the roottrees are dead review
Screenshot by Siliconera

Review: The Roottrees Are Dead Is a Clever and Intuitive Mystery

It’s 1998, the year of Windows 98, Saving Private Ryan, and that horrible accident involving the Roottrees. Oh, you haven’t heard about that last one? The Roottrees, members of the affluent and wealthy family, are dead. With problems of inheritance looming on the horizon for the surviving members, it’s up to you to sort out their complicated and extended family tree so that all blood relatives may receive their fair share. Armed with a dial-up Internet connection, a mix of primary and secondary sources, and logic, it’s time to get to work.

Recommended Videos

Our story starts with a news story proclaiming that a private jet carrying members of the Roottree family crashed, killing all aboard. The victims are Carl Roottree—current president of the Roottree Candy Company—his wife, and their three daughters. The daughters are models who work for ROOT, which is yet another business venture that the Roottree family owns. These five people, all together, were worth billions of dollars. And with all that money to return to the family’s rather bizarre trust fund, a lot of people are about to receive a lot of cash. Provided, of course, that they’re a blood relative of patriarch Elias Roottree, thus entitling them to it.

Following this news, a shadowy figure knocks on your door and hires you, a detective, to track down the extended members of the Roottree family. She starts by testing you to see if you can figure out key personal information on the three Roottree sisters. They’re famous models, after all, and if you can’t even find out basic details about their lives, then how do you hope on uncovering, say, an obscure cousin? This figure continues to visit you as you fill out more of the family tree, either to update you on the going-ons in the real world or to provide you with more sources. Completing the family tree also serves to uncover this mysterious woman’s true identity.

After completing the main story, you can play Roottreemania. In Roottreemania, you once again receive a request from a Roottree family member to track down blood relatives. This time, however, you’re looking for the illegitimate children that came out of the multiple affairs that various Roottree family members had over the years. This is something you figure out during the first half of the game, but America’s sweetest family? Turns out they’re not that sweet at all.

the roottrees are dead gwynn
Screenshot by Siliconera

The Roottrees Are Dead is a genealogical mystery game, with the entire game revolving around researching a family to complete their family tree. As the game takes place in the late 1990s, you only have the most basic tools available: “NetScrape Explorer,” a local library’s online card catalog, and a periodical database. Starting from the most rudimentary pieces of information from your client, as well as a list of notable Roottrees, you have to fill out the fifty members of the Roottree family. This isn’t even getting into Roottreemania, which adds forty more. Not only do you need to find their names and figure out their relations to each other, but you also need to fill in their profession and photo.

Finding out this information requires some careful reading of the sources you dig up. Sometimes, you even need to burrow down into some rabbit holes to uncover a key piece of information about someone. In the above screenshot, I can learn Gwynn’s occupation and deduce that she’s a blood relative via her mother. Another source I found in the game informed me that Gwynn is Elias’s granddaughter, making her mother his daughter. But to find information on her husband and kids, I needed to look into the movies she was in, as well as track down the tabloids discussing her divorce. It wasn’t as easy as it sounded, considering almost all the coverage used her husband’s stage name, and it took about three other sources to find enough details on her kids to fill in their boxes.

the roottrees are dead family tree
Screenshot by Siliconera

Years and dates were important as well—albeit more so in Roottreemania. When you have, like, four generations of family to sift through, and over half of them were outside of the public’s eye, it can start getting difficult keeping things straight. One source could bring up information about someone’s spouse, only for another source to list a different name because of a divorce that happened. So then, which one was the first wife and what surname are they all using now? Context clues, process of elimination, and lateral thinking were all necessary factors in solving this puzzle. I highly recommend that you keep notes, either in a physical notebook or with the game’s internal notebook mechanic. This makes it a lot easier to find a specific reference again after learning more context, or to have a cheat sheet for the various generations and branches.

If your forte doesn’t lie with this kind of thinking, never fear! Consulting with the rubber duck can provide you with a starting point if you’re really stuck. Unlike some puzzle games where it’ll only give enough information to lead you in the right direction, The Roottrees Are Dead will give you the correct answer if you ask the rubber duck enough times. So people who’re curious about the Roottree mystery but can’t figure out a part of the family tree can still clear the story, at least.

the roottrees are dead confirmation
Screenshot by Siliconera

Obviously, the best way to play the game is to solve the puzzle yourself. The excitement when you stumble upon a treasure trove of evidence and can cross-reference it with previous information you uncovered is unmatched. Not to sound like a nerd, but it reminded me of the dopamine rush from when I finally figured out a math equation I was stuck on, or when inspiration struck me while writing an essay. The more retro sites, as well as the specific databases, that I needed to look through in Roottrees brought me back to university again. It even recreated the frustration of hitting dead end after dead end in research. I even impulsively messaged a friend, “Blood is coming from my mouth and tears are streaming down my cheeks,” after one too many such obstacles. Great times.

The game only confirms if you’re right or not after correctly filling in the information of three to five family members. And all the details need to be the most recent. That was the kicker a lot of the times, because I’d put in someone’s previous occupation or surname under the assumption that was the most recent one. Then, I’d come across a magazine or webpage that came out later with a one-off mention about how so-and-so changed their surname because of personal reasons, or how they left their job for another pursuit. With one exception, the game can be rather stringent about what you put in. It took me forever to lock in certain members of the family because I thought their job was something else.

Roottreemania, the continuation, is a lot harder, as you’re looking for illegitimate children this time to determine if they’re actually blood relatives. Since people covered up these affairs, you could only piece them together using more circumstantial evidence or hearsay. Filling in names proved more difficult as well. For context, The Roottrees Are Dead mode provided a full list of names when you’re filling them in. If a name doesn’t appear on the list, then you’re barking up the wrong tree. Conversely, in situations where you only have a last name, typing in the surname can usually give you the full name of a spouse or kid. In Roottreemania, however, you need to individually punch in the first and last name of every person in the tree. As mentioned earlier, marriages and divorces could make this especially difficult. Locking in the second infidelity took me way too long.

the roottrees are dead free spirits

Now, if you’ve heard of Roottrees back when it was on Itch, you might’ve seen the AI art the developer used. Midjourney appears in the credits, as well. However, the Steam version of the game uses illustrations from a human artist, which was fantastic to see. There’s something very nostalgic and sweet about the art. It really grabs that, like, late 1990s to early 2000s style. The faces and shading reminded me of children’s books I read back in the day. Think The Boxcar Children, The Babysitters Club, and other series from that era. My friend described it as a “riff on 1950s commercial illustrations” but with a modernized twist that hearkens to the 2000s VHS era. It’s a look that I associate with a very all-American style of books and advertisements, which fits with the late 1990s aesthetic of the game itself.

Another aspect I like about The Roottrees Are Dead that has little to do with the gameplay itself is the storytelling. As you unwrap and reveal the Roottree family’s dirty secrets and scandals, you can see these little snippets of entire lives and generations. My impression of certain family members changed as I found more information about them, or when I read someone else’s account of their time interacting with said family member.

I won’t spoil any of the major revelations that you stumble across in the game, but I will say that I appreciated how, as a multi-generational story, we can see the passage of time through their attitudes towards different issues. Relationships that were frowned upon in the past (the earlier generations) became more normalized as the years passed. Many of the older women never held jobs and were housewives, which was pretty normal in the 1920 and 1930s. I really enjoyed the secondary story of how societal norms and major events could shape a family over generations. It added a lot to the narrative, and made it more compelling, which paired well with how the gameplay felt like actual Internet sleuthing.

Putting together the puzzle of these people’s lives wasn’t easy. But the experience of doing so felt rewarding. It felt great to look at that complete family tree, and reminisce on how grueling it’d been to fill in. This game isn’t for everyone, though. Though simplified compared to the real deal, it’s still gamified genealogy research. To glean any information from the sources you uncover, you need to suss out key details in otherwise insignificant information, as well as read between the lines. If this sounds like the game for you, though, then The Roottrees Are Dead presents an unforgettable mystery to dig up.

The Roottrees Are Dead is readily available on Windows PCs via Steam.

9
The Roottrees Are Dead

A genealogical mystery straight out of 1998. Scour the early Internet for clues, uncover hidden connections, and piece together the family tree behind the secretive Roottree Corporation.

The Roottrees Are Dead was a uniquely fascinating and frustrating experience, and it's definitely something I recommend to fellow genealogy or research nerds. The story, too, was an interesting one and I, for one, wouldn't oppose to a sequel focusing on Elias's or Gwyneth's siblings' family trees.

Food For Thought
  • The original music for the singers in the family is really good. I always put them on when I needed to take a breather.
  • According to Steam, it took me only about 12 hours to complete the game. Reviews averaged at around 15 to 17, it seems. Unless you get really stuck or you make liberal use of the rubber duck, it should take around that long.
  • I cannot stress this enough: KEEP NOTES! USE THE JOURNAL! After getting burned in the original Roottree scenario, I became way more meticulous about it in Roottreemania, and it really helped when I was figuring out some of the infidelities.

Siliconera is supported by our audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission. Learn more about our Affiliate Policy
Author
Image of Stephanie Liu
Stephanie Liu
Stephanie is a senior writer who has been writing for games journalism and translating since 2020. After graduating with a BA in English and a Certificate in Creative Writing, she spent a few years teaching English and history before fulfilling her childhood dream of becoming a writer. In terms of games, she loves RPGs, action-adventure, and visual novels. Aside from writing for Siliconera and Crunchyroll, she translates light novels, manga, and video games.