Roots in the Sky - The Hand of Glory 2

Pretty impressive sequel! I was amazed by the attention to detail and care put into the game. The colorful artwork looks fantastic, and I was seriously impressed by the quality of the voice overs. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3792904082 This second installment continues the investigating adventures of Lazarus Bundy, who, in addition to his returning partner Alice Sharf, also has a new buddy, Malcolm, and an even more ridiculous outfit along with his cape-like scarf, which the devs relentlessly keep making fun of throughout the game. Humor in the game is ever-present, with numerous puns and easter eggs here and there. Everything we need to progress is logical and can be discovered through careful exploration. There are also a few well-thought out detective minigames that were quite fun to complete. We get to travel to 4 countries, Italy, Jordan, India, and Japan, and the plot kept surprising me with unexpected situations and outcomes. We also get to learn more about Lazarus' past, which added some interesting depth to his character. It was a fun play. I am definitely looking forward to discover what happens in the final part of the story!

It's always nice to see that old-school genres still have their place in the indie community, a community that never really forgets. If you are a fan of graphic adventure games, this is a game for you. The story is well-written, the puzzles are engaging and the dubbing is top-notch. Overall, a great experience for fans of the genre.

Loved the first game, the Hand of Glory and was waiting for the Roots in the Sky.... and this adventure of Lars and Alice is even more exiting, the story not only goes on but we even can solve an issue from our first case. In addition to well known and improved features of investigation, we find beautiful artwork and wonderful voiceovers, subtitles in more than English, too. Puzzles are challenging but the player can choose between 'normal' and 'easy' for the kinetics tasks of Alice. All in all it is a great experience with even an outlook on a next case.. Highly recommended, don't miss it !

Dopo l'ottimo The Hand of Glory, Madit Entertainment e Daring Touch alzano ancora l'asticella. Lars ed Alice si confermano due personaggi riusciti e ci portano di nuovo a girare il mondo scoprendo misteri e risolvendo enigmi, in un'avventura dall'ottima longevità (più di 16 ore nel mio caso). Il design degli enigmi è vario e sempre divertente, con un livello di difficoltà molto ben bilanciato. Grande passo in avanti anche per quanto riguarda il comparto grafico, con ambientazioni belle e curate. Consigliatissimo

A full-fledged improvement over its predecessor, with an impressive technical leap, and overall a point-and-click adventure that stands out in today's landscape, even more so if you're a fan of Broken Sword, which is the main reference.

Roots in the Sky is a continuation of the fantastic game Hand of the Glory, created by the Italian studio Daring Touch. In the game, we have a chance to play as Lars and his friend Alice, who have a really difficult mission. The main goal is to find who killed a man in Rome at the beginning of the game, but this urgent case changes into something bigger and more important, and it's connected with a dangerous group of people. During the game, we will visit not only Rome, but also different locations like India or Japan. The graphic style is fantastic, just like in the previous game. Locations look fantastic. Visiting Rome or India gives a chance to see culture, people's lives, or even to discover a small part of history in these places. Developers did a really good job in creating them. Music connects with locations, and it feels like we are in Rome or Japan. It sounds good and didn’t bother me during the game. Riddles are challenging, but logical. Sometimes we need to do something with the inventory. Sometimes we need to read books and then find out some clues for riddles, and finally there are some different riddles when we have to work like a detective and find a murderer or really important man. The length of the game during my playthrough took me 15 hours, so it's a really good result in my opinion, and it's longer than the previous game. I hope we will see the next game from this studio. It was my pleasure to support the developer, and I wish not only for me but for all players more games like this one.

I'm still early in the game, but I need to write this: Rome is beautiful in this game! The opening scene, the waterclock scene, Piaza di Spagna! If this is the quality standard I can't wait to play through all the locations in the game! Stunning!

I really enjoyed Roots in the Sky - The Hand of Glory 2! As a Kickstarter backer I was able to play the game a couple of weeks before the official release, so I already completed the game (it's a pretty big game as well, easily 15+ hours!). The production values exceeded my expectations, especially the many custom animations, the beautiful backgrounds and the music. The puzzles are logical and fair. It's always clear what your objectives are (because there is a notebook that keeps track of those) and there are subtle clues as to what the solution might entail. The story is ambitious, and although I did not understand every aspect of it, once I got to know the style of the game and the storytelling, I went along with it for the ride and it did not disappoint. On to part 3! :)

Back in 2022, I played "The Hand of Glory", a point 'n click adventure game that - to be honest - didn't look like much at first view, but once I got past the rather simple character designs I discovered it was an amazing story filled with intuitive puzzles that could definitely compete with the likes of "Broken Sword" and "Gabriel Knight". Now, Madit Entertainment and Daring Touch are back with the sequel! And surprise, surprise: Lars "Lazarus" Bundy is back! Who’d have thought! The main menu of "Roots in the Sky" offers a handy recap of the first game, and then the new game catches up with our main character in Rome five years later, where he's become a bodyguard. His latest client gets shot under his watch, however, giving us a new case to investigate. But not before we play through a little flashback scene to Bundy's childhood to show us how he became the man he is today. Not much else happens in the first hour of gaming, except for me cursing at the inventory interface. "Roots in the Sky" employs a one-click interface, so when you open up your inventory to choose an item, first you need to choose whether you want to actually pick up said item or examine it further. Being more used to two-button interfaces, with the left mouse button to manipulate and the right button to examine, I kept simply clicking on the object in question, and then leaving the inventory again thinking I had already selected it. I kept forgetting that extra, second click… But other than that, I totally love the game. There are many hotspots to interact with or examine, Bundy's character design has greatly improved since the first game. And this is an adventure where you really need to take your time to explore, talk to people and figure things out. It has a slow pace but that means you can really submerge yourself in this world, take it all in. At the same time it's very cinematic and plays out as if you're watching a movie. After eight hours of playing, what I had been looking forward to most finally happened. I'm sure it's not a surprise, but of course I'm talking about the return of Alice Sharp! Oh, how much I enjoyed her presence in the first game... And now she and her computer skills are back to assist Lars once again! Not only will you have to tinker around with a variety of computer interfaces, Alice has also developed her Sherlockian kinesics skills and can determine a person's hidden thoughts just by looking at them and making deductions. As she talks to people, some of her comments will trigger a reaction, which could be a tapping foot or an averted glance. You click on those aspects and when you get enough in a row, a deduction screen pops up where you can offer explanations for each of those reactions. Get them all right, and you will have a new approach to deal with that character. If you fail, no worries, you can keep trying until you get it right, so it's only your own pride at stake. "Roots in the Sky" automatically switches between Lars and Alice as the playable character when the story requires it, though later on there are puzzle situations where you can (and have to) switch manually. Each of them has their own inventory then. There were some puzzles where I resorted to taking a screenshot, because I had to replicate a pattern or code if you will in a different location, and I'm bad at remembering such details even for a short while. And of course I have been searching the game for my personal digital award as a Kickstarter backer: a newspaper article! There are several newspapers to be found in the game, each with a couple of backer stories, so I made sure to read every one of them! When Lars and Alice leave Rome for some adventure game globetrotting in search of a killer and of course their motive behind it all, their first stop is an archaeological dig in Jordan. Next our heroes travel to India, which is probably my favorite part of the game. Jungle settings always speak more to the imagination, and there's quite some adventuring to be done, finally revealing some of the mythological themes in this story. There was also one cutscene that blurred my eyes, not because something sad happened but because it was so endearing and sweet. To be honest, I don't rightly know why it touched me so. It doesn't even relate to the general story, but I was very glad the scene was there. But every location in this game has its charms. After India it was on to Japan and there is so much attention to detail in both the setting and the characters you meet. This part reminded me a lot of the Thera bits in "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis". You also go diving, but finding the exact location of where you should go is one of the puzzles in the game that tripped me up a bit. It was my own fault, though, with purely a misinterpretation, or wrong assumption, on my end regarding some map directions. Throughout the game you already receive some glimpses into the personality of this story's villain, during cutscenes in between the chapters, displaying him as a very human character. Why, then, is he so dead set on doing what he wants to do? The finale of "Roots in the Sky" is very rewarding in revealing it all, and those last scenes are both suspenseful and emotional. And so the world is once again saved in fourteen and a half hours, exactly the same as the first "Hand of Glory" game. That's quite the coincidence, or perhaps perfect development by Madit Entertainment and Daring Touch. There wasn't a moment in "Roots in the Sky" I didn't enjoy. The goals were always clear, the puzzle solutions sometimes not immediately - the way it's supposed to be in a quality adventure game! - but in the end everything made sense and it was great fun to play with Lars and Alice again.