Rusty Lake: Roots

This builds very nicely on Rusty Lake Hotel, an already amazing game. It doesn't spell out the events of that one but does thematically explain a lot, being set nearby. Also it adds a nonlinear approach where you get to choose the order in which you play the levels all of which show an important event in the family Vanderboom who you follow from multiple generations as you see their various traumas. I quite appreciate that while at times you do appear to be controlling one of the characters on screen since what you do corresponds to what they do at other points it seems like you are this omniscient force not passively observing but influencing events. For a while I wasn't entirely sure where it was all going but I did find the conclusion quite satisfying. It has a much greater variety in multiple areas such as the locations where you are in multiple rooms yes but also the garden and other areas. In addition the puzzles have that element such as in the drag feature at one point you color in painting another you spell something with a Ouija board and it's much more rewarding because of how it's done rather than how it would be if it was genuinely limited to clicking. It does maintain the issue that sometimes you can't tell what will happen when you press and sometimes stuff gets stuck too close to each other so it can't tell exactly which one you're trying to do something with. The psychological and disturbing material it goes into is more personal this time around. All of these improvements reflect that the developers had more experience by the time they made this and really listened to player feedback on what was their first paid game. Like in that one this could be the very first video game that you ever play to be clear it shouldn't be played by children it's much too morbid for them but if you are someone who is good at brain teasers this one won't require you to also know very much about this particular medium all you need to know is how to use a mouse and heck this can even be how you learn to do that. Basically you'll always find yourself dealing with a few screens at a time you can click on certain things if you try anywhere that you can't, it just won't have a result it won't lead to a failed state or something. You gather items that need to be used on something, some of them have to be combined with each other and the like and gradually you construct or uncover something. There are times where you will actually be shown what you are supposed to end up with and thus you have to work your way towards that and can get a real sense of what is missing. This is especially true for the more intricate of the stuff you have to do. They are really great at poking at things that disturb us. Sometimes it is injury or death other times it's other kinds of taboo stuff that is gross. They play a lot with context things that would be acceptable in a certain way but the way they're doing it, it absolutely isn't. This opens on a marriage proposal where she is pricked by the thorns of the rose he gives her he wipes off the blood with his handkerchief and proceeds to write the proposal with that handing her a ring from a cut off hand. So we have this blending of something life affirming with something that reminds us of the frailty of the human body. This is of course something a lot of those working in fiction tap into another example would be South Park. In addition to the homes of the various members of the family who we follow from birth for some of them this takes you into the front of World War II surreal dreamscapes etc. There was one part where you see both sides of a rather messed up situation and relationship and I have to say as much as the first part hit me like a ton of bricks it was nothing compared to the second. It is not a terribly long title though there is stuff you can do after your initial completion including unlocking a secret ending. And certainly I don't think that it's too short, it feels like a very full experience. It's also worth noting that it doesn't spoil the original game so you can play these out of order something I hear is true for the rest of the entire franchise as well which by this point has over half a dozen entries which also helps make it feel more fulfilling in that there are more parts to it than these two. As per usual I would recommend getting them on sale every so often all of them go on sale on Steam. The graphics are quite good. I appreciate they don't try to pull off something that they can't make look right. It's not even remotely trying for a photorealism which also wouldn't really fit the tone. The stylization is much more appropriate and also helps make it less horrifying what we see which allows them to go further with it and deliver some deeply memorable stuff that I haven't seen outside of this series. This is far from the goriest that I've experienced but it uses what it has really well and frankly I found it much more effective than some that are much more eager to show you for example decapitated heads like say the original Outlast in part it's because you know some of the people who you're seeing be cut up and in fact you are the one manipulating their destroyed and sometimes dead and decaying bodies rather than merely witnessing what somebody else did. Recommended if it sounds appealing to you. 8/10.