Your thirst for blood is insatiable. Spread your roots throughout the mountains, the cities, the swamps and the forests. Capture and drain every living creature your parasitic vines can imbibe. Roots Devour demands you to satisfy Mother’s thirst for blood, what else could Lovecraftian madness and delusion inspire more of?

You may be in charge of the direction of your roots, but in this strategy card-connecting hybrid of genres, you’ll find plenty to feel out of your depth. Roots Devour is built on experimentation, on development of knowledge, and most of all, the ever-expanding demand for more blood. Is it worth embarking on Mother’s desire to quench her thirst for destruction, or should you leave these roots to wither away?

Escape Your Roots

The call has been made manifest. The mysterious figure of Flora beckons you from the earth to heed Mother’s appeal. Too-curious humans have performed one ritual too many in the depths of the forest, awakening a force they know too little of. So begins your mission: capture the Forbidden Fruit (without asking questions), and gather as much blood along the way as you can.

Roots Devour has a deceptively detailed story, borne out through dialogue interactions with more… ‘friendly’ NPCs… and the hapless humans who are falling prey to the suffocation of your winding branches. It runs a delicate tightrope of explaining just enough to keep you barreling through the five chapters, while speaking plenty in riddles and ambiguity to keep things expectedly Eldritch and maddening.

Cthulhu is often the most poorly utilised Lovecraftian outer God in media. Here, though, Rewinding Games show a genuine understanding of the inherent psychosis that unknowing knowledge would bring. The dialogue is suitably unhinged, your decisions and exploration will bring more details, and seeing a hapless Owl’s face of betrayal when it’s consumed fits the lore beautifully. My only issues with Roots Devour’s story is text suffering from infrequent translation issues.

Root Beer or Blood Beer, Why Not Both?

So, your mission is clear. Navigate these unknown lands of the humans, claiming all before you to appease the higher power of Mother. How do you do this? Well, that’s where Roots Devour gets mighty interesting. It harbours elements of rogue-lites, deckbuilders and strategic puzzling. All wrapped up in a grim-dark fantasy aesthetic that’s oozing with disquieting notes.

The basics are simple. Extend your roots via cards set out on the map. The further the reach, the more blood and water will be expended. Run out of either, and your time as the harbinger of hemoglobin is over. You replenish blood by connecting to living creatures, while water is more finite, but with clever plotting, less frequently required. The main focus is on what cards you can place, but more importantly, where you place them.

While straightforward in theory, Roots Devour becomes addictingly complex to maneuver. Residue cards my seem pointless at first, but you’ll rapidly find the value in innocuous cards that shorten connection length, keeping your run going in a clutch moment. You can additionally spend blood to place a card pack, with randomly generated cards spewing forth. Sometimes you’ll get three body fragments just when you need them, other times you’ll get three tree blocks and curse your entire existence.

Root Out The Obstacles

Speaking of blocks, Roots Devour’s levels (labelled by location as chapters), are labyrinthian in their layout and design. There may be six pathways before you, yet only three can be accessed initially. Do you spread between all three, risking your reserves of blood and water before making it to a checkpoint to spawn to? Or, follow one path to the end, potentially missing out on a wealth of interactions, collectibles and even NPC characters?

That’s not even mentioning the ridiculous number of hidden cards under tree lines, meticulously placed into just-out-of-sight areas. Finding these is incredibly satisfying, and Rewinding Games rewards you for being thorough and inquisitive. Beware that curiousity however, as nothing good ever comes from gaining knowledge never meant for the human mind. You can uncover shortcuts, unlock teleport checkpoints and new starting locations as you progress, which keeps the momentum while still maintaining a risk-reward setup.

Figuring out how to solve any given problem is part of the strategic enjoyment that Roots Devour promotes. Faced with a seemingly impassable row of trees, you may just… dissolve them with acidic soil. Failing having any of those in my hand (you can only hold a few at a time), I often positioned other cards just right to line up a perfect vine that could stretch through. The challenge ramps up significantly as the game progresses, which keeps things (mostly) fresh.

Devour Your Misconceptions, Mortal

The Snowy Mountains chapter is where Roots seriously tested my mettle. Here, cards freeze, costing a lot more water and blood. One easy mistake and your run is over. It felt like a brutal difficulty spike in comparison to the rest of the game, and while the mechanic and challenge is solid, it may have benefitted from smoothing out. For comparison, I failed about 5-6 times on the mountains, but then did the entirety of the next two chapters in my first run.

There’s an element of mastery that comes with Roots Devour that makes it as intoxicating as the drug-like euphoria of forbidden power. When you’re in a flow state with this game, uncovering cleverly disguised nooks or finding that perfect shortcut just as things are starting to look bleak, there’s a secret sauce that had me hooked like the poor sap I’d just ensnared in my roots.

Failure is very much part of that process, which is where the rogue-lite design comes in. The maps never change (thankfully), so muscle memory will carry you a long way there. However, between attempts you’ll return to The Altar, where you can spend accrued blood to acquire upgrades, complete challenges for rewards, interact with ‘saved’ NPCs and even uncover more mysteries lurking in the depths.

Blood Courses Through These Roots

If there’s one part of Roots Devour that’s lacking compared to the rest of the game, it’s probably the upgrade system and The Altar. While equippable Bloodveins make a seismic difference to runs, bestowing various effects and buffs, the passive upgrades and challenges are somewhat diluted rather than pure blood. The majority are static increases to blood and water capacity, which while useful, are fairly bland. Most challenges are completed before you even unlock the Omen cards holding them too, I found.

I would have liked to have seen more variety and creativity here to incentivise returning to completed areas or to encourage more tinkering with my playstyle. They’re unintrusive which, in fairness, likely keeps things accessible and unrestrictive, but they’re also mostly forgettable after a couple of hours. Still, upgrades do make a difference to survivability without becoming a crutch for poor play, which is a difficult balance to strike, but the developers nail that here.

Additionally, The Altar hosts your NPCs acquired on runs, who may have a nugget of information or two available for you. They may even make a request for you to uncover an item occasionally too. Just whatever you do, DO NOT place and ensnare the Owl. You may be playing a literal manifestation of an Outer God’s evil will, but you’re not that much of a monster. Surely?

An Atmosphere To Devour For

I want to take a moment to really let the richness of Roots Devour’s art and sound work seep right down into the heart of these roots. The pungent stench of stagnation, decay and decomposition is all-consuming throughout the entire game. Aesthetically, the concept artists have captured this depraved, maddening Eldritch lore impeccably well. The Snowy Mountains will suffocate you with cold hues of blue and bluster, while the swamp will have you disorientated in its fleshy greens and shadows.

Snap your branches onto a human’s card and it’ll writhe in despair. Find a pair of isolated siblings cowering from your monstrous works outside and you’ll feel a faint whiff of guilt as you consume them just as the rest. Cards will belch out new flesh fragments, accompanied by suitable disturbing audio. It’s a marvel how well the developers have tapped into Lovecraftian motifs without it becoming overindulgent or just gruesome for the sake of it.

Needless to say, I’m a big fan of what they were reaching for. There are some issues I encountered with my roots failing to spread properly, or an indoor area not revealing itself when hovering over it like it should, but these are fairly rare. There’s also a slight lack of polish. I reached my ending, watched through the credits and then… waited. Nothing happened, no going back to the menu, no returning to The Altar, just a blank screen that still had interaction prompts. Some patches are definitely needed here, but nothing is game-breaking or sucks the blood from this beast entirely.

Tempting Madness

I think I’ll finish my review with a little anecdote that I think best sums up playing this enigmatic amalgamation of ideas of a video game. I logged on at about midday, already at about 8 hours of playtime, content to play an hour or so before doing some other bits for the day. The next time I looked up, it was 4pm, I’d finished the final two chapters in one sitting, and suddenly realised I hadn’t eaten or drank anything for that entire time. Well, that’s not true, the branches feasted on plenty of blood.

When the tendrils of Roots Devour locked in to me, there was no escape. Much like the foolish cultists summoning their own destruction, I was doomed to suffer the fate of an addict, I just needed to hit the “start” button again and keep going. Keep going until there was no more blood to consume. As an homage to Lovecraftian horror, I suspect there’s no better compliment than that.

It took me around 12 hours to complete a full playthrough, acquiring just one of the available endings and having finished two side quests. Roots Devour is a game that seeps, pours and envelopes itself into you, always chipping away at your willpower to stop playing. It has minor impurities which dilute the blood somewhat, but this is a full-blooded, nightmare-inducing good time.

Roots Devour will be available from January 28th on PC via Steam.

Developer: Rewinding Games
Publisher: GCORES PUBLISHING

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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