"The Roottrees are Dead" is a wonderful game that scratches an itch few games can. The dev has cited "Return of the Obra Dinn" and "Her Story" as influences and it sure shows. From the act of looking at a list of names and trying to match them to pictures, to typing words in a search engine, it hits the same notes. It even has a "objective complete" jingle that is very reminiscent of "Obra Dinn".

"The Roottrees" tells a compelling story, leads you down a few dead ends and it's your job to dig yourself out of them. There are several red herrings and it never felt like I was wasting my time going down a certain rabbit hole. I was still painting a more complete picture of who the Roottrees were, or the world they lived in.

I couldn't put this game down, I even left it running for a few hours in the background while I stepped away to ponder things about the family. It's an incredible version of "spreadsheet heaven", where you can just lock in and forget the outside world exists.

Highly recommended for everyone, but especially for fans of "The Return of the Obra Dinn" and the "Golden Idol" games.

A unique take on usual puzzle games, based almost entirely in what you can discover in texts -- sometimes between the lines -- and old photos. As someone who's poked around at genealogy in the past, it feels very similar to that sort of IRL puzzle, especially when half the tree is named after the same two people. I also enjoyed the inclusion of the rubber duck hint, which allowed me a little bit of room to puzzle it out myself with a hint, rather than looking up the guides where they tell you to just type in XYZ to move on.

I adored this game from start to finish. I love when mystery games put you fully in the role of detective and allow you to find, interpret, and piece together clues to make unwraveling the mystery all the more satisfying. The researching mechanic was well done, the clues were well hidden without ever becoming obtuse, and I appreciated how many different ways there were to approach the answers for a single question. The only complaint I might have is that there's one specific track in the music with a saxophone that can be a liiiittle more grating than soothing, but if that's all I can think of to gripe about, then you know it's a great game.