Rusty Lake: Roots

About Rusty Lake: Roots

Rusty Lake: Roots is the second premium point-and-click adventure from Rusty Lake, the studio behind the Cube Escape series and Rusty Lake Hotel. It came out on Steam on 20 October 2016 for Windows and Mac, and is also sold on GOG, the App Store and Google Play. It holds a Metacritic score of 75 on PC, and won the Best Narrative award at IndiePrize Tel Aviv in 2016.

James Vanderboom's life changes when he plants a special seed in the garden of the house he has inherited. From there you build the family's tree of life, about three generations and half a century of Vanderbooms in 33 short vignettes: love and marriage, births, betrayal, a soldier in a trench, a well in the garden, a family portrait, all drawn in the studio's flat, storybook style against painted landscapes of the lake.

Each level is a self-contained puzzle scene with items to pick up and use, objects to drag and mechanisms to work out. Simple actions have strange results: PCWorld's review describes a key that opens a lock only to show a hand nailed to the wall, a proposal written in blood and graves dug up with a shovel. The calm surface is built to break into very dark moments, with figures such as a man with a stag's skull for a head, and a deeper layer of symbolism that ties into the earlier Rusty Lake games. Every level has its own theme song.

PCWorld called it grander, grimmer and more gruesome than Rusty Lake Hotel. The same review found some puzzles leaned on trial and error, and noted the controls feel made for tablets, with a lot of click-and-drag on PC. It suits puzzle fans who like the macabre more than jump scares, and anyone who has played the Cube Escape games. Steam also sells it in a bundle with Servant of the Lake, another story of the Vanderboom family.

How to play Rusty Lake: Roots

1. Buy it on Steam or GOG for Windows or Mac, or on the App Store or Google Play for phones and tablets.
2. Choose a portrait on the family tree to play that moment of a Vanderboom's life.
3. Click the arrows, or drag and swipe, to look around each scene.
4. Pick up items, then select one in your inventory and click somewhere in the scene to use it.
5. Solve the level to unlock new portraits and follow the bloodline across generations.

Tips

• Write down symbols and numbers; clues often carry over within a level.
• Try dragging things as well as clicking them: some objects only move when dragged.
• If a level seems broken, the makers suggest the Reset level option in the settings first.
• Achievements point to secrets in the tree beyond the main story, so look again at finished levels.

Questions