A lot of people are comparing this game to Obra Dinn, and that is by some extent a true statement.
Your goal is to identify people on a list - and that's kind of where the similarities end.
Roottrees is not physically searching for clues and context.
It is 95% reading and 5% tearing your hair out.
It is the curated Wikipedia deep dive of your dreams.
It is the information hunt for a dissertation you will never write.
It is following threads of articles for an hour to find out someone's maiden name.
It is developing personal beef with the name Elias.
And it is audibly cheering when you finally figure out the birth order of too many siblings.
Roottrees will scratch that particular itch for these particular people.
And once you're all done - there's an even harder familiy tree to sort out.
An absolute treat that I still haven't fully cracked.
Occupation: Baby.
A lot of people are comparing this game to Obra Dinn, and that is by some extent a true statement.
Your goal is to identify people on a list - and that's kind of where the similarities end.
Roottrees is not physically searching for clues and context.
It is 95% reading and 5% tearing your hair out.
It is the curated Wikipedia deep dive of your dreams.
It is the information hunt for a dissertation you will never write.
It is following threads of articles for an hour to find out someone's maiden name.
It is developing personal beef with the name Elias.
And it is audibly cheering when you finally figure out the birth order of too many siblings.
Roottrees will scratch that particular itch for these particular people.
And once you're all done - there's an even harder familiy tree to sort out.
An absolute treat that I still haven't fully cracked.
Occupation: Baby.
Good but frustrating (if you’re stupid).
It’s a genealogical deduction game where you scour over a sudo internet to retrieve relevant information about a mystery. This ever growing breadcrumb trail provides the information to fill in the detailed history of multiple generations of a family, all without leaving your house. Similar to Obra Dinn and Golden Idol, you are confirmed correct when a certain amount of deductions are all correct and it feels fantastic looking up a source, following a trail, doing some logical deduction, and seeing that your guess is correct. The hint system especially is great because it guides you to where you should look at first which sends you down rabbit holes that you spend hours trying to dig your way out of. If you’re into other deduction games, you’re gonna love that aspect.
That being said, unless you’re a turbo nerd (non-derogatory) who is prepared to physically write notes for every minor detail and follow up, getting the most out of the mystery is going to be hard. There are no keywords like Golden Idol since everything is freeform text. This is great because it really does feel like sleuthing and detective work. However, it REALLY feels like grindy detective work when you have hundreds of individual pieces of evidence and you forget where you got a detail from just to backtrack through your entire logical tree to get back to some article. You’re going to need to write detailed notes of how you got where since the UI is early internet and doesn’t store much outside of page history and a highlighting notebook. You miss one little proper noun and entire swaths of evidence could be blocked off. The ending takes the kiddie gloves off and just says “go deduct”. You have to read in between clues, look at dates, and match every scrap of evidence to another to get the actual final answer. Luckily the game does still allow dumb people like me to wrap up the story without getting it 100% right.
For some turbo nerds (again not derogatory), this is fantastic and will scratch that deduction itch after you speedrun Obra Dinn, thought it was too easy, and gave Her Story GOTY. For smooth brained puzzle lovers who need constant dopamine hits and don’t have the journaling skills of a tik tok mom, it can get frustrating not being able to figure it out. Skill issue I know.
This game was made specifically for me, a librarian with an interest in genealogy. It brought the same sense of accomplishment I get from putting together a physical puzzle -- each little piece fitting together until suddenly I have the whole picture. It made me want to create my own mystery game in the same way reading a good book makes me want to write my own.
TL;DR: This game engaged my intellect, sparked my creativity, and watered my plants.
Really enjoyed everything about this game and was going to give it a glowing review until the credits rolled and revealed that it used Midjourney to generate some of the art for the initial version. While the developer states that this version doesn't use that technology for any of its art, if I'd known this game was built on stolen and environmentally destructive art, I wouldn't have bought it.
I refunded this game at the start of the tutorial. It looked like it was about to be real tedious and boring. If I wanted to do literal genealogy research I don't need to buy a game for that.
I didn't make it very far as this game is just kinda creepy, in a bad way, at first. You are tasked with finding the family tree for 3 models that died in a plane crash. You spend several hours being a stalker and trying to find everyone that is related to the models via the internet, public library, and various magazines and publishings. I got the game expecting a detective game and instead just learned how to be a stalker, don't recommend unless you are trying to learn how to be a real creep
I actually enjoyed playing this game, but I can't recommend it due to its use of AI art despite the dev saying elsewhere that they did not use it. It's blatantly obvious in the pictures, and I wish the dev had been upfront with their use of it. I refuse to support products made with ai when human artists could have been hired. See my screenshot in the community hub for evidence (there's plenty more as well).
This a negative recommendation sorely due to the misinformation and incorrect comparisons in the reviews that baited me hard into buying this game. The game itself is probably fine. But this is NOTHING like golden idol games or even obra dinn there's barely any mystery.
It's a family tree porn game, if you find the idea of figuring out what "He's my third cousin from my mother's side thrice removed" means fun, then by all means this game is for you.
It's a fun puzzle game. Challenging, but not impossible. I love the "old internet" mechanic. My only complaint is that I wish there was somewhere in-game to make and take notes.
The Roottrees can go root themselves.
So this is meant to be a Return of the Obra Din type game where you have to sort through a bunch of documents to figure out which family member is which so that you can figure out who are the rightful heir/heiress to a multibillion dollar candy bar empire. I sort of had my doubts about getting it, but it was on sale and I said why not.
The problems I had were the following:
1) The documents you are going through are spread out throughout a terrible interface where they're basically all laid out on a table or in a Netscape Navigator search box. As you go through the game, you are expected to highlight things and put them in the in-game journal, which is all fine. But unfortunately, the journal does not let you do Ctrl+F. This means that if you catch a reference to Edgar Roottree III's dildo store and think 'oh I read about that earlier', then you have a choice of either going through the pages of highlighting that you did or just remember what page of the Buttstuff Weekly you read that in.
You could sort the highlighting pages into different topics and subheadings, but it's clunky and annoying to do that. If the game had just had a Ctrl + F feature, that would have helped enormously. I just wanted a simple way to sort through all the information I had previously highlighted about a character. Without that, it felt like the game was less about solving mysteries and more about organising a binder.
2) Because keeping your stuff in order is so hard, very often the thing you're going to use to get through this stuff is the in-game hint system. It's good that this exists because it let me keep plugging along and helped me keep track of names, but because going through the data is such a slog, I found that it rapidly became the first resort. The hints would be telling me things I already knew, but would essentially be pointing me to pages that I couldn't find for the life of me.
But again, I don't want to be a detective that uses the "I'm stumped" hints. I would rather have solved things on my own. See #1.
3) The plot twist is completely underwhelming. I was expecting something about conspiracies or aliens or something, but instead it ends up being a PSA. This left the game with a real "Oh... that's it?" feeling. There's a post-game game about finding out which of the Roottrees were sleeping with who, but I don't think I'm going to bother.
Overall conclusion:
A lot of puzzle games are trying to push this thing where you're supposed to write things down. Tunic and Blue Prince wanted you to do that, and I think this thing did too. I grew up in the 90s too and I know what feeling that's trying to invoke, but can we please maybe get over that sometime soon? If you want me to make a journal, please give me the tools to make said journal inside of your game. Just a word processor with some basic search functionality would be nice. Please don't expect me to go down to the stationary store so that I can solve your puzzles.
Final Rating: 5.124643/11
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!
It is mainly a text based game where you must fill a family tree. It truly was an unique experience and really enjoyed it except for some flaws:
- it uses english nicknames rather full name, as a non english native speaker, it really was hard to determine the actual name of the character, specially when the full name is required into the family tree.
- as the evidence and visited web site grows, it really get a mess to find something, specially when you first thought it was irrelevant.
That said, do not ask me to do your familly tree, I might end up telling your dog is your grand aunt.
I devoured this game in like two days, its that good. Less morbid but fills that Obra Dinn shaped hole in my heart.
A fantastic treat for fans of mystery games, detective games, genealogy and rubber ducks! Praying for 20 sequels where we untangle a King Roottree's family tree, or a Lady Roottree's marital affairs. I'll even take sorting out the genealogy of the Roottree family pets! Anything for more Roottrees!
i have a mental disorder that makes me bad at logic & puzzle games (nvld). that said, this game is SO FUN. im currently working on roottreemania and i have to say that this game provides the amount of challenge to not be a straight game (pun intended) but also it's not too difficult that you find yourself tearing out your hair. and if u do struggle with games like this, you can always turn to your trusty rubber ducky for a hint. 10/10.
SUPERB!! This is an amazing detective simulator, the artist deserves a standing ovation with the way the art style changes slightly based on the era a photo was taken in.
Guy Hudson you slut.
A lot of people are comparing this game to Obra Dinn, and that is by some extent a true statement.
Your goal is to identify people on a list - and that's kind of where the similarities end.
Roottrees is not physically searching for clues and context.
It is 95% reading and 5% tearing your hair out.
It is the curated Wikipedia deep dive of your dreams.
It is the information hunt for a dissertation you will never write.
It is following threads of articles for an hour to find out someone's maiden name.
It is developing personal beef with the name Elias.
And it is audibly cheering when you finally figure out the birth order of too many siblings.
Roottrees will scratch that particular itch for these particular people.
And once you're all done - there's an even harder familiy tree to sort out.
An absolute treat that I still haven't fully cracked.
Occupation: Baby.
A lot of people are comparing this game to Obra Dinn, and that is by some extent a true statement.
Your goal is to identify people on a list - and that's kind of where the similarities end.
Roottrees is not physically searching for clues and context.
It is 95% reading and 5% tearing your hair out.
It is the curated Wikipedia deep dive of your dreams.
It is the information hunt for a dissertation you will never write.
It is following threads of articles for an hour to find out someone's maiden name.
It is developing personal beef with the name Elias.
And it is audibly cheering when you finally figure out the birth order of too many siblings.
Roottrees will scratch that particular itch for these particular people.
And once you're all done - there's an even harder familiy tree to sort out.
An absolute treat that I still haven't fully cracked.
Occupation: Baby.
Good but frustrating (if you’re stupid).
It’s a genealogical deduction game where you scour over a sudo internet to retrieve relevant information about a mystery. This ever growing breadcrumb trail provides the information to fill in the detailed history of multiple generations of a family, all without leaving your house. Similar to Obra Dinn and Golden Idol, you are confirmed correct when a certain amount of deductions are all correct and it feels fantastic looking up a source, following a trail, doing some logical deduction, and seeing that your guess is correct. The hint system especially is great because it guides you to where you should look at first which sends you down rabbit holes that you spend hours trying to dig your way out of. If you’re into other deduction games, you’re gonna love that aspect.
That being said, unless you’re a turbo nerd (non-derogatory) who is prepared to physically write notes for every minor detail and follow up, getting the most out of the mystery is going to be hard. There are no keywords like Golden Idol since everything is freeform text. This is great because it really does feel like sleuthing and detective work. However, it REALLY feels like grindy detective work when you have hundreds of individual pieces of evidence and you forget where you got a detail from just to backtrack through your entire logical tree to get back to some article. You’re going to need to write detailed notes of how you got where since the UI is early internet and doesn’t store much outside of page history and a highlighting notebook. You miss one little proper noun and entire swaths of evidence could be blocked off. The ending takes the kiddie gloves off and just says “go deduct”. You have to read in between clues, look at dates, and match every scrap of evidence to another to get the actual final answer. Luckily the game does still allow dumb people like me to wrap up the story without getting it 100% right.
For some turbo nerds (again not derogatory), this is fantastic and will scratch that deduction itch after you speedrun Obra Dinn, thought it was too easy, and gave Her Story GOTY. For smooth brained puzzle lovers who need constant dopamine hits and don’t have the journaling skills of a tik tok mom, it can get frustrating not being able to figure it out. Skill issue I know.
This game was made specifically for me, a librarian with an interest in genealogy. It brought the same sense of accomplishment I get from putting together a physical puzzle -- each little piece fitting together until suddenly I have the whole picture. It made me want to create my own mystery game in the same way reading a good book makes me want to write my own.
TL;DR: This game engaged my intellect, sparked my creativity, and watered my plants.
Really enjoyed everything about this game and was going to give it a glowing review until the credits rolled and revealed that it used Midjourney to generate some of the art for the initial version. While the developer states that this version doesn't use that technology for any of its art, if I'd known this game was built on stolen and environmentally destructive art, I wouldn't have bought it.
I refunded this game at the start of the tutorial. It looked like it was about to be real tedious and boring. If I wanted to do literal genealogy research I don't need to buy a game for that.
I didn't make it very far as this game is just kinda creepy, in a bad way, at first. You are tasked with finding the family tree for 3 models that died in a plane crash. You spend several hours being a stalker and trying to find everyone that is related to the models via the internet, public library, and various magazines and publishings. I got the game expecting a detective game and instead just learned how to be a stalker, don't recommend unless you are trying to learn how to be a real creep
I actually enjoyed playing this game, but I can't recommend it due to its use of AI art despite the dev saying elsewhere that they did not use it. It's blatantly obvious in the pictures, and I wish the dev had been upfront with their use of it. I refuse to support products made with ai when human artists could have been hired. See my screenshot in the community hub for evidence (there's plenty more as well).
This a negative recommendation sorely due to the misinformation and incorrect comparisons in the reviews that baited me hard into buying this game. The game itself is probably fine. But this is NOTHING like golden idol games or even obra dinn there's barely any mystery.
It's a family tree porn game, if you find the idea of figuring out what "He's my third cousin from my mother's side thrice removed" means fun, then by all means this game is for you.
It's a fun puzzle game. Challenging, but not impossible. I love the "old internet" mechanic. My only complaint is that I wish there was somewhere in-game to make and take notes.
The Roottrees can go root themselves.
So this is meant to be a Return of the Obra Din type game where you have to sort through a bunch of documents to figure out which family member is which so that you can figure out who are the rightful heir/heiress to a multibillion dollar candy bar empire. I sort of had my doubts about getting it, but it was on sale and I said why not.
The problems I had were the following:
1) The documents you are going through are spread out throughout a terrible interface where they're basically all laid out on a table or in a Netscape Navigator search box. As you go through the game, you are expected to highlight things and put them in the in-game journal, which is all fine. But unfortunately, the journal does not let you do Ctrl+F. This means that if you catch a reference to Edgar Roottree III's dildo store and think 'oh I read about that earlier', then you have a choice of either going through the pages of highlighting that you did or just remember what page of the Buttstuff Weekly you read that in.
You could sort the highlighting pages into different topics and subheadings, but it's clunky and annoying to do that. If the game had just had a Ctrl + F feature, that would have helped enormously. I just wanted a simple way to sort through all the information I had previously highlighted about a character. Without that, it felt like the game was less about solving mysteries and more about organising a binder.
2) Because keeping your stuff in order is so hard, very often the thing you're going to use to get through this stuff is the in-game hint system. It's good that this exists because it let me keep plugging along and helped me keep track of names, but because going through the data is such a slog, I found that it rapidly became the first resort. The hints would be telling me things I already knew, but would essentially be pointing me to pages that I couldn't find for the life of me.
But again, I don't want to be a detective that uses the "I'm stumped" hints. I would rather have solved things on my own. See #1.
3) The plot twist is completely underwhelming. I was expecting something about conspiracies or aliens or something, but instead it ends up being a PSA. This left the game with a real "Oh... that's it?" feeling. There's a post-game game about finding out which of the Roottrees were sleeping with who, but I don't think I'm going to bother.
Overall conclusion:
A lot of puzzle games are trying to push this thing where you're supposed to write things down. Tunic and Blue Prince wanted you to do that, and I think this thing did too. I grew up in the 90s too and I know what feeling that's trying to invoke, but can we please maybe get over that sometime soon? If you want me to make a journal, please give me the tools to make said journal inside of your game. Just a word processor with some basic search functionality would be nice. Please don't expect me to go down to the stationary store so that I can solve your puzzles.
Final Rating: 5.124643/11
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!
It is mainly a text based game where you must fill a family tree. It truly was an unique experience and really enjoyed it except for some flaws:
- it uses english nicknames rather full name, as a non english native speaker, it really was hard to determine the actual name of the character, specially when the full name is required into the family tree.
- as the evidence and visited web site grows, it really get a mess to find something, specially when you first thought it was irrelevant.
That said, do not ask me to do your familly tree, I might end up telling your dog is your grand aunt.
I devoured this game in like two days, its that good. Less morbid but fills that Obra Dinn shaped hole in my heart.
A fantastic treat for fans of mystery games, detective games, genealogy and rubber ducks! Praying for 20 sequels where we untangle a King Roottree's family tree, or a Lady Roottree's marital affairs. I'll even take sorting out the genealogy of the Roottree family pets! Anything for more Roottrees!
i have a mental disorder that makes me bad at logic & puzzle games (nvld). that said, this game is SO FUN. im currently working on roottreemania and i have to say that this game provides the amount of challenge to not be a straight game (pun intended) but also it's not too difficult that you find yourself tearing out your hair. and if u do struggle with games like this, you can always turn to your trusty rubber ducky for a hint. 10/10.
SUPERB!! This is an amazing detective simulator, the artist deserves a standing ovation with the way the art style changes slightly based on the era a photo was taken in.
Guy Hudson you slut.
