The Roottrees are Dead is an adventure mystery set in 1998, after a private jet crash kills the Roottree sisters and their parents. Their enormous fortune must be redistributed among the family, but only blood relatives qualify. As the investigator, you use a dial-up-era computer to work out who belongs on the family tree and uncover the connections that could determine who inherits.
The central puzzle is a process of research and deduction. You search for photographs, books, articles and other evidence, then use family relationships to place names and faces. Correct entries narrow down where the remaining clues fit, while later evidence becomes harder and more obscure to find. The game’s casework therefore turns each solved relationship into a tighter set of possibilities, rather than relying on guesswork alone.
Its late-1990s computer setting shapes both the investigation and the presentation. The Steam edition adds hand-drawn illustrations, a 3D living-room perspective, interface improvements, remastered music and sound effects, and voiced cinematics. It also includes “Roottreemania,” a separate mystery about what happens to the family after the main story, with another family tree to complete. These touches place a contemporary deduction game inside the period’s distinctive digital and visual atmosphere.
