
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.
Modeled estimate, not a reported figure. How we estimate →
Media

About
The year is 1998. A private jet belonging to the Roottree Corporation has crashed. On it were the Roottree Sisters and their parents. Combined, they were worth over a billion dollars.
Now, due to the eccentricities of their great-great-grandfather Elias, their money must be redistributed to the rest of the family. But who's actually a BLOOD RELATIVE? That's where you come in.
Armed only with the power of your mighty dial-up modem, you'll scour for photos, books, articles and other evidence. Then, you'll make connections and deductions based on the family relationships you uncover. With every spot on the tree you fill in correctly, the names and photos left in your possession will have fewer and fewer places to go — but the evidence will also be harder and more obscure to find.
Can you put together the final pieces of the puzzle?
The Acclaimed Armchair Detective Game, Re-imagined on Steam
The Roottrees are Dead was originally created for the Global Game Jam 2023 and released as a free browser game. It was beloved by many for its clever puzzles, retro computing interface and novel world-building. The Steam version is the same great game, but enhanced in many ways:
Hand-drawn illustrations from acclaimed board game artist Henning Ludvigsen.
A 3D living-room perspective that ties together all the unique puzzle systems
An enhanced user interface with many quality of life improvements to make your mystery solving easier to use and more intuitive
Remastered music and sound effects, with fully voiced cinematics.
A handful of Easter eggs and little touches for those who can't get enough of the late ‘90s charm
Includes "Roottreemania", a brand new mystery
Find out what happens to the Roottree family following the events of the base game.
A whole new family tree to complete!
Discover the scandals, lies, and infidelities that took place behind the scenes of America's largest maple candy empire.
Genres
Stats
All-time low is the lowest price we've recorded for this game since we started tracking it.
Languages: English*, French, German, Spanish - Latin America, Simplified Chinese*, Portuguese - Brazil, Italian*languages with full audio support
Engagement
Hours played at review time, across 182 reviews with recorded playtime.
Reviews
Themes across 180 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
Reviews
[spoiler] 哈德森真乃种马也!小子在正传里还人模人样的(确实比较帅一点),怎么dlc里光速塌房啊。 [/spoiler]
解密难度适中,即时激励感很强
很有趣啊,不过鲁特里狂热对我来说有点太难了,还是本体的难度更加适合
The most noble thing you can do is this family is to Die apparently
神作,文本量超大,对新手也很友好,有无限提示可以用。好玩
A game that I found to be an interesting, amusing deductive puzzle game, and also a tedious chore. For a while the balance was in favor of the first part, during the first mystery. But when I got to the second, any charm the game had vanish, and my enjoyment of the game took a nose dive. And I was left feeling dread, something along the lines of if you had to write a new essay, since your original essay and research were lost.
I absolutely adore this game. My friend and I loaded it up a little less than 6 hours ago and we were hooked from the get-go. The gameplay is great, the storytelling even greater. We’re big fans of detective games and this scratched that itch big time. Honestly, I haven’t had this much fun in a hot minute! I can see this being fun for solo play but it’s ten times better with a buddy.
我真的很想知道埃利亚斯有没有私生子,期待后续
Absolutely incredible game. I have done nothing else for the last few days. I have been thinking about nothing else. I started a new game to see if I could fill in the tree from memory and hit no roadblocks. I fear the Roottree family history has taken over my life. 10/10.
This game was so much funny. I love detective style puzzle games and this one was actually challenging. A lot of the evidence wasn't waved right in your face. I wish I could wipe my memory and play it again already.
Related
Related
Trends
Modeled estimate over time, reconstructed from Steam's monthly review histogram.
Engagement
DAU/MAU are modeled from peak concurrent players (≈×8 and ×28) — Steam publishes no active-user counts, so treat these as rough estimates, not reported figures.
Audience
Estimated from the language of this game's reviews — a proxy for where players are, not official Steam demographics.
Audience
Games most often reviewed by the same players — an audience-affinity signal from our review sample, not full ownership data.
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