Rusty Lake: Roots

“Rusty Lake: Roots” by Rusty Lake, Maarten Looise, Robin Ras, Bob Rafferty, Victor Butzelaar, Johan Scherft, Rafał Nowak, Ksenia Slavshchik, Taylor Kim, Ida Birk Glenert, Estela Peixoto, Jialing Geng, Nicolas Thf, Germán Michelis, Nina Kavelar, Giovanni Guglielmo, Meg Furihata & Ayşegül Özol.

“James Vanderboom’s life drastically changes when he plants a special seed in the garden of the house he has inherited. Expand your bloodline by unlocking portraits in the tree of life.”


If you ever played one of the titles created by Rusty Lake, you will not be surprised that I have to highly recommend “Rusty Lake: Roots”. However, even if you never played one of those, it is still a fascinating game with tough, satisfying riddles for you to solve. The puzzle design is fantastic, as it demands not only logical, but also associative thinking. Visual clues can often be found between the lines, and even when you find them, you will still need to explore how exactly they are related to the different items of this point and click adventure.

Of course, “Rusty Lake: Roots” is not only a series of puzzles. Instead you have to progress through the levels to expand your own family free. Each solved stage will help the tree to grow new branches and thereby new puzzles. On your journey you will learn a lot about the Vanderboom family (which are often recurring in the other Rusty Lake titles, by the way).

Let a lunar shadow man give you secret codes, play chess to gather a king’s brain, cut the eyes of voodoo dolls for a bigger purpose – it all may sound crazy for now, but I assure you, in the world of “Rusty Lake: Roots”, it all makes sense. Tick-tock, tick-tock, hear the sound of the Vanderboom’s clock. [PLAY]