The Roottrees are Dead — patch notes and updates
Stored observation / content update:
Dated developer announcements recorded from Steam. Open the source for the complete update.
| Update | Date | Excerpt / source |
|---|---|---|
| Update Notes for Apr 29 | 2026-04-29 | - Contains fixes for typos on French - Added simplified Chinese logo for Galley House for Chinese players. |
| The Roottrees Are Dead x Wax Heads | 2026-04-24 | Jeremy sat down with Murray from Wax Heads to discuss game design, writing, and 80s music. You can watch the whole interview here:We're also delighted to announce that we'll be in a Steam bundle with Wax Heads when it releases on May 5. (It's also available on Switch, PS5 and Xbox.). |
| Urgent Fix: Database was corrupt | 2026-04-23 | In an earlier fix today, I somehow pushed out a corrupt database which meant that Simplified Chinese and Portuguese players couldn't search or input names properly. I also unfortunately did this right before a long dog walk, so I couldn't fix it for a couple of hours until I got back. It should be fixed now, and to say sorry here is a photo of my dog. https://i.imgur.com/OsreVwD.png - Robin "Evil Trout" Ward |
| Small Patch for Apr 23, 2026 | 2026-04-23 | - Try to eliminate visual bug with lots of white glow on the screen |
| Minor PT-BR Fixes | 2026-04-12 | - Addresses a couple issues with the PT-BR translation |
| Now available in Mandarin! | 2026-04-09 | In December we launched The Roottrees are Dead in Simplified Chinese, and we were blown away by how well it was received. Within two weeks it had outsold every language except for English, and it continues to be played and well reviewed by new players every day.We wanted to thank our Chinese players by providing an update to the game which includes full voice acting in Mandarin. It is available today as a free game update. This was only possible because of all the Chinese speaking fans and their wonderful support.Of course, if you'd like to stick to the original English voice over, that option still exists. You can customize your own experien |
| Brazilian armchair detectives, we have a challenge for you! | 2026-03-19 | The Roottrees are Dead is now available in Brazilian Portuguese.This is great timing, because we've also just been nominated for Best Narrative at the gamescom latam BIG Festival.Thanks to everyone who helped make this translation happen!P.S. Italian is next. |
| Update Notes for Mar 17, 2026 | 2026-03-17 | PT-BR Fixes: - A piece of evidence in Roottreemania was not displaying properly - Made search terms for a particular article more lenient |
| Patch Notes for March 16, 2026 | 2026-03-16 | - Translates some PT-BR names to make the text more consistent. |
| Update Notes for Mar 13, 2026 | 2026-03-13 | - Fixes for some pt-br search results not working correctly. |
| Patch Notes for March 5, 2026 | 2026-03-05 | -Adds support for Brazilian Portuguese -Translates Achievements in French, Simplified Chinese and PT-BR -Fixes some minor typos and issues. |
| Regional pricing update for Latin America | 2026-01-23 | Greetings, genealogists!Over the last year, we’ve learned a few things about our players around the world, including how pricing works in different countries. While Steam provides recommended regional prices, developers can adjust them to better reflect local purchasing power.We’ve taken a close look at how Roottrees is priced in parts of Latin America and lowered our regional pricing to make it more accessible to local players. This changes are now live, and they affect Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Steam’s USD-LATAM region.This isn’t meant as a sale or temporary discount, but more like a pricing alignment that makes |
| One Year of Roottrees | 2026-01-15 | The Roottrees are Dead has now been out for a whole year on Steam, and it’s been a wild ride! When we started this project, we only had a vague hunch that people would enjoy a game like this enough to buy it. We had no idea how many people it would reach and how well it would be received. Here’s some highlights:We’ve sold over 200,000 copies of the game. That’s a mind-boggling number for a small studio like ours.We received an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam from our players, with thousands of reviews.We made “Best of” lists for many publications such as The New York Times, NPR, Bloomberg, The Economist, Game Informer, GameSpot, Game |
| Now available in Simplified Chinese! | 2025-12-18 | Hello Genealogists!We’re excited to announce that as of today The Roottrees are Dead has been translated into Simplified Chinese! This is our most ambitious translation yet, as there is less overlap between Chinese and English than there was with French, German, and Spanish. In addition to translating all of the search results, we’ve revisited everything with text. This includes names on the tree, and evidence such as print advertisements and stickers on album covers!It has been fun to watch the project come together, seeing familiar art with an entirely new look to it. Now we’re happy to share it with you just in time for the Steam Winter Sa |
| Nominate The Roottrees are Dead for a Steam Award | 2025-11-25 | The Steam Awards are currently accepting nominations, and if you enjoyed The Roottrees are Dead, nominating us would be really appreciated! We think we're a good fit for the Most Innovate Gameplay category, since there aren't many games about genealogy out there and we think our take on it is somewhat original. If you agree, you know what to do :)Thanks! |
| The Cozy Crimes Bundle: The Roottrees are Dead and Little Problems | 2025-09-25 | We're delighted to be bundled with Little Problems: A Cozy Detective Game as part of the Cozy Crimes Bundle. You can pick up both games for 20% off, and we recommend you do! |
| The Roottrees are Dead is now in French, German, and Spanish | 2025-08-18 | After many months of hard work and an open beta, we're delighted to announce that you can now play The Roottrees are Dead in French, German, and Spanish. The game has roughly 100,000 words to translate, which is the length of a novel! Most players won't find every word of content, but it's important that it's all there for players who dig deep into our game universe.We're also happy to announce that we've begun translating the game into Simplified Chinese.Now even more armchair detectives can solve the mysteries of the Roottree family! |
| Update Notes for July 21, 2025 | 2025-07-21 | - Contains fixes for French, German, and Spanish Translations. - An attempt to reduce confusion in the final cinematic where it might appear that your choice was incorrect briefly. |
| The Roottrees are French, German and Spanish! (Beta) | 2025-07-14 | At long last, you can now play The Roottrees are Dead in French, German and Spanish! The game should auto detect your system language when you start it up, but in case it does not pick it correctly, there is now a "Language" setting you can change. There was a tremendous amount of text to translate, so you may encounter bugs, typos, and other translation issues. As a result, for now we are calling this a Beta Release and asking our players to report issues on our Steam Discussions. Thanks so much to our translators: Rolf Klischewski, Alexander Neubert, Punda Translations, and Aurélien Folley. |
| The Roottrees are Dead has sold 100k copies! | 2025-07-07 | Last week we reached a major sales milestone: The Roottrees are Dead has sold over 100,000 copies on Steam! This is mind-blowing. We never expected so many people to enjoy our little game, and the response has been overwhelming. It has exceeded every expectation we had, and we can't express how thankful we are.Later this month, we'll be releasing translations in Spanish, German and French, which we hope will allow even more players around the world to experience the intricacies of the mysterious Roottree family.We also have launched the Steam page for our next project: The Incident at Galley House - if you enjoyed Roottrees and want to contin |