VOOZH about

URL: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/TheRoottreesAreDead

⇱ The Roottrees are Dead (Video Game) - TV Tropes

👁 TVTropes Logo
TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open
👁 Image

Follow TV Tropes

You need to login to do this. Get Known if you don't have an account

Video Game / The Roottrees are Dead

Go To
The plane that crashed last night just outside of Pittsburgh is now known to have been the private jet of the Roottree Corporation. Local aviation authorities have speculated that from the pilot's final communications, the winter storm and heavy winds played a significant role in the crash. On board were multiple family members, including corporate president Carl Roottree and his daughters, the Roottree Sisters, best known for their fashion lines and modeling careers. There were no survivors.

Again, for those of you just joining us...the Roottrees are dead.
—Introductory Newscast

The Roottrees are Dead is a research-based detective game by Jeremy Johnston. The original version is available for free on Itch.io👁 Image
, and an updated version by Robin Ward with improved art and an added bonus mystery, Roottreemania, is available on Steam.

It is December 6, 1998. Carl Roottree, president of the Roottree Candy Company and great-grandson of the company's founders Elias and Gwyneth, has died in a plane crash along with his wife and their three daughters. As the family mourns, a mysterious person comes to you with a challenge: given a small amount of starting information and what you can find via research, can you reconstruct the entire family tree of Elias and Gwyneth's descendants? As you do so, you begin to uncover secrets that the family has kept hidden for decades...

You have access to an Internet search engine, along with the local library's online card catalog and a database of articles from various periodicals. As you accumulate information, you build an evidence folder, including pictures, text, and audio recordings. You are provided a notebook in which to store other clues.

You are given the structure of the family tree and need to fill in the name and profession of each member of the family, along with a picture. You may also find additional pictures of some individuals, and the names and pictures of relatives by marriage; these are not necessary to complete the game, but can be helpful in finding details about the blood relatives.

Similarly to Return of the Obra Dinn, your guesses are marked as correct when you have correctly given full details (name, profession, and picture) of three blood relatives; other information that is correct will also be marked at that time.

Much of the game is research, so the tropes below contain many spoilers.

    open/close all folders 

The Roottrees are Dead (the original mystery)

The original mystery involves tracking down the entire family tree of Elias and Gwyneth Roottree's descendants.

Tropes found in the original mystery include:

    Main Game Tropes 
  • 100% Completion: Requires getting every character name, profession, and photo correct for all descendants and their partners.
  • 13 Is Unlucky: The 4th President of the Roottree Candy Company ran for 13 years, helping it recover from its previous management before dying of "heart illness".
  • Added Alliterative Appeal:
    • One 1932 newspaper article says "RED ROOTTREE RALEIGH RALLY RACKET REVEALED".
    • The vintage ad for 5Pieces says that the Miracle Berry flavor is a "burst of beautiful blossoming blended berries".
  • Advertised Extra: While they're the first Roottrees you deduce, the ones on the cover of the game, and in-universe celebrities, the Roottree Sisters are ultimately incredibly minor in the grand scheme of things, and other family members play much bigger roles in the story.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • The text and miscellaneous evidence items show how many pieces of evidence are left to be discovered from them.
    • When descendants are locked in due to getting enough of them exactly correct, any other information you have in the right place (partner names and photos, and extra photos of descendants) is also locked at that time. Any supplemental information that is not locked in at that time is therefore incorrect.
    • To save frustration from wasted time and effort, you will occasionally be informed when a certain line of investigation becomes fruitless, such as being told, "The lyrics of this song contain no clues", or being told that a web search for a particular topic is a dead-end.
    • The Steam version provides various QOL features such as browsing history, the ability to highlight text and instantly add them to your notes, and to add new pages and rearrange them.
  • Art Evolution: The February 26, 2025 update redid the Roottree Sisters' Steam artwork to make them look more lively and youthful.
  • Artistic License – Economics: The "5Piece Guarantee" is a stipulation of the Roottree family trust which sets the company president's annual salary to be equal to the current price of a bag of 5Pieces. The ridiculously low salary was meant to strongly discourage anyone who is not a Roottree blood relative from desiring the presidency, and also is meant to motivate the president to stimulate growth of the company, since their actual income will be based on their share of the trust fund (calculated from company profits) rather than a salary. The game even points out that economists fiercely debate whether this makes any sense.
  • Beeping Computers: The computer you use makes dial-up noises every time you start it up and has loud clacky keyboard sounds.
  • Black Sheep Hit: In-universe, "Rollin' On Down to the City" is this for Jim and Diamond, being a disco song by an otherwise folk band that was also their sole top forty hit.
  • Bland-Name Product: The Steam version's in-game browser is called Netscrape Explorer while the radio's brand is called Nony.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: Typing in Butler County in SpiderSearch will mention the game itself is set in the aforementioned county, despite the game's creator not having any connection to it. In general, searching real locations or works have a mention of how or why the creator thought to include them.
  • Cinderella Plot: Separated from Elias and Samantha, Patricia thought that Sam is in this as she lived in a life of labor and was raised by a "twisted twin". Samantha herself averts and defies this, as she considers the ones who raised her as her actual parents and didn't consider her life at the farm to be that bad.
  • Computer Screen Story: Most of the game will be spent interfacing with your home computer and its catalogue of resources to find public records on the Roottree bloodline.
  • Conspiracy Theorist: During your investigations, you come across the website of a "Thomas Overwood", who claims that the deaths of the last three Roottree presidents were deliberate and also has theories about "Mayan Ruby Skulls" and being able to get away with any crime on February 29 as long as it's not discovered until afterwards. Trying to investigate the conspiracies turns up nothing; you instead need to look up the person who's attempting to debunk them.
  • Conspicuous Consumption: After completing the family and getting a share from Sam's money, one of the first thing you purchase (in the thousands) is the Fluzi's Conquistabore cassette from the reviewer so that you can listen to "Beef Baby".
  • Convenient Photograph: E.C. is present in the background of the 5Pieces photo.
  • Cool Old Lady: The mysterious contact is a vocally elderly woman with a good sense of humor, who's willing to put herself at risk to have the truth of the Roottrees see the light of day.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance:
    • LGBT+ people are treated relatively better in the 90s than they were back in the early 20th century, as shown with Stephanie Jones being raised well by her mother and stepmother and their being praised for it in the former, but E.C. being kicked out of his family for being found kissing a male farmhand in the latter. E.C. and John Miller's adoptive daughter Sam was also shunned for being born out of wedlock and was sent off to be raised by "a farmhand and his roommate", being lied to that her birth parents were dead. E.C. and John's relationship wasn't even acknowledged, with the former being called a "Confirmed Bachelor" instead.
    • In her diaries Lauren Roottree, who grew up in the early twentieth century, mentions that one of her brothers brought home a partner that would be "illegal" to marry in some parts of the country, something that evidently upset their father as he had to "get over" it; the fact that said brother has a child of mixed race makes it clear what is meant by that sentiment. In contrast, Stephanie's marriage to the black Brian Jones later down the family tree is treated as unremarkable.
    • Lauren points out that it threw big waves when Gwynn had a divorce (though she shows understanding for it, considering who the ex-husband had been), and shows disdain for her son remarrying instead of just staying single such as herself (a widow) or Gwynn. The only remarriage she shows approval of is the case where a widow marries her first sweetheart, who had stayed single after the break-up.
  • Developer's Foresight: Samantha's job is farmer, but because she's planning to release a book about her family's secrets, the game also accepts author as her job.
  • Double In-Law Marriage: C&J+J&D was a band composed to two cousins married to two sisters. They split up because one of its members, Clark, cheated on his bandmate Jane for her sister Kim.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: For Patricia, after her first husband's death, she returned to Butler County, married her true love Elias Jr. (who fortunately waited for her) and got her daughter Sam to become a part of the Roottree family (albeit at a great cost).
  • Easter Egg:
    • In the Itch.io version, searching for "Beef Baby" after beating the game allows you to unlock the aforementioned song as a Hidden Track. In the Steam version you need to search for it while playing Roottreemania.
    • The Steam version of the game has several items in your room that can be looked up online, although they're not relevant to the investigation.
  • Family Business: The Roottree Candy Company is owned and run by the descendants of founder Elias Roottree, whose personal motto was "blood is thicker than syrup". He was so insistent that the company remain a family business in perpetuity that he worked with his son to create a uniquely structured legal trust (that can't be altered without dissolving it completely) to keep the company ownership only in the hands of his blood relatives.
    • Besides Roottree Candy, there are other family-run businesses that you can search online, particularly in local newspapers.
  • Evolving Title Screen: After beating the main game in the Steam version, the article about the plane crash on the title screen is replaced with a T-shirt that says "I'm a Secret Roottree", leading into the plot of Roottreemania.
  • Fan Community Nicknames: invoked Diamond's fanbase is called Diamond's Dazzlers.
  • Featureless Protagonist: The player character is never shown and chooses to remain anonymous, although in the Steam version, they're shown to have a big interest in mystery and genealogy, going by their posters and book collection.
  • Fictional Document: Besides the various text files, books, and magazines you can gather as evidence, in the Steam version, you have the complete collection of the Alphabet Davis series, a mystery novel series that inspired you to become an armchair detective. They can be looked up online.
  • Foreshadowing: The locked space in the family tree tells you to look for inconsistencies in the evidence you gather. Depending on when you find or receive them due to the game's nonlinearity, you may get clues that point towards the truth behind one particular branch of the 5Pieces early on, which are later explained at the end:
    • Lauren's diary entries, particularly from Revisiting the Diary, highlight the circumstances behind Sam's return to the family:
      • Lauren mentions that Sam resented not just Elias Jr. and Patsy, but all the 5Pieces and the founders of the Roottree Candy Company. After some digging, the player realizes this is because Sam hates her family for kicking her out of the Clanced Trust for being the illegitimate child of Elias Jr. and Patsy. After even more digging and a visit from Sam herself, the player realizes that the real reason Sam hated the 5Pieces was for their treatment of E.C. and John, her adoptive parents, and for depriving her children (and grandchildren) of their inheritance as well (especially Ernie Jr., who despite being the 4th President of the Roottree Company and the one responsible for saving the family business only ever made $36 from his job and died young of a heart condition his family couldn't afford to treat). While we mostly have her word to go off of, it's strongly implied that Sam's crusade is far less about personal greed in her old age and far more about getting justice and recognition for her family.
      • Lauren was told that E.C. was a "Confirmed Bachelor" and was warned not to visit him and his "roommate" Mr. Miller's farm ever, and when Sam returned, Lauren was told during Elias Jr. and Patsy's wedding that Sam's relationship with the family is "complicated". This is because Sam was born to Elias Jr. and Patsy out of wedlock, so she was sent away at the same time as E.C. by Elias to the farm for "tarnishing" the family's reputation. Sam was reunited with her birth parents at their wedding because Patsy wanted to see her again, and Elias reluctantly let Sam back into the family as long as she never learned the truth or received inheritance.
      • In Lauren's essay about anger she did for school as a child, she recounts the day she met a "girl she didn't like" who hugged the former's father and claimed he was her father. Sam was the girl in that story, and she mistook Lauren's dad Clancy Edward for his identical twin brother (and Sam's uncle/adoptive father) E.C.
      • In the entry commenting about how the family's habit of recycling names through the generations tend to cause confusion, she mentions receiving an official government letter addressed to Edward Clancy Roottree and assumes they've gotten her father's name wrong. They haven't; the letter was intended for her uncle, Clancy Edward's identical twin brother.
      • At the will reading at Elias' funeral, Sam's true heritage was revealed, shocking her and most of the family because the former was told her parents died, but the 5Pieces were in on the secret: she was the illegitimate daughter of Elias Jr. and Patsy. Sam was silenced by her grandfather, fearing that the rest of his grandchildren would become outcasts like her.
    • The 1928 vintage ad of 5Piece Candies, named after the initials of the 5Piece Children by birth order, introduces miracle berries as their newest flavor. However, the product was invented in 1922, six years before the youngest 5Piece was born, while the very first ad had egg cream instead as the third flavor. This is because the sixth member, Edward "E.C." Clancy, Clancy Edward's twin brother, was disowned by their father Elias for being gay, so his flavor was replaced by Miracle's.
    • The picture of the 5Pieces has a mysterious man in the background, whose face can be taken and added to the family tree, but he doesn't seem to fit in their generation, he suspiciously looks like one of the men in front, and the locked space is conspicuously directly connected to the secondborn 5Piece's family. After completing the rest of the tree, the space opens up to reveal the spots for Sam's adoptive fathers, E.C. (Clancy Edward's identical twin brother) and his partner John Miller.
    • In Tina Angelina's book Steamy Correspondence, a romantic letter by "Patch" is theorized by Tina to have been written for her secret lover and not the man she was married with. Patch mentions how "awful" it was to have a "beauty" that is her child to be taken away from her to be raised by her lover's brother's "twisted twin... an outcast, forced to a life of labor under a wicked relative". It was written by Patricia Christensen to grieve over losing custody over Sam, who was sent away to be raised by Clancy Edward's twin brother E.C. and his partner John, while Patsy herself was married away to an older man. While Patsy resented E.C. for being gay, deep down, she missed her daughter and reunited with Elias after her husband's death for Sam's sake.
    • Ernie Jr.'s Business Watch article mentions rumors that he was trained to be the next president of the company after Zac, but was passed up for unspecified reasons, while the Free Spirits photo lists one of the people in it as "Next President Guy Hudson" instead of Ernie Jr. It turns out Zac chose Guy Hudson over him because he was "family" despite being new to the business world. Elias' fears of the company nearly going under came true when Guy invented a candy that was a failure in the market.
    • Despite being hardworking, Ernie Jr.'s also noted to "forgo the typical luxuries of the average Roottree", while the yearly salary of the President is only the price of a single pack of 5Pieces. As a result, he only earned $36 annually in his tenure and relied on his wife Debbie's salary to stay afloat, but he wasn't able to afford the medical bills for his heart illness and died during the company's return to financial success.
    • A lawsuit called "The Roottrees vs RR" involved one family member trying but failing to oust the other out of the Clanced Trust for being born out of wedlock and committing a crime against their own family member. However, the court rules that the wording of the Trust specifies that all blood relatives can inherit it, it doesn't say that they had to be legitimate children, and one cannot remove a blood relative from the Trust without dissolving it entirely. Gwynn got pregnant with Robbie just when she divorced Wild Bill, and years later, Robbie was tried and convicted for embezzlement of his brother Ron's production studio. Ron tried filing a lawsuit on him to remove him from the Trust over those, but he lost the case due to this loophole. This same loophole is the reason your client, who claims to be a Roottree, has assigned you to sort out the family tree: she's Samantha Madsen, the daughter of Elias Roottree Jr., who had been cut out of the Clanced Trust under the excuse that she was born out of wedlock. She's writing a book to expose the company's scandals and secure an inheritance for her surviving daughter and granddaughters.
  • Forgotten First Meeting: Lauren and Sam first met each other when they were young. They ended up on bad terms due to Sam mistaking Lauren's father for her own.
  • Four Is Death:
    • The 3rd President of the Roottree Candy Company poorly managed it for four years before dying in a car accident.
    • The 4th President ran for 13 years, helping it recover from its previous mismanagement before resigning due to illness and dying from heart disease soon after.
  • Game Within a Game: You can download the digital version of FamilyDoku! in your in-game PC, where you can solve smaller family tree puzzles. There's even an achievement for solving them all.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: In the Soap Within a Show Time Marches Onward, Carson dies while saving his younger sister from drowning in a whitewater rafting accident in the same river Carson had his own rafting accident six years ago.
  • Hidden Track:
    • After beating the game, you can search "Beef Baby" to unlock it as a bonus piece of audio evidence.
    • The March 3, 2025 update added another secret track: the Game Boy beside your computer plays a chiptune version of the song that plays when you lock in family members.
  • Hint System: The Steam version lets you talk to a rubber duck at any time for a hint on what to search for next. It gives you two clues on the next thing to search before outright telling you what it is. It also lets you skip the sliding picture puzzle for David 4th's pic if you're stuck.
  • Honesty Aesop: After helping your client complete the family tree and discover the company's dark history, they explain most of the evidence you gathered and conclude the investigation with this:
    "Whitewashing the past to protect the status quo can lead to repercussions in the present and future."
  • Identical Twin Mistake: Lauren describes a strange girl (Samantha) hugging Lauren's father and saying he was her dad. Sam mistook Lauren's father, Clancy Edward, for his twin, her adoptive father, Edward Clancy.
  • Insane Troll Logic: When Chris Rafferty tries to prove that Ernie Jr. had a heart condition with credible evidence, Thomas Overwood rejects the proof because "he's an expert at creating fake evidence".
  • Internal Retcon: After Miracle is born, 5Pieces candy is changed to remove Edward Clancy's flavor and replace it with "miracle berry".
  • Justified Tutorial: The client tests you first with identifying the Roottree Sisters, confirming that you can work out details of well-known pop culture icons before delving into the more obscure members of the family.
  • Knowledge-Based Progression: The whole game is about find any surviving Roottree heirs using an outdated computer system. You can search for any keyword (though the game is pretty precise about what you can and can't find.) You're even given a notebook to fill out relevant info.
  • Laser-Guided Karma:
    • After (perhaps unwillingly) participating in the cover-up of his teenage relationship with Patricia, Elias Jr. ended up spending most of his life alone until Patricia came back into his life in their 50s. His descendants, including a president of the company, were excluded from the Clanced Trust and Samantha does not consider him as her real father.
    • Ernie Madsen Jr. (president of the company at that time) helped Carl Roottree to found fashion company ROOT., even though the rest of the family refused to invest at the start. Years later, with Ernie dead and his family struggling financially, Carl (who succeeded Ernie as the president) and his wife Brenda convince the company to use some of the trust to help his family.
  • Life Imitates Art: In-universe, the TV show Brother Trouble's plot of competition between two brothers becomes this as the director, Ronald Roottree, unsuccessfully sued his brother, screenwriter Robert Roottree, for his crimes, which include embezzlement, assault and harm towards a family member.
  • Never Trust a Trailer: The Steam trailer shows altered webpages and evidence to not spoil anything to the player. Some of the family members have false names (the patriarch and matriarch are Cornelius and Olivia, respectively) and have their photos placed in the wrong spots.
  • The Nth Doctor: In the Soap Within a Show Time Marches Onward, Carson is played by a different actor from TMS when the character returned to the show after a six-year absence. The change is explained by having Carson's face wrapped in bandages because his work in the mines left him disfigured and his voice sounding different. His bandages are removed after he gets plastic surgery, revealing the new actor who would play him for three more years and 500 more episodes.
  • Once More, with Clarity: At the end, when Samantha is explaining her motivation for hiring you, excerpts from the evidence you've gathered show up onscreen, with newfound context.
  • Overly Long Gag: The search result for the soap opera "Time Marches Onward" is an irrelevant 3 paragraph long summary of Carson's (Thomas Sheridan's character) character arc on the aforementioned show.
  • Playlist Soundtrack: The game's soundtrack cycles through several mystery themes, which can be skipped to other songs anytime.
  • Plot-Triggering Death: The president of the Roottree Candy Company, his wife, and all three of their daughters are killed in a plane crash. Their deaths is what kickstarts the plot of having to figure out who is a blood relative of the family so they can earn Elias' inheritance.
  • Post-Release Retitle: Lauren's in-universe book "Swashbuckle My Heart" was renamed to "X Marks The Spot" when it was re-released 11 years later.
  • Public Domain Soundtrack: The game's soundtrack has both original songs, some composed by fictional bands such as J&D and The Fluzis, and royalty-free music.
  • Pun-Based Title: One of Gwynn Roottree's movies, Guys Like Us, can be interpreted as either the two female leads disguising themselves as men to become more successful in life, or that men are fond of them.
  • Put on a Bus: In Time Marches Onward, Carson (TMS's character) appears in 53 episodes before he "went away to camp". A later episode reveals that he died offscreen in a whitewater rafting accident, but six years later, he returned alive all along, but as a partial amnesiac who survived child trafficking by Mexican drug runners.
  • Queer Colors: In FamilyDoku!@Home, same-sex couples are marked with a rainbow.
  • Quote Mine: The blurb on C&J+J&D's record says, "Folk style songwriting...catchy...". The actual review recommends skipping the record, saying, "Amateurish folk-style songwriting is catchy at times, but ultimately doesn't do anything new".
  • Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: A common problem with the evidence is the people involved always record their thoughts fairly realistically, especially in interviews and Lauren's diary. This means what could have been fairly cut and dry proof of who is related to who if they dryly clarified themselves at every turn instead becomes a separate game of guessing nicknames and connecting obscure comments and details about family.
  • Relationship Chart: The entire game centers around building one of these about the family, complete with corkboard and yarn.
  • Riddle for the Ages: As the game only focuses on building the family tree, we don't have answers on whether the deaths of Guy Hudson, Ernie Jr., and Carl and his family are an accident, foul play or a curse.
  • Rock Trio: The Fluzis are composed of Candy (guitar), Nicki (bass), and Nina (drums).
  • Shout-Out:
  • Show Within a Show: Downplayed: "Brother Trouble", a sitcom that several members of the Roottree family were involved with, is mentioned often but we never see any of it.
  • Sibling Triangle: In the Show Within a Show "Brother Trouble", the two brothers compete for the affection of their next-door neighbor, Roxie.
  • Slow-Loading Internet Image: The computer takes a couple of seconds to load a new webpage whenever you do a new search.
  • Sweet Polly Oliver: Guys Like Us, one of Gwynn Roottree's most famous movies she starred in, is about two female secretaries disguising themselves as businessmen to get ahead in life until one of them falls in love with her client. To quote the plot summary on its SpiderSearch result, hilarity ensues.
  • Theme Twin Naming: Edward Clancy was the older twin, Clancy Edward was the younger one.
  • Title Drop: The introduction ends with the game title.
    "Again, for those of you just joining us, the Roottrees are dead."
  • Wiki Walk: The main conceit of the game. Use online resources to look up and follow the obvious leads and terminology, and then follow the interesting terms on these pages to discover new information and how it connects to the Roottree family. For example, looking up a TV actor leads to information on a show he was in, leading to information on his costars and their careers, the production company, Hollywood history, and more, all of which ties somehow ends up tying back to the Roottrees.
  • You Can't Get Ye Flask: The internet is picky with what terms you use. For example, looking up an individual requires both their first and last name.
  • You Shouldn't Know This Already: The space in the family tree marked with a dotted rectangle (or kept in a Top Secret folder) is locked, and two names are not on the drop-down list because you need to remember them and input them manually once you fill in the rest of the tree. Even if you know that they are E.C. and John Miller, you can't add them to the tree until the very end, when Sam reveals to you that those are her adoptive fathers.

Alphabet Davis series

The Steam release references a four-book Alphabet Davis series owned by the player character; and synopses of all four books can be found on the in-game library website as an Easter Egg.

Tropes found in Alphabet Davis include:

    Alphabet Davis tropes 
  • Alliterative Name: In Alphabet Davis: Secret Searcher, the title character's love interest is named Christine O'Connor, while in Ends & Beginnings, his wife is named Rachel Roman.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: In Alphabet Davis' Ends & Beginnings, the title character's ally Billy doesn't show up for no reason at all. invoked This didn't sit well with the fans, so he was presumably brought back in The Erased Names of the Genesis to appease them.
  • Death by Childbirth: In Alphabet Davis: Secret Searcher, the eponymous character's mother died giving birth to him, and his father resented him for having all her worst traits.
  • Disappeared Dad: In Alphabet Davis REVERSUS, the title character's dad dies being thrown off into sharp rocks, as prophesied by the treasure Alphabet found in Secret Searcher.
  • Double In-Law Marriage: In Alphabet Davis REVERSUS, the title character discovers that his dad and the latter's identical twin brother each married identical twin sisters. This resulted in their children, who are double cousins and genetic siblings, being identical as well.
  • Family Business: In Alphabet Davis REVERSUS, the owner of the metallurgy shop that crafted the mysterious mirrors took up his father's job.
  • Framing Device: Alphabet Davis' Ends & Beginnings has this, where an older Alphabet shows his teenage children the treasures he found on his previous adventure, which prompts Alphabet to go on "one final adventure" with them. During their journey, Alphabet takes a break to tell his kids that the adventure they're on now reminds him of one he had with his dad when Alphabet was younger, and the novel becomes a prequel to explain how that voyage went.
  • Generation Xerox: In Alphabet Davis' Ends & Beginnings, the teenaged Alphabet discovers that his deceased mother loved puzzles just like him.
  • Heel–Face Turn: In Alphabet Davis: Secret Searcher, Billy Gruff betrays his gang of fishermen, who were sent by a rival company to sabotage Alphabet's search for the hidden treasure, to join his team.
  • Immediate Sequel: Alphabet Davis REVERSUS begins three days after Secret Searcher.
  • Plot-Triggering Death: The plot of Alphabet Davis in The Erased Names of the Genesis is kickstarted by Christine's death, which motivates Alphabet to investigate the cause.
  • Put on a Bus: In Alphabet Davis in The Erased Names of the Genesis, Dirk and Annie attend their mother's funeral (after she was retconned from Rachel to Christine) and are sent off to live with their maternal grandparents, never showing up again.
  • Remember the New Guy?: In Alphabet Davis' Ends & Beginnings, the title character's wife isn't Christine O'Connor, but rather Rachel Roman, who showed up out of nowhere and had little presence in the story. However, this was retconned in The Erased Names of the Genesis, where Dirk and Annie are Christine's children all along, but she dies of a mysterious illness in the first chapter, while Rachel becomes Alphabet's new ally instead. invoked These changes didn't sit well with the fans.
  • Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: In Alphabet Davis in The Erased Names of the Genesis, Layla Amin, Alphabet's new love interest, dies to the Curse of Ahmuntentra before the end of the first half. Three years later, she shows up at the climax of the second half, revealed that she faked her death, was the one who killed Christine and Billy with poisoned artifacts, and is a direct descendant of Queen Ahmuntentra. She also reveals that the masked man who ambushed Alphabet three years ago is her brother.
  • Rod-and-Reel Repurposed: In the Alphabet Davis series, the title character uses his fishing rod not just to catch fish, but also to snag out-of-reach items. He first learned how to do this when he, as a teenager, pulled himself out of quicksand with it in Ends & Beginnings.
  • Sibling Murder: In Alphabet Davis in The Erased Names of the Genesis, Layla Amin reveals to Alphabet that the man in the golden mask who attacked him three years ago was her brother, and she showed up in the pyramid to collect her birthright. She then turns against her brother and shoots him so she can take the treasure all for herself.
  • Theme Twin Naming: In Alphabet Davis REVERSUS, the title character's dad was named Martin Davis Jr. while his identical twin brother's named Martin J. Davis.
  • Thrill Seeker: In Alphabet Davis: Secret Searcher, the title character's described as this trope, making him "impatient and foolhardy". He enjoys sailing the seas for the thrill of it instead of catching fish for his father's seafood company.
  • Time Skip: Alphabet Davis in The Erased Names of the Genesis has an abrupt three-year timeskip halfway through, where Alphabet explains at Billy's funeral what happened before: Billy bailed Alphabet out of prison, but they get into a fight over the death of Alphabet's new love interest Layla, with Billy destroying the mysterious mask to end the chain of clues Alphabet was investigating to find the cause of Christine's death. Billy then abandoned Alphabet and returned home to run the fishing business, but then died of the same mysterious illness as Christine when he tried pawning off another item of treasure.

Roottreemania

After completing the original mystery in the retail release, a New Game Plus mystery taking place eight months after is made available: Roottreemania. The public release of the Roottrees' history has brought the family into the spotlight, including how any blood descendant of Elias and Gwyneth Roottree is eligible to get money from the Clanced Trust. People start coming out of the woodwork claiming to be secret children born out of wedlock to members of the Roottree family. You're once again called on to dig into the family's infidelities and identify who has enough of a claim of Roottree ancestry to require a paternity test.

Spoilers for the original mystery are unmarked.

Tropes found in Roottreemania include:

    Roottreemania tropes 
  • Accidental Truth: Though Miracle Roottree's claim that Felix Fellowes is not a Roottree and is just out for a cash grab was made purely to try to dissuade Miracle's own illegitimate child from following in Felix's footsteps, it turns out to be bang on the money.
  • Ambiguous Situation: Whether Frank "Wildcat" Williams is the child of Elias Roottree is left unclear by the end of the game. While it's almost certain Elias and Bess had an affair, there was still time for her to have taken another lover before having her son, and the game ends before the present-day Roottrees have gotten in contact with his descendants to arrange a DNA test.
  • Anti Poop-Socking: Searching for "lower back pain" has the result advising you to sit with good posture and also to get up and stretch once in a while while spending "hours doing genealogy research".
  • Atrocious Alias: Tostaritto Jacobson (born Lucinda) legally changed her name to win free meals for life from a Mexican fast food chain called Fuegos Fiesta.
  • Bowdlerise: In-Universe. When Dirtay Davey's song "Heat" was rereleased in 1999, it was rewritten to be less profane and the line referencing Rhayna was "clumsily" replaced with Dana due to concerns about Felix Fellowes finding his third cousin attractive.
  • Brick Joke: The Roottree Sisters fansite initially says that creator wants to get her ears pierced like Rhose. The updated version of the site eight months later says that indeed, the creator got them pierced like hers.
  • Broken Base: In-Universe. The reception of Sam's book is stated to be extremely divisive. Roottreemania goes into more details: While her main cause regarding E. C. and John Miller is seen by the public to be extremely sympathetic (except for religious fundamentalists), she included alot of unsubstantiated rumors and scandals in her book and alot of people questioned the timing of releasing a book when her nephew and his family died tragically from a plane crash.
  • Bland-Name Product: 45 Minutes is a TV news magazine whose logo is a stopwatch, just like 60 Minutes.
  • Cassandra Truth: As it turns out, "Anonymom" really was one of Guy Hudson's affairs, and "Jane Doe" is his child. The reason her story sounded so similar to Felix's is because he took it from her.
  • Chekhov's Gun: One unrelated to the possible Roottrees, funnily enough; in the original game, Stephanie Jones is noted to be pregnant; fast forward to Roottreemania eight months later, and she and Brian have a daughter you have to add to the family tree.
  • Conspiracy Theorist: Like in the original mystery, Thomas Overwood exploits Roottreemania to come up with new conspiracies about the Roottrees such as the deaths of certain members being faked. This time, searching one of these theories gives you a new lead — the missing pages of the recalled Picotee issue detailing Sisely's involvement with Guy.
  • Cuteness Overload: The genealogist refuses to use anything other than SpiderSearch because they find the spider cute.
  • Daddy DNA Test: DNA tests are done on two children whose mothers had been involved with Guy Hudson; one of them comes back positive, but the second does not. At the end, more DNA tests are done. It turns out that the initial two were faked and had the exact opposite results from what they should have.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: Barb Williams' sister Sharon is actually her daughter, whom she conceived from a fling with a boy when she was fifteen and who was adopted by her father. This was a common practice in the era Barb grew up, to spare the girl the scandal of a teenage pregnancy while allowing the parents to discreetly support the child. In contrast, by the time the game takes place she openly discusses her motherhood of Sharon as part of her motivational speaking.
  • Destroy the Evidence: Felix destroyed intimate images of Guy and his mother, keeping only a tame picture of the two of them at a company picnic. The pictures never existed, as his mother never had a relationship with Guy.
  • The Dissenter Is Always Right: Miracle Roottree turns out to be completely correct in his assertion that Felix Fellowes is not a Roottree.
  • Fabricated Evidence: The initial DNA tests for Felix and Courtney-May were faked; Rubie threw away Bonnie's hair. For Felix, Sam suspects that she substituted hair from Felix's mother off of her hairbrush, mentioned specifically as something of hers that he kept. This would give a positive relationship result. For Courtney-May, Sam suspects that Rubie used her own hair instead of Bonnie's to get a false negative.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • There's another locked-off space waiting until you fill in the family tree. The inconsistencies that start revealing what might be under that space include:
      • Anonymom's description of her relationship with Guy seems extremely similar to Felix's mother's. That's because Felix based his story on what Anonymom told Rubie, before Felix's story was published.
      • A profile of Guy mentions that he sees Elias Roottree as a role model and strives to emulate him, especially when it comes to 5Pieces. Each flavour of the original 5Pieces matches the initial of one of Elias' children. Similarly, Guy hid the money he was paying to the mothers of his children by listing it on the books as expenses towards the development of new 5Piece candy flavours, each one sharing the woman's first initial. There is also no candy flavor listed that starts with a J, matching Felix's mother Joanna.
      • There is some confusion over when Felix Fellowes wrote one of his early songs. Said song explicitly mentions that it was written when Felix was seventeen, but other elements don't line up with that timeline. The confusion is because Felix is lying about his age in an attempt to make the timeline of his claim to be a Roottree work; he was born well before Guy became president and well after his mother left Roottree Candy.
      • Guy and his sister Bonnie both have vibrant red hair, like their parents. While "Jane Doe" Roottree's face is censored, her hair is visible, and she is also a redhead. Joanna also has red hair, which would make it unlikely that she and Guy would have a child with hair as dark as Felix's, while Courtney-May is the real biological Roottree in Anonymom's story.
      • Rubie Spratt, a foster child, started the Foster Fountain charity program in Portland, and many of the performers there were foster care alumni who knew each other growing up, one of who was Dirtay Davey. Rubie's valedictorian speech and 5Peez' song "All Your Problems" also speak of wealth inequality, with the latter being a Take That! against the Roottrees and being the only original vocal song without the "lyrics have no clues" note (not counting "Beef Baby"). This is a clue towards Rubie and Felix's budding alliance to steal the Roottrees' wealth and redistribute it to the poor.
      • Rubie visited the Roottrees after the Rift, which was caused by Sam Madsen's book, but before Roottreemania, which had multiple people claiming to be "secret Roottrees" in order to get their share of the Clanced Trust. She offered to work for them for very little pay in exchange for helping them sort out the Trust, but the family resisted against risking their wealth for it. It was all a setup for Rubie to sabotage them and steal a big part of the Trust because she knew Felix's mother Joanna worked for Roottree Candy.
      • DNATECO's testing procedure involves collecting hair samples from the alleged relatives, but if the sample is sent remotely, the donor is listed as "Jane Doe". Bonnie, who has the same red hair as her deceased twin brother Guy, had her hair sampled this way. However, the two signatures of Bonnie's DNA, which are used to prove and disprove Felix's and "Jane Doe"'s parentage, respectively don't match, while Rubie was reported to have been throwing away hair samples. This is because Rubie faked the tests — Sam suspects that Felix used the hair on his mother's hairbrush as a fake sample and sent it remotely so that the donor would be registered as "Jane Doe" when matched against Guy's alleged biological children. Courtney-May's hair sample was also sent remotely for the second test, but was suspected to have had been discarded by Rubie and replaced with her own. This is why Courtney-May complained on her website about DNA testing being unreliable, while Clark and Sam require both parties to be present when testing for their upcoming investigation on Frank's surviving family.
    • After the locked space is unlocked, you're tasked to determine if the children of the affairs and also Ron and Robbie are biologically Roottrees or not, or if it's ambiguous. The Smoking Guns listed when you inspect each potential Roottree give you some hints:
      • Christine met Guy during Zac's retirement party in November and was "reluctant" to switch partners. Later articles mention that Christine eloped with her husband while pregnant, and he later started his cooking lessons in August so he can also watch over their son. Additionally, a Kitchen Tales recipe tells the story of two lost lovers who reunited after being separated by a third party, while Christine and her husband had their second child after they moved to Boston. Not only was James Garland born nine months after that "party", Steve was also fully aware that Christine got pregnant with Guy's illegitimate son, so he ran away with her to start a new life together as a family. Also, James' brother Robert was born after his family moved out, making him not a secret Roottree.
      • In "Hangin' With the Hans", Lang Xinyao says that her older sister was "desperately in love" with anything US-related such as Butch Cassidy and Robert Redford. Lang Xinyu ended up falling for Guy in one of his visits.
      • When Lang Hongbo discovered that his youngest daughter couldn't bear a male heir to his company, he paid Qigenes to perform IVF on her older sister. However, a whistleblower exposed the company's secret that they sometimes falsify the process to cover up an unexplained pregnancy. Also, Lang Xinyao writes in "Hangin' With the Hans" that she and her husband have had a son after moving to the US. The false IVF procedure was done to hide Lang Xinyu's pregnancy with Guy.
      • Sonia Alves was married off to an older husband when she was a teen, and her public appearances with him were only for show; they didn't even live together, and Nia hated her parents for the Arranged Marriage. Also, the Christmas 1979 party, where Guy visited Brazil to celebrate the groundbreaking of a new Roottree Candy factory, is suspiciously not in the company records. Additionally, Flavio's star sign is Libra, putting his birthdate between September 22 and October 23. The photo of said party shows Sonia leaning closer to Guy than to her husband Edson, implying that she liked Guy more than Edson and that Flavio was conceived during the affair.
      • In her interview about her cancelled book about Guy, Sisely Sanchez remarks that he sent one of his mistresses, "Suzy something", to the bathroom before propositioning Sisely about her book; she laments that she knew "Suzy" from their overseas trips. The company records show that Susan Ford was hired as an interpreter for Guy's international "business trips", and she can be seen in the aforementioned Christmas party photo.
      • Sisely also recalls that the last time "Suzy" was with Guy, he was wearing a green suit like Elias. True enough, Susan was in the photo where Guy wore that suit, where she was cleaning the chocolate off of the young Chris.
      • Grandorf Dove, which had a "Hudson Wing" built thanks to a generous donation, got vandalized by Mrs. Hughes' husband upon realizing that she was already pregnant. This is because the school's expansion was instead named after Guy, the actual father of Susan's twins, and he paid her twice the usual amount of hush money for them.
      • Mary-Beth Clementine was known to had had visited Miracle Congregation several times. Her adopted son Stuart never knew his father, while Miracle welcomed him and his mother into the church after "developing a kinship" with Mary-Beth. The following year, a "Basket Baby" was delivered to Mary-Beth and was adopted under "unusual circumstances". This confirms that Mary-Beth adopted Stuart before her affair with Miracle and subsequent "adoption" of Mark nine months after her first meeting with Miracle.
      • Mark "Crocodile" Clementine was bailed out by Tostaritto Jacobson, formerly Lucinda, who was the sister of Edith, wife of Miracle Jr. This means that Lucinda knew that Mark was the biological son of Miracle Sr. and used that connection to bail him out.
      • Gwyneth was known to strong-arm Elias into accepting illegitimate children such as Sam into the family, and was overheard arguing with him about another woman named "Beth" by Ernie Jr. Sam assumed that Gwyneth was referring to Elias's secretary Elizabeth, but Sam never met her, while Lauren recalled that Gwyneth had a lisp. It turns out that she was actually referring to Bess, Elias's alleged mistress.
      • All Sam knows about Bess Williams, based on your evidence, was that she wrote a Propaganda Piece about Elias, but died tragically young, leaving her son an orphan with no memory of his father. While this fits with Wildcat Williams' backstory, there's no evidence of Bess's other relationships, and Sam and Clark have only recently contacted his surviving family for a DNA test on that.
      • The Steam version of Wild Bill Williams' Starlet article states that he was rumored to had had affairs with blonde women, and Gwynn divorced him over them. One witness saw them arguing about the divorce while Gwynn, visibly pregnant, was holding their baby. The gossip surrounding the divorce claimed that Gwynn got pregnant "again" right after it. Tellingly, one change from the browser version of the original mystery is that Ron's parentage from Gwynn is marked with a dashed line for illegitimacy/adoption instead of a solid line for a biological and legitimate relation. This is because Ron was Wild Bill's biological child with another blonde woman, and Gwynn passed him off as her biological son while she was pregnant with Robbie.
      • Following Gwynn's death, Ron and Robbie reconciled with each other as they grieved for her, the Guys Like Us remake was cancelled over Ron's medical condition, while his wife Penelope is holding a charity program for research on Huntington's Disease, which is hereditary. However, Ron and Robbie's father is alive and well while Gwynn was in "good health" before she died, while one of Wild Bill's costars died of Huntington's. It turns out that Ron got the disease from Lesley and not from Gwynn, adding more credence that he was adopted by her.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In-Universe. The caviar flavor was infamously hated around the globe even more than the other unpopular new flavors Guy devised for 5Pieces candy. Unlike those flavors, they still found a market because they were inexplicably beloved in Brazil, where they were originally produced. To the point Brazil is the last foreign branch still standing simply by virtue of shifting their entire production to exclusively producing caviar flavored 5Pieces.
  • Heir Club for Men: When the CEO of Langtai Textile Corporation passed on without any sons, leadership of the company passed onto his younger brother instead of his daughter who was pretty much running the company behind the scenes. She did eventually take over as CEO after her uncle stepped down due to cognitive decline, though a large chunk of her uncle's board of directors grumble that she coerced him to do so somehow.
  • High Turnover Rate: Employee records show for the brief reign of Guy Hudson, new employees (especially secretaries) were hired frequently and fired after only a year or so on the position.
  • Hourglass Plot: The start of Roottreemania sees 5Peez as the only "notable" Roottree as the only one confirmed by the media circus, while Anonymom is the prime example of a disproven case made up of false claims. The details you receive throughout the game allows you to, at the very end, piece together that the evidence was sabotaged from within the company and the opposite is true. Fellowes is an imposter butting in on the fortune while Anonymom's evidence was tampered with to keep her and her daughter out.
  • Interface Spoiler:
    • New photo evidence usually involves character(s) from the original family tree interacting with new characters. On the new trees for infidelities, sections are included for the members of the Roottree family, but those who didn't commit infidelity get their new photos placed next to their original position. Thus, the easiest way to tell which Roottrees are involved in affairs is to see which of them have new photos which can't be placed next to their original portrait.
    • At the very end, you have to determine whether people are Roottrees or not, and are shown a list of "smoking guns" that might help; ones you haven't found yet are indicated as such, with a space for them to be filled in. But even if you somehow found none at all, the fact that there's a massive list of smoking guns to find for Felix Fellowes - whose claim was initially presented as straightforwardly proven by DNA evidence and which should therefore require two or three at most, rather than the longest list in the entire game - makes it obvious that you need to debunk the "obvious" assumption. Similarly, the very fact that you're asked to investigate Ron and Robbie, coupled with their lengthy list of smoking guns, makes it obvious that at least one of them isn't going to be a Roottree, since nobody else in the original family gets that check.
  • Irony:
    • Ron Roottree tried to get his younger brother Robbie kicked out of the Clanced Trust for embezzlement and being born out of wedlock. This was one of the precedents that helped Sam argue that her children should have been part of the Trust, as she was also born out of wedlock. Just before Gwynn's death, and just as Ron was taking over as company president, she told him that she wasn't actually his mother and he's not really a Roottree, leading to Ron being forced to step down and likely losing access to his part of the Trust.
    • Stuart Clementine mentions that his mother may have had a relationship with Miracle. She did, but he wasn't the product of it; his younger brother Mark was.
    • Mark Clementine, son of two highly religious parents, is a career criminal.
  • Juggling Dangerously: The picture found of Frank Williams shows him juggling hammers.
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler: Defied in Roottreemania, where trying to create a new save warns you that it'll spoil everything in the original mystery because the first family tree is already completed.
  • Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe:
    • Susan Ford's husband gets upset that his new bride is pregnant by another man and goes off to trash a school building donated by (and named for) the actual father.
    • Zig-Zagged Trope for Felix Fellowes, who claims this was the case and led to his parents' divorce, and even has DNA evidence to prove it...but the DNA evidence turns out to have been faked and he is not actually the child of Guy Hudson after all. It is unclear if he is the child of his mother's husband.
    • Flavio Soares is neatly passed off as the son of his mother and her long missing husband.
  • My Secret Pregnancy:
    • Barbara Williams kept her pregnancy under wraps well enough for that her child was able to be passed off as her younger sister without anyone being the wiser.
    • Mary-Beth Clementine takes a rather lengthy hiatus from her career due to health reasons shortly before she comes across her second son. Your investigations soon prove that her adoptive son is actually her natural one.
    • Lang Xinyu's pregnancy out of wedlock isn't hidden from the public, but is claimed to be her becoming a surrogate via IVF to help her sister have a child.
  • Naturalized Name: When Han Junwei and Lang Xinyao moved to America, they changed their names to Jerry and Linda Han. They also gave their son an American name instead of a Chinese one.
  • New Game Plus: All research from the original game is carried along into the new game.
  • Never a Self-Made Woman: Most of Guy Hudson's mistresses owe their success later in life to the money he provided them after they have his child. The discrepancy of Felix Fellowes' mother dying destitute is another hint to the fact that he isn't Guy's son.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Gwynn Roottree adopts her husband's bastard after his mother passes away from illness, keeping the truth a secret so that the child can have access to the Roottree family fortune. Unfortunately what killed the child's biological mother turns out to be Huntington's disease, and so the child, unaware that he's a carrier of the disease and will also eventually succumb to it, goes on to have several children of his own that he may have passed it on to.
  • No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: In-Universe. Sam's scandalous tell-all book and the Roottreemania scandal have made several Roottrees' related products and locations skyrocket in sales. Sam's book, Lauren's memoir, Gwyneth Anderson's tourist attraction farm, Gwynn's movies etc. all ended up becoming relevant to your investigation.
  • Odd Name Out: Apart from the infamous caviar, the names of the other 5Piece flavours that Guy Hudson was developing are pretty typical (butterscotch, strawberry, and sugarplum)...and then there's xigua, which turns out to be a Chinese word for watermelon. All those flavours turn out to be code names for the hush money payments that Guy was paying his mistresses; Sam later lampshades that the whole ruse got a bit less clever once Guy chose to take up with a woman whose name began with an X.
  • Permanently Missable Content: The secret achievement for putting Jerry Seinfeld's name in the expanded family tree can only be done before completing Roottreemania, but this is downplayed since you can just start a new save file in a separate slot and do it there.
  • Previously on…: The Reminders evidence is a black-and-white title card that says "Previously On The Roottrees Are Dead".
  • Red Herring:
    • As told by your clients, not everyone's names will be used in the new family tree, while only the affairs that resulted in children will be counted. One affair affected by this is Guy's with Robyn Martin, who was unmarried. There's a spot on the family tree for an unmarried woman, but it isn't hers because she didn't have children with him. She was rumored to have had undergone an operation to prevent that.
    • An interview about Elias and Gwyneth Roottree reveals that Gwyneth knew about Elias having an affair with a woman named "Beth", which seems to refer to Elizabeth Knox, who has worked at the Roottree company for over 50 years. However, another passage reveals that Gwyneth spoke with a lisp and she was actually saying Bess (as in Bess Williams, the author of Family Man), meaning Elizabeth had nothing to do with Elias's infidelity.
    • There are also some articles that seem to be dead ends, but they actually hold valuable info if you search the right terms in the right places. One such article is about Anonymom, which outright tells you that her daughter was already ruled out as an illegitimate Roottree child and that you shouldn't try searching her or her child because of their anonymity. However, one magazine, Picotee, is known to invade people's privacy and has an article partly revealing their names: Beatrice and Courtney-May Watts.
  • Sequel Goes Foreign: The original mystery had most of the action in Butler County, while Roottreemania has you investigating the case online not just in other US cities, but also in Brazil, China, France, and Australia.
  • Sequel Hook: At the end of the investigation, Sam says that she's had enough drama about her family to last her a lifetime, but there's still Elias's and Gwyneth's siblings, whose stories haven't been told...
  • Shed the Family Name: After Colleen divorced Mark "Crocodile" Clementine, she and her second daughter used her maiden name, Webb, to avoid being associated with Colleen's criminal ex-husband.
  • Significant Name Overlap: Like in the previous mystery, trying to sort out multiple people with the same name is part of the puzzle, as searching for Lucy Lang leads to three relevant people with that name. It's the one who's part of Team Talonclaw who has a picture for the family tree.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Spy Speak: Payments to one character's mistresses were disguised as product names starting with the same letter.
  • Stage Name:
    • Rapper Felix Fellowes goes by 5Peez during the height of Roottreemania. Before that, he went by Dirtay Davey after his birth name David.
    • Child actress Cricket Yastrzemski goes by York for her last name in the press because her real surname is hard to pronounce.
  • Streisand Effect: invoked Picotee Magazine's issue about Sisely Sanchez' cancelled book about Guy Hudson was given a cease and desist by Rubie Legal Enterprises due to Sisely not having the rights to have the pictures in the book redistributed by the magazine. This caused the issue to be pulled from the shelves the day after the lawsuit, but it only caused more people, particularly conspiracists, to buy it before it was recalled. The NEWSTime article covering this notes that Picotee likely got more eyes on this lawsuit than it would have if the Roottrees just ignored the story.
  • Succession Crisis: Happened to Roottree Candy in the eight months timeskip between cases, with Ron immediately going to the press and announcing that he was taking over, he and Clark becoming joint presidents after the rest of the family get their acts together and finally Clark becoming the sole president after Ron's Huntington's disease manifests and he is also outed as not being a biological Roottree.
  • Time Skip: The mystery takes place on August 3, 1999, almost eight months after the original.
  • Uncanny Valley: The Steam version of the game, which includes Roottreemania, has updated art that's a humanmade recreation of the AI-generated images for the characters in the browser version. However, the exception is the mascot of EDUC8TU — one Liberry Library fan complains that the mascot's a terrifying little girl who "stares into your soul" because she also happens to be a black-and-white version of the original portrait of November Roottree.

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Browse Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing

Advertisement:

Top