The Roottrees are Dead (But For Real This Time).
Hey everyone!
The response to The Roottrees Are Dead over the past few months has been fantastic, beyond my wildest expectations. The game was featured on a few high profile best of 2023 lists, some incredible podcasts, and I recently learned that PC Gamer magazine even reviewed it in their April 2024 issue.
That said, there are definitely things that I would do differently if I were to start over from scratch. Many of you have rightfully called out that the use of AI art. I'm the first to admit that in addition to the ethical problems that come along with the entire issue, there are some elements that can also distract and detract from the experience.
There's also the improvements that could come from better UI/UX. For example, better search abilities for names on the family tree and a better browser history that allows players to go back and find things quickly and easily, especially across multiple sessions.
So, I'm happy to announce, that for the past few months, we've been doing that. Starting over from scratch.
I say "we", because I am no longer the only developer tackling this issue. I'm not an artist, and I have heavy time commitments that prevent me from working on the game to the quality level that we're intending. Enter Robin Ward, aka "eviltrout", a fellow puzzle game developer who I met through some common interests. He has taken over managing the game's production, and is leading the programming effort. In the meantime, I'm working on the content: Transferring it from one database to another in such a way that it can be more easily sorted through and searched for in-game, translated to other languages if we so desire, and expanded upon with additional content and extensive notes to our artists meant to address the problems people have with some puzzles *cough*No more ambiguity on These Times*cough*.
The new version of the game will be released on steam, and will not be free, but will contain many improvements across many features meant to raise the quality level to a level worth paying for. At the moment, we don't have a release date or price point, but we are making steady progress, and recently pushed our steam page live with a trailer showing off some of that progress. It would do us wonders if anyone reading this could go and wishlist the game:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2754380/The_Roottrees_are_Dead/
Additionally, many of you have donated through the in-game link and by paying here on itchio. It's immensely appreciated, and helped push me to the decision that a paid release could be worth the time, energy, and of course, financial investment that it would cost from everyone involved to create.
That said, due to the fact that we'll be officially selling the game in the future, I am disabling those payment methods as of today. We don't currently have any plans to remove this free version of the game, but please, consider it a beta version of what's to come.
Thank you all so much,
-Jeremy Johnston
The Roottrees are Dead
A family tree puzzle inspired by games like Obra Dinn and Her Story.
| Status | In development |
| Author | jjohnstongames |
| Genre | Puzzle |
| Tags | 1998, Family Friendly, ggj2023, obra-dinn, Point & Click, research, Singleplayer |
More posts
- Some small fixes...Jan 11, 2024
- Save Issues, Bug Fixes, and Small ChangesNov 22, 2023
- The Roottrees are (finally) Dead!Nov 08, 2023
Comments
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I appreciate your frankness about your use of AI, and I hope you will find an artist for the Steam release. I had a great time playing, and will definitely buy on Steam if AI is not involved.
ive not played the game yet. But i wanted to ask what's the problem with using AI art? its a tool to help you create ! i guess if the audience doesnt like it thats a reason to change it or your own personal tastes.
There are many ethical concerns with using AI art, I think that if you're interested in knowing more there is a significant amount of information about that out there since it's a very hot-button topic at the moment. Just searching for "ethics of AI art" for example, would lead to a lot different resources from articles to reddit posts, etc.
I am no expert on the subject, but generally, how I sum up the main problem, is that there is no public-use AI that I know of that has been built on art that they sourced ethically. In many cases it was taken without permission, and in the cases where they do claim to have permission, it seems like that permission was gathered retroactively (because AI is a relatively recent phenomenon)
AI needs a massive database of images to begin to learn the patterns of how to create more images, and in this situation that core seems to be built without properly gathering the rights to do so for essentially every mainstream AI image generator.
Appreciate that reply. I think you have explained it well enough that I don't need to search further. Thanks. I may not completely agree with artist on this issue even as an artist, i appreciate you being respectful of the situation. This particular situation - it seems close to a metallica x napster thing for me so probably the artist have some rights that are bring neglected should they want compensation and regulation.
Jeremy, this is such awesome news. You made a fantastic game - one of my favorites of last year. I'm so happy to hear you continue (and expand!) the effort here. I just wishlisted.
Congrats!
I love this game, and will definitely buy it when it comes out. I do have a couple suggestions.
-I don't know if the current version of the game or the future one will require figuring out who people in photographs are by matching their faces, but I have a mild form of prosopagnosia (inability to remember faces). I think if there were a setting or some kind of clues to help with that, that would be great.
-I could make notes in my journal linking names to jobs if I knew someone's job, but not where they were on the tree. It seems very useful if I could link names/ jobs with peoples' pictures too, like making a little note for someone's face saying "this is Diamond Laroux."
-Just a little thing I noticed was that with all of the names in the game being available to see when selecting someone's name, I occasionally found myself looking up some of the names of people who were on the name list, but who I hadn't actually found yet. Maybe, kind of like with the pictures, you'd have to click on names in articles on Spidersearch and stuff to unlock them?
Again, this is a great game and I understand if these suggestions aren't implemented, as they're just suggestions. Keep up the great work!
This is such wonderful news!!
delighted to here this as i loved the original release, but felt it was weakened by the art and the internet search system, two of the things that are being reworked
query: if we have already played the original, will any of the 'solutions' be novel, or is this more a graphical and interface overhaul
Generally this is primarily a graphical and user-interface overhaul. We do plan to have some new content and some new puzzles, but we're trying to be very careful not to disrupt the story as it currently stands.
We're not adding any new people to the main family tree, for example, and I don't have the bandwidth to create an entirely new family tree like I would if this were a sequel.
Instead, I'm working on ways to include bonus content to investigate into and solve that fits nicely into the story I've created.
thanks for the clarification :)
That's excellent news. Looking forward to it.
Good luck with the eventual Steam release! I'll definitely be buying it day one.