Breaking news at the top of the hour this morning: The Roottrees are Dead, and someone made a video game about that. As part of my endeavors to make a dent in my game backlog, I’ve had a look at said video game. Since I’m operating under standard Backlog Busting rules, however, I can only report on the first two hours of my time with The Roottrees are Dead. The premise is as follows: In the year 1998, you find yourself watching the news immediately following a plane crash that killed five members of the massively notorious Roottree family.

That plane crash has left the various companies owned by the Roottrees without leaders and potential heirs. Your character is unexpectedly visited by a strange woman who doesn’t identify herself. This woman knows your character is (apparently) renowned for your skills in sorting out genealogical conundrums, which is why she sought you out. The Roottrees’ family tree is more like an unkempt family forest, and that’s preventing potentially quite a few people from inheriting quite a bit of money. The sooner that genealogical kerfuffle gets sorted out, the sooner everyone involved will be happy because they’ve received their rightful inheritance.

You see, Elias Roottree Sr., the founder and first president of the Roottree Candy Company, included a stipulation in his will that entitles every living person he designated a “blood relative” to inherit varying sums of the Roottree family’s money in case something like this ever happened. That’s a problem because no one knows how many qualifying “blood relatives” are still alive, much less who they are. That’s where you come in. You’re expected to prune the unkempt forest that is the Roottree family line and figure out exactly who is eligible for any of that money as per Elias Roottree’s will.

Even though this odd visitor doesn’t identify herself or her employer, she makes sure to mention that if you succeed at this daunting task, there will be a significant payday in it for you. So, you resolve to take the job without pressing this peculiar woman for any further details, as any sane person would. If you’re at all familiar with Lucas Pope’s Return of the Obra Dinn, you’re going to get nearly identical vibes while playing The Roottrees are Dead. I’d say there’s one particularly significant difference between these two games aside from their very different art styles, however.

The difference in question is that instead of a magical pocket watch that allows you to see and hear the events that led to a ship being abandoned in great detail (including several murders), the only tool you have to help you do your job is something potentially much more psychologically and emotionally damaging: the Internet. Thus, with your trusty late-1990s computer, blazing-fast 56K dial-up modem, and high-quality printer, you set to work. Of course, you’ve also got the requisite corkboard and alarmingly large amounts of thumbtacks and red string at your disposal to give you a much more tactile way of sorting out this mess.

You’ll have several buttons at the bottom of your HUD that you can switch between as often as necessary. These buttons allow you to review the physical evidence you’ve collected so far, look at your corkboard to officially match photos with names, relatives, and professions, use your computer to do research, and get hints about what to do next if you get stumped. You get hints by “talking things through with your rubber duck.” You know, as any rational person would do. I’ve had several breakthroughs solely because of the hints provided by that rubber duck; its help has been invaluable to me.

When you’re traversing the “Information Superhighway,” you’ll initially only have access to a rudimentary Internet search engine. This is how you’ll acquire most of your evidence, including relevant photos you can print out and music you can download and listen to. You’ll eventually also be granted the ability to search for books in the local library’s database once you discover their title and the author’s full name, as well as an archive of newspapers and magazines. These depend entirely on your usage of specific keywords and phrases, as you’d likely expect. This tends to help keep you on the right track.

Some praise is in order here, so let’s double back for a second. When I said you can find, download, and listen to music recorded by relevant people in the Roottree line, I wasn’t kidding. Not only does such relevant music exist, but it’s all of pretty great quality as well. The Roottrees are Dead could probably have gotten away with not putting nearly as much effort into this particular bit of its gameplay, but Evil Trout Inc. instead decided to do the exact opposite of cutting corners. That’s a huge point in its favor as far as I’m concerned.

I have to give The Roottrees are Dead a lot of credit for the quality of its music, as well as its voice acting. The Roottrees are Dead also seems to go well out of its way to help players who get stuck often (like myself) while also managing to avoid holding the player’s hand too much. The in-game hint systems are great at both gently nudging players in the right direction and, for the benefit of people like me who need extra help, bluntly spelling things out when necessary. I’m always quick to applaud deduction-heavy games that don’t feel condescending.

If you enjoy logic-heavy puzzle games, especially if you’re more skilled at them than I usually am, I’m sure you’ll have quite a lot of fun with The Roottrees are Dead. However, another commonality with Return of the Obra Dinn is the disappointing realization that you can only solve all its puzzles for the first time once. Standard Backlog Busting rules forced me to stop playing after two hours to write this article, but I can definitely see myself taking the time to properly finish The Roottrees are Dead now that I’m free of any such restrictions.

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The Roottrees are Dead

$19.99

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Excellent voice acting and soundtrack.
• Great sense of humor.
• Hint systems feel neither overbearing nor condescending.

Cons

• Very little (if any) replayability.