulator.

Like a lot of people have already said, if you enjoyed Return of the Obra Dinn, this will be right up your alley (or the inverse, if you enjoyed this, go play Return of the Obra Dinn).

You will be tangled into this family's history whether you like it or not. Clues buried upon clues, you'll need a sharp mind and either a good memory or lots of note-taking. Details will jump at you resulting in a cascade of rapidly growing mounds of information that you have to sort through and extrapolate upon.

It is story-telling through your agency and curiosity. It is magical.

The Roottrees are Dead is a fantastic detective game in the same genre as Return of the Obra Dinn, in that you're given a huge list of people who you have to correctly identify by slowly working your way through evidence and accumulating deductions, untangling the story as you go along. It was super satisfying to worm my way through the rabbit hole of the simulated 1998 internet and stumble across useful information about Roottree family members in the most unexpected places. If you're the kind of player who likes this kind of thing, then this is definitely the kind of thing you'll like.

Really two games in one, with very different characteristics, though the second one would not be playable without the first.

1. The Roottrees are Dead is a great puzzle game that has nice pacing and a holistic energy, where you feel like you are constantly making progress on unraveling the big picture. It follows the veins of Obra Dinn, though it's less stylistic. The paths to solving the puzzles are also always linear (which is called out explicitly by the game in its own summary), which does mean I had to use the hint system to catch a few missed threads in the sea of evidence.

2. Roottreemania is much harder, much more ambitious, with way more red herrings and leaps of logic and deduction required to make it work, but still just as linear. I'm not sure I would ever have gotten through it without liberal use of the hints system. The story it tries to tell is still very interesting, but I think the experience was more frustrating than it was worth.

Overall 7/10

Now, while I don't smoke or drink but this makes me want to put on a detective coat to work from 7 PM-11 PM and drink a shot of whiskey and smoke a cig to solve a family tree. It's a good game. Love the music.

This is one of those extremely satisfying narrative puzzle games where there's a good reason for it being a logic puzzle, instead of it being a logic puzzle in search of a reason with a narrative tacked on. Strongly recommended. The only thing that I can say I found really trying about it were the oddly excessive fourth wall breaks during research that added nothing to the plot. Besides that, it's a really solid and unique game. Art's even unusually good. And, c'mon, which other puzzle game has multiple original songs in multiple genres?