
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 165 reviews with recorded playtime.
Reviews
Themes across 163 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
(只针对本作、含剧透!!)先叠个甲:游戏值得一试,美漫art style很赞、bgm满分、悬疑的氛围烘托得很足(可能因为带点默剧色彩你看着族谱上一张张人脸而他们都是无声的就好像这张网背后藏着什么不可告人的秘密(事实也确实如此)),剧情暗藏一些阴谋论、绯闻、旧核等心理恐怖元素,让整个游戏的体验比起简单的字谜和数独更加丰满,好了不需要多吹有多好玩了,说些我觉得游戏可以改进的地方&我对续作(如果有)的期待吧: 1. browser设计得太糟糕,如果你玩过《全网公敌》的话这种对比尤为明显,项目组明显缺经费,很难想象一款几乎把侦探当黑客用的游戏search engine和periodical竟然是纯文字反馈,没有插画、没有索引、打中结果纯靠瞎猜和选中搜索,搜索结果里的网站完全是"you find information on a website about...", "you find a link that seems to be a list of articles"而并没有实际的H5可以参考,这让核心的搜索推理过程变成了纯文字游戏,而背后的代价是大量无意义的搜索和阅读,虽然这对推理游戏而言也是情理之中,但纯文字未免也太无聊了些, 这种平日里就好像写文综试卷你完全没有头绪只能不断阅读材料试图抠出里面有关联的部分(懂得都懂是种什么感觉),这也是我玩过唯一一款我能说用小黄鸭比不用小黄鸭有趣一点的游戏。 2. 本作最终谜题的答案,得出的过程太草率,可能因为我在国外生活过对双胞胎名字反过来用这种事比较熟悉,但没有这层文化背景的玩家可能就会卡在这无意义的一步上很长时间。我相信大部分玩家玩到最后都大概能推理出EC是CE的双胞胎兄弟、以及EC是个gay这件事,但始终找不到他名字的来源,因为大部分玩家玩这类游戏的逻辑都是:找到evidence→在字里行间找到这个人的人名的依据→复制粘贴,就比如我,我尝试找了很久有没有CE或Elias的日记、有没有坊间gossips、有没有什么卷宗里提到这一家尝试把EC除名之类的、毕竟到最后clanced trust和5piece guarantee都只是一大篇废纸,然后到最后我才意识到设计师的脑回路是E代表Edward是因为Elias Jr. 是最大的男的,呃我就是说我们都期待这个”最终谜题“背后还藏着更多能阅读的不可告人的秘密。 3. 最年轻一代的设定完全是waste of time and resources,有太多像Stephanie Cattrall, Jason Williams这种我不说你估计都忘了这是谁的人物,还有Nicole Madsen, Candy Roottree这种你以为在剧情中有重大承接作用实则不然的人物,作用?作用就是你卡着不动的时候填上名字然后student二选一收获正反馈,如果说前几代都有丰满的人物塑造、扑朔迷离的人物关系和情节以及某种象征意义的话,这一代可能是为下一部作品做铺垫的?那你也没必要放这一部啊心智都还没长成熟。
One of the best puzzle games I played in a few years
all I could think about for 3 days :)
Y'all can hate me but I love this way more than the game that inspired it. Chef's kiss.
这个游戏需要一层层抽丝剥茧的推出角色关系,八卦的感觉真爽啊!只是鲁特里狂热章节真的好费脑子,感觉脑细胞不太够用了。。。
好玩,太好玩了,就是需要一大段连续的时间。
弥补了老子平时不能开盒别人的遗憾
神
解密难度适中,即时激励感很强
Extremely impressive and engaging "puzzle box" sort of game. Basically catnip if you like problem solving and some logic puzzles. The writing is very good too. There's something very empathetic about digging into these people's lives and understanding who they are. There are moments of laughter, sadness, and pride. Lauren was worried she would only ever be a housewife like all the rest of the Roottree women, and there was something very gratifying about being able to say "No - you were not a housewife, you were an author. And probably the most important person in the entire family tree". There are many different ways to discover the same information, and there is a lot of content for what it is. I highly recommend this and think it's outstanding.
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.
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