The Roottrees are Dead, Evil Trout Inc.'s genealogical detective game, is now out on iOS and Android. The mobile version went live on November 5 through a publishing partnership with IndieArk. It costs $9.99 on both the App Store and Google Play, half the $19.99 Steam price, and the store listings say it includes a second mystery called Roottreemania.
A family tree with a billion dollars hanging off it
The game opens in 1998. A private jet owned by the Roottree Corporation has gone down, killing the three Roottree sisters and their parents, a family with a combined fortune of more than a billion dollars. Nobody is asking how they died. The problem is the will. Elias Roottree, the founder and the sisters' great-great-grandfather, left instructions that the money has to be shared among the surviving members of the family, so someone has to work out who those members actually are. That someone is you.
No crime-scene forensics and no interrogation trees here. You get a corkboard, a box of evidence and a dial-up connection to a convincingly awkward late-'90s internet. From that you rebuild the Roottree family tree one branch at a time, putting a name, an occupation and a face on every card.
Searching the web like it's 1998
The core loop is research. Your in-game computer runs a period-appropriate browser and search engine, and almost every search turns up something with a new name, a date or an unexplained detail in it: obituaries, magazine profiles, corporate pages, a teenager's neon fan site. Pick out the right keywords and you open up new searches. Find a link between two documents and a new branch of the family appears. The developer's own pitch is that one discovery unlocks the next, and the clues get stranger and more indirect the deeper you go.
That's what has made the game stand out since it reached PC in January 2025. It sits in the same small, demanding genre as deduction games that give you a pile of information and trust you to make sense of it. There are no hint arrows and no quest markers, just your notes and your reasoning.
What changes on phones and tablets
When Evil Trout announced the port in September, it said the game had been reworked for smaller screens and touch controls rather than dropped onto phones unchanged. That matters for a game whose main screen is a big zoomable corkboard covered in cards, and where you spend a lot of time reading documents and dragging names and photos into place.
The Google Play listing leads with the extra content: the mobile release includes Roottreemania, a second mystery, on top of the main case. Neither listing mentions in-app purchases. You pay once and get the whole game.
Price, size and requirements
- Price: $9.99 on iOS and Android, a one-time premium purchase.
- iOS: needs iOS 15.6 or later, and the download is around 915MB.
- Languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Russian.
- Publisher on mobile: IndieArk, listed on the App Store under Yaozuo Games Ltd.
- Also on: Windows, Mac and Linux through Steam, where Evil Trout is still releasing small fixes. The latest arrived in October.
Evil Trout's launch note puts the case simply: the mobile version is a way to get the game to friends and family who don't have a gaming PC or a Steam account. For a game made of reading, clicking and careful thinking, a tablet on the sofa may suit it better than a desk. If you've been meaning to try it, it is now cheaper and easier to get than it has ever been.
