Disclaimer: I beta tested all the way back when this was just a game jam on itch. Holy cow has the game grown in the interim!

The Roottrees Are Dead hails from the same genre as Return of the Obra Dinn and Her Story, taking a genealogical angle and casting the player as a web sleuth running on nostalgic 90s-era hardware. Gameplay largely consists of using a keyword-based searchbar to delve through hundreds of webpages sifting out little bits of detail here and there to piece together a huge family tree packed with twists and turns.

The game's best part for me is the developer's creativity with puzzle design. there are countless surprises hidden within the Roottree genealogy, every possible curveball seemed to be lying in wait somewhere along my search. Extreme care has also been taken to ensure the player never gets truly stuck, I spoke with other beta readers after the fact and none of us ever seemed to take the same route to locate the information we did. The Intuition mechanic also exists to highlight what pieces of information haven't yet been fully mined for important clues, and serves very well as a safety net to ensure the player is never stranded with no direction to go.

Art and presentation wise, this Steam version is a huge step up from the original free version, with tons of illustrations and much more of an actual setting the player exists in beyond the "desktop on featureless table" from the original free version of the game. There are way more puzzles, way more tracks, way more peripheral pieces of content to analyze including songs and minigames and unique types of websites to explore. I personally think this Steam version is a step up from the old free game in every way and the ideal version to experience the Roottree story.

In case it's not clear, I highly recommend TRAD to fans of the genre, it's a wonderful experience and I'm honored I got to playtest it and watch as the devs push themselves to such lofty heights as a full-length release on Steam!

Disclaimer: I beta tested all the way back when this was just a game jam on itch. Holy cow has the game grown in the interim! [I]The Roottrees Are Dead[/I] hails from the same genre as [I]Return of the Obra Dinn[/I] and [I]Her Story[/I], taking a genealogical angle and casting the player as a web sleuth running on nostalgic 90s-era hardware. Gameplay largely consists of using a keyword-based searchbar to delve through hundreds of webpages sifting out little bits of detail here and there to piece together a huge family tree packed with twists and turns. The game's best part for me is the developer's creativity with puzzle design. there are countless surprises hidden within the Roottree genealogy, every possible curveball seemed to be lying in wait somewhere along my search. Extreme care has also been taken to ensure the player never gets truly stuck, I spoke with other beta readers after the fact and none of us ever seemed to take the same route to locate the information we did. The Intuition mechanic also exists to highlight what pieces of information haven't yet been fully mined for important clues, and serves very well as a safety net to ensure the player is never stranded with no direction to go. Art and presentation wise, this Steam version is a huge step up from the original free version, with tons of illustrations and much more of an actual setting the player exists in beyond the "desktop on featureless table" from the original free version of the game. There are way more puzzles, way more tracks, way more peripheral pieces of content to analyze including songs and minigames and unique types of websites to explore. I personally think this Steam version is a step up from the old free game in every way and the ideal version to experience the Roottree story. In case it's not clear, I highly recommend TRAD to fans of the genre, it's a wonderful experience and I'm honored I got to playtest it and watch as the devs push themselves to such lofty heights as a full-length release on Steam!