Some feedback after finishing the base game

[ThePiachu]

While I enjoyed my time with the game, there are some things that perhaps could use some attention:

- It is a bit hard to search people's names from the family tree. I tried left / right clicking on people to search them / copy their names but I wasn't able to. And it's too easy to misspell a name and not be able to find anything on the person...
- It would be nice if the list of all the peoples would update similar to the notable Roottree names. I've referenced it a few times down the run to search for people by their initials and wasn't able to easily find the information - it was much easier to use an empty spot in the family tree to do the searching.
- Searching multiple periodicals for the same text is a little tedious. Would be nice to have some option to search them all at the same time if you will only get one hit anyway...
- It would be nice to have some kind of bookmark folder for Internet searches. I know we have the History tab but that can be a bit harder to navigate back a few steps...
- Being able to organise the evidence a bit more would be useful. Like being able to take some piece of evidence and shove it in an "archive" folder to clear up the clutter. I didn't need to refer to the list of notable Roottrees halfway down the game, or look at someone's balding head once I filled in his entire family branch...
- Scrolling the family tree all the way to the left could be better when you have your notes open - it's hard filling in the left edge since the notes are blocking it.
- The game could really benefit from being able to piece together some kind of timeline of events since it's really easy to forget that someone mentioned some kid but that was 40 years ago so now you are looking for an adult or the like...

Other than that, a few things didn't fell that great in the game:
- "Roottree" as a family name you often have to type in isn't that great, given that it has three double letters. Would've been great if the name was simpler ;)
- It kind of felt like the shape of the family tree was a little bit too much of a necessary clue to some investigations that you'd have a hard time uncovering yourself (this being the point of the investigation - to uncover the whole truth without help). Like I wouldn't be able to tell which of the redhead twins was the oldest if it wasn't for the tree shape showing me that one of them had three kids and one didn't have any and other clues point to three kids. Or knowing someone is a single kid in a given family.
- I'm not sure if there are clues to someone's marriage status. I remember reading "X had a kid with Y out of wedlock" and it didn't really occur to me that they married afterwards rather than it being more of an affair, especially when it was around the final secret thing so it was unsure if the shape of the tree was wonky there on purpose or not...

But yeah, a pretty enjoyable game otherwise. I really appreciated the hint system being what it was to help me get over some hurdles in small nudges and all that!

[NoopMoney]

Originally posted by ThePiachu:

- Searching multiple periodicals for the same text is a little tedious. Would be nice to have some option to search them all at the same time if you will only get one hit anyway...

huge +1 to this one

[Melbac]

And if you realy want do give people a nice QoL Featur add a "Search as book" and "Search as periodical" Button...

[Evil Trout]

There's now an optional setting to enable searching all periodicals at once. It makes some puzzles easier so it's default to off, but it's there for those who need it.

[Oahkery]

Originally posted by Evil Trout:

There's now an optional setting to enable searching all periodicals at once. It makes some puzzles easier so it's default to off, but it's there for those who need it.

Does this setting search ALL periodicals, or only ones you've "found" already and have in the list of previously searched ones? I really want to click this so I don't have to bother selecting the correct periodical when it's obvious which one it would be in (such as the music one when I'm searching about a musician, etc.), but I don't want to turn it on if it's going to search other periodicals I haven't discovered yet.

[DLeopard25]

Originally posted by Oahkery:

Does this setting search ALL periodicals, or only ones you've "found" already and have in the list of previously searched ones? I really want to click this so I don't have to bother selecting the correct periodical when it's obvious which one it would be in (such as the music one when I'm searching about a musician, etc.), but I don't want to turn it on if it's going to search other periodicals I haven't discovered yet.

It only searches periodicals you already have

[MarkE]

Originally posted by Evil Trout:

There's now an optional setting to enable searching all periodicals at once. It makes some puzzles easier so it's default to off, but it's there for those who need it.

wow huge, i didn't know that. I saw that option in the settings but i had no idea that this is what it does... it just scares you that some puzzles will be easier

[seblav]

Originally posted by MarkE:

Originally posted by Evil Trout:

There's now an optional setting to enable searching all periodicals at once. It makes some puzzles easier so it's default to off, but it's there for those who need it.

wow huge, i didn't know that. I saw that option in the settings but i had no idea that this is what it does... it just scares you that some puzzles will be easier

Honestly, I don't know why they wrote that it would make the puzzle easier. In the end, without the option, you pretty try every single periodicals one by one, because you might be surprised to find info into unrelated periodicals. This option is honestly a time saver.

[ThePiachu]

I think they mean the puzzle where one tabloid has a lot more information than the other periodicals because it was describing someone getting into a very public fight. Kind of an alright puzzle, but eh, not worth the extra hassle of missing all the other information along the way by accident because you searched the wrong thing...

[ensouls]

I really enjoyed it, as a big fan of deductive reasoning games. The mechanics (and the little sound effect rewards, like in Obra Dinn) are satisfying and the plot was interesting enough to keep it going.
I did enjoy the main game a lot more than Roottreemania for a couple reasons. About halfway through it felt like everything slows to a crawl because of the number of possible combos to search and periodicals (I wasn't aware of the QOL option to search all periodicals at once). In addition, needing to reread a bunch of your sources from the main game was a slog. In the main game I never used hints, but I did more than once in Roottreemania because the prospect of re-searching and re-reading another dozen items felt so tedious. Hope there is more to come, but maybe a fresh start instead of reusing old ground.