A few years ago, my daughter developed a not-so-secret plan to achieve YouTube fame by recording my attempts to play video games. It was pitched to me as a bonding experience, but I knew better. Had the project come to fruition, the audio would have sounded like this: 

“Which one is me? Am I moving? Why am I not moving? What button do I hit to jump again? Oops. Didn’t mean to do that. Wait, I thought I was the other one? Why am I dead?” 

Let’s just say the joystick was more like a painstick for me. I played the games out of love for my kid, but it was more effort than fun, like trying to sustain the never-ending saga of make-believe during her preschool princess phase. (As a three-year-old, she once trailed me around the grocery store in a Snow White costume dramatically waving her hands and moaning, “Please stepmother, I did the dishes. Can I have something to eat now?”) 

And yet she persevered, convinced that somewhere out there a video game existed that we would both enjoy. Over the holidays, we struck gold. The Roottrees Are Dead is a 2023 detective mystery developed and published by Evil Trout Inc. The goal of the game is to untangle the sprawling family tree of the rich, famous, and recently deceased Roottrees. There are a few visual puzzles to complete, but most of the clues come from reading and noticing—two things your average non-gamer novelist can do without embarrassing herself. 

While my daughter manned the keyboard, I reclined against her Squishable taco pillow (10/10 lumbar support) and called out suggestions. There were news articles, archival photos, excerpts from memoirs, song lyrics, in-game search engines, vintage marketing materials, political ads, library catalogs, and plenty of gossip to parse as we sorted out who begat whom, why this random farmhand was mentioned more than once, which sibling married his ex-wife’s sister, and other mysterious secrets.  

I loved it because it functioned like a novel: story-based, text-heavy, packed with clues that had more to do with relationships and biographical details than slaloming around a flashing neon obstacle course. (Aesthetically, The Roottrees are Dead is aggressively old school, befitting the late ’90s setting.) The subject matter also brought home for me how much I enjoy intricate family sagas, which is definitely a note I’m keeping in my Book Ideas file. 

Zooming out, I am reminded that context often matters as much as content when it comes to the media we consume, and we played through this game in the last remaining days before my daughter returned to college for the spring semester. I would have signed on for Grand Theft Auto if it meant spending a few more hours in her company, but I also would have been bored to tears.   

It felt much more fitting to end a winter break that kicked off with the latest Knives Out movie (two thumbs up) by immersing ourselves in another twisty tale of secret relatives, misplaced loyalty, and powerful men behaving badly. Clearly we are in our mystery era. 

I suspect most writers are amateur sleuths, observing the people around them and theorizing about their motives. The great thing about The Roottrees are Dead—besides the excellent company—was that I didn’t have to think up all the plot twists myself. For someone who has spent the last several years spraining her brain to craft a pair of YA cozies, it was a treat to be in the passenger seat for a change.