The Roottrees are Dead

November 19, 2023 6:12 AM

"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? 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."
The Roottrees are Dead is a free deduction game playable on your desktop browser.(dev blog post)
posted by simmering octagon (27 comments total)

This mystery is not designed to run on your device.

Is there a post delineating what devices it’s designed for?
posted by Thorzdad at 7:22 AM on November 19, 2023

It's a Mormon plot to attract people to genealogy!
posted by pracowity at 7:22 AM on November 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

The supposedly simple tutorial seems to be missing a critical name in the name selector dropdown and I cannot solve it without this name...
posted by Xoder at 8:13 AM on November 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

You need to google more to find out what name to put there.
posted by novalis_dt at 8:26 AM on November 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

Is there an option to abandon the investigation and hand the wealth over to the commons?

[Grinning_Marx.gif]
posted by CynicalKnight at 8:31 AM on November 19, 2023 [10 favorites]

Yeah, I got there eventually. I feel like a real-world search engine would have been much better about this. Where's my faux Wikipedia ;-) ?!?!?
posted by Xoder at 8:35 AM on November 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

CynicalKnight, you beat me to it! That would be a much better game.
posted by BlueHorse at 8:38 AM on November 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

Perhaps a module to model a wealth tax and show how that would slow or stop inter generational hoarding of resources by the ultra-wealthy….
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:42 AM on November 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

Also, unless I am one of these blood relatives, what’s my hourly rate for research?
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:43 AM on November 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I got there eventually. I feel like a real-world search engine would have been much better about this. Where's my faux Wikipedia ;-) ?!?!?

The game is set in the winter of 1998, so about 3 years in the future.

Also, unless I am one of these blood relatives, what’s my hourly rate for research?

The mysterious stranger who shows up at your door promises you life-changing amounts of money as soon as you complete the tutorial, so there's that.
posted by firechicago at 9:21 AM on November 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

obra dinn vibes
posted by sibboleth at 9:39 AM on November 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

Can someone please tell me if there is a way to ZOOM OUT on the damn family tree????
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:19 AM on November 19, 2023

The only zooming I see is the mouse wheel.
posted by pracowity at 1:04 PM on November 19, 2023

brb setting SPIDERsearch as my default search engine and making a red string wall in Obsidian so I can lose my goddamn mind on this for the rest of the afternoon
posted by bcwinters at 1:47 PM on November 19, 2023

Cut and paste isn't working on OSX Safari for me. Or on OSX Firefox.

Also, "Due to The Roottrees are Dead's reliance on AI-Generated art, I am releasing it for free." ...ugh.
posted by egypturnash at 1:50 PM on November 19, 2023

let me warn people NOT to click on 'add to collection' or it will kick you out of the whole game and make you do it all over again
posted by corb at 2:18 PM on November 19, 2023

Okay, it seems to have saved my spot, but I still can't figure out how to click on 'text' in that upper folder.
posted by corb at 2:22 PM on November 19, 2023

I still can't figure out how to click on 'text' in that upper folder.

Go full screen (click the icon near the bottom right corner with four arrows), make your browser window wider (so the Itch.io overlay thing doesn't cover it), or change your browser's Zoom setting to make the game window take up less of the browser frame (so the Itch.io overlay thing doesn't cover it).
posted by bcwinters at 2:37 PM on November 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

Glorious. Okay, this is incredibly addictive, I'm on 27 now though it definitely gets harder once you get up three.
posted by corb at 7:23 PM on November 19, 2023

my kids started complaining about the dialup noise after an hour. Those poor lucky children simply cannot truly understand how good the dialup sound is. (And also how irl it was much louder & longer.) I like it.

And I LOVE the game!! I'm an absolute disaster with the notetaking though. Hit a wall at about 23 solved, maybe I'll start over and pay more attention to ages and stuff
posted by Baethan at 9:10 PM on November 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

I’m at the very last bit, but can’t seem to find the last optional picture.

Some tips:
1) copy and paste liberally
2) some of the picture clues you won’t see until you select them and they zoom in
3) sometimes you will need to guess full names from nicknames
posted by corb at 10:19 PM on November 19, 2023

I missed 3 optional pictures at the end. (I missed some clues, too, but was able to fully fill in the chart without them.) Fortunately the game understands completionists like me and let me go back and fiddle with them some more to get it to 100% after the grand finale. I don't think the AI-generated, relatively low-res art is quite up to the demands of a task like "match up this photo of someone as a child with this photo of somebody middle-aged". Or maybe I'm just bad with faces.

Overall I was pleased by how realistic it was, although I kept feeling like I could've been done a lot quicker if I'd only had the option to go down to the Butler County records in person and flip through the Birth/Death/Marriage records.

I’m at the very last bit, but can’t seem to find the last optional picture.

Hint/spoiler: I clicked on that picture entirely by accident, rapid-fire clicking on a photo with a number of faces in it.
posted by mstokes650 at 12:10 AM on November 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

Done! I wasn't ready for it to all be over
all be over


I am unironically very into that one song
morning clover
posted by Baethan at 2:02 PM on November 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

And then there was the time where I had been intently staring at one person's photo for minutes trying to figure out which of several possibilities they could be before realizing that they actually had their name on their shirt.
posted by dannyboybell at 7:46 PM on November 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

anyone else so creeped out by the child in the center of the fourth gen group photo that you learned where they'd show up in the female photo options & blocked that part of the screen with your hand? yeah me either

other than that I'm having fun but I wish they'd just let me type in the secret two names that I figured out about halfway through the tree -- not a brag, just, it takes like 3 pieces of evidence which I happened to find kinda early -- and go to bed
posted by taquito sunrise at 1:57 AM on November 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

That was super fun! Brilliant concept. I really enjoyed the combination of puzzle solving, sleuthing and family secrets. Also enjoyed how the evolution of 'society mores' affected parts of the family tree.

I had to guess one occupation - I'd missed a nickname and/or periodical somehow - but got it from context.

I ended up with 5 optional names, it took me two goes to get them in right places. Not sure if there was a way to find these properly or not!
posted by atlantica at 4:15 AM on November 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

What a great game. I got to the last couple of blood relations through slow but steady progress, and then had to guess at the last few spouses and a couple of jobs. I wish I'd taken better notes from the start, there were a couple of pages I found and couldn't find my way back to again. On the whole though, super fun.
posted by Fully Completely at 11:04 PM on December 12, 2023