The Roottree family tree, from Elias Roottree to the sisters

Start where the game starts. The client first tests you on the three Roottree sisters, who are famous models and so the easiest people to find.⁴ A community walkthrough lists two pieces of evidence at the start, a magazine advertisement with the three sisters and a list of names, and a first goal of three blood relatives.¹⁰ Search each sister by name and read every result to its end.

One sister will not match the list of names. The developer answered players who took this for a bug with the advice to search Rhose Roottree on the computer and pay very careful attention to what the results say.³ The board asks for the name each person was born with, so a nickname will not lock.⁵

After the first test the whole layout of the board appears, with a list of Notable Roottrees marked by stars. Wikipedia describes these as the relatives who are easiest to find on the in-game web, so they make good footholds in each branch.^8,10

Work down from the top as well as up from the sisters. A company page about the founder lists his awards, and the community guide The Path of Logic quotes one that ties him to a later president of the firm.⁹ The game also hides initials and family names in the names of candies, books and magazines.⁹

Use the occupations as a check, since the board wants the most recent job and not the first one.⁵ If nothing moves, the rubber duck on the desk gives a nudge, and asked again it gives the answer.^4,6 Everything below this section gives answers.

This section and every section after it give away parts of the puzzle. They draw the frame of the Roottree family tree, its generations and its branches, and leave about forty relatives for you to find.

At the top stands Elias Roottree. Siliconera calls him the patriarch, and Adventure Game Hotspot calls him the founder of the Roottree Candy Company and a firm believer in the ties that bind.^4,7 Game Rant quotes his rule that “blood is thicker than syrup”.⁶

At the bottom are the people of the crash. Siliconera names them as Carl Roottree, the current president of the Roottree Candy Company, his wife and their three daughters, models who work for the family label ROOT.⁴ Game Rant gives the same family.⁶ The official pages make Elias the great-great-grandfather of the sisters, which places Carl three generations below him, and Wikipedia calls Elias the great-grandfather of Carl.^1,8

The Roottree family tree therefore runs over five generations, from Elias down to the sisters. The chart draws that span as a dotted arrow from Elias to Carl and leaves out the branch Carl comes down and the two people between them, since those are answers the game asks you to find.

The sources differ on small points. The official pages speak of the Roottree Corporation and the reviews of the Roottree Candy Company.^1,4 Wikipedia names only Carl and the three daughters as the dead, while the store page and the reviews put the mother on the jet as well.^8,1,6 Wikipedia also sets the crash in December 1998 in Butler County, Pennsylvania, which no official page opened for this page states.⁸

The developer names one sister as Rhose Roottree in a reply on the game’s itch.io page.³ The community guide The Path of Logic gives all three as Rhayna, the oldest, Rhose, the middle child, and Rhiley, the youngest.⁹ No official or press source opened for this page names Rhayna or Rhiley, so the table marks both names as from the community guide.

The guide reads the search results for Rhose as the developer hinted. Rhose is not on the list of names, and a page about the label ROOT says a magazine cover of 1985 listed her once under her birth name, which the guide gives as Carly Roottree.⁹ That is the answer to the first test. The chart keeps Rhose on her symbol and notes that she was born under another name.

The guide also names the sisters’ mother as Brenda White, the head designer of ROOT. No official or press source opened for this page names her, so the chart writes her only as the wife of Carl.^9,4

Elias married Gwyneth. Siliconera names Gwyneth beside Elias, and the community guide quotes the company page that shows the two together and gives her name before her marriage as Gwyneth Anderson.^4,9 Below them the tree splits into five branches, one for each child. The guide works out their order from a clue that gives the initials G, E, C.E., M and M, oldest to youngest.⁹

The five, as the guide gives them, are Gwyndoline, Elias Jr., Clancy Edward, Margolite and Miracle.⁹ Every blood relative below Elias on the Roottree family tree belongs to one of these branches, so a name you cannot place has five places to look. The chart stops at the five. Their spouses, their children and the rest of each branch are the puzzle.

One branch has an anchor in the press. Siliconera found that Gwynn is a granddaughter of Elias through her mother, which makes her mother a daughter of Elias.⁴ The guide names that daughter as Margolite, so the chart hangs Gwynn below her, and reads the search results for Gwynn as those of an actress active in the 1950s.⁹

This section gives away the ending. When the board is full, the client reveals who she is. Wikipedia names her as Samantha Madsen, an illegitimate Roottree descendant, raised by John Miller and Edward Clancy Roottree, a twin brother whom Elias removed from the family line because of his gay relationship.⁸

Edward Clancy is the last blood relative the tree needs, and his place on it is the final answer of the game, so the chart leaves him off. In Wikipedia’s summary, Samantha’s book sets out to prove that her daughter and granddaughters are equal heirs.⁸

A square is a man, a circle a woman and a diamond a person of unknown sex, which is how Miracle is drawn, as no source opened for this page says whether Miracle is a son or a daughter. The wife of Carl is written as Unnamed. A horizontal line is a marriage, with the children below it, and a cross is a death, carried only by the five people of the crash.

The dotted brown arrow from Elias to Carl stands for two generations that the chart does not draw. It reads great-grandfather of at the end of Elias and great-grandson at the end of Carl.

To keep your own Roottree family tree while you play, open this chart in the editor, add each relative as the game locks them, and download it as a PNG or a PDF. The symbols are set out in the genogram symbols.