Rusty Lake: Roots

Rusty Lake: Roots turns family-tree plotting into a point-and-click puzzle chain, and that structure is its best trick. By our assessment, it is one of the Rusty Lake adventure games, built around rooms, object hunting, and small logic puzzles that unlock the next unsettling scene. The real appeal is the atmosphere: the series’ eerie, hand-drawn look and its habit of making ordinary domestic details feel off. Its weakness is also familiar for this kind of game: progress depends on noticing odd little connections, so it can stall if a clue does not click. In practice it is a slow, puzzle-first experience rather than an action game, and the pleasure comes from piecing things together one room at a time. Compared with broader adventure games, it is narrower and more exacting, but also more distinctive. The Astrina catalogue files it under Games, and that is the right shelf for it.