Fantasy Genealogy: The Family Tree Mystery

Coming off the high of releasing my first ever course (!!!), I've been trying to re-engage with other creative projects that I've set aside for some time, in order to get some distance and really switch things up for my brain. 

What does that have to do with genealogy? Or fantasy? Or mystery? 

Well, you're about to find out. 

This post takes us from murder mystery games all the way to fantasy interactive fiction, so hold on to your hats!

 

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Non-Murder Mysteries

I'll cut to the chase: I've been very interested in finding mystery games that are less about murder and more about other kinds of mysteries or crimes. I want to find a great game about something that has been stolen, or a person who has been kidnapped for ransom, or an upcoming plot that must be stopped - or even an ancient language that must be decoded, or an ancient mystery that must be investigated. There are so many kinds of mysteries, and yet so many mystery games default to murder-focused plot lines as their central mysteries. Don't get me wrong - this is extremely fun, and juicy, and when done correctly, can be immensely satisfying for players. I love murder mysteries as much as the next person. But I want to do something different - or, at least, something that doesn't get explored as much.

Back when I was designing mystery game boxes, I wanted to make something that wasn't a whodunnit murder mystery with puzzles and envelopes with clues, but with a more believable and hands-on setup. I played around with the concept of a case file, with all of the pictures of the evidence/crime scenes/etc., with a few pieces of "collectible" evidence, with the police reports, documents, and notes, and so on. I do have a few mysteries I've designed like this, and if I could make video games, I would have made them video games instead, since that seems to be a little more easily marketable than a mystery box. But as I mentioned above, I wanted to make something less murder-oriented, and I still do.

Of course, all of the examples I listed above are examples I've considered and worked with. I do have an interesting mystery revolving around a stolen object, and I have begun designing an alien-language-deciphering experience. Nevertheless, I'm always looking for new ideas that I can incorporate into my work or put my own spin on.

This past week I came across a game that fascinated me: The Roottrees Are Dead.

 

The Roottrees Are Dead and The Breakthrough

The Roottrees Are Dead is a browser-based game where you must use the different platforms provided (a search engine, a periodical catalogue, a note-taking application, physical evidence, etc.) to figure out the Roottree family tree in order to make sure that everyone who is part of the family can get their share of the inheritance (given that the Roottrees, as the name mentions, are dead).  

I love the idea. It's a nice mystery that doesn't seem to revolve around murder, and as you now know, that's exactly what I'm in the market for! It includes a juicy dose of family drama, a great gameplay mechanic that allows you to feel like you're doing your own research, and though it holds your hand just a little too much for me (it is 14+, so that might have something to do with it), I do appreciate the balance that the developers have struck in making the game so that it guides you without giving you everything you need. I've been watching a gameplay and I'm not very far in (seriously considering stopping and getting my hands on a copy), but I do enjoy the way that it's been put together. 

And so, here we have another kind of mystery type has been revealed to me: genealogy. 

It reminded me of a series I saw on Netflix a few months ago, The Breakthrough (2025), where an investigator uses genetic genealogy to narrow down the list of suspects in a double-murder by matching them to an unknown-DNA source (the culprit) to finally figure out who the killer is. Of course, while the basis of the forensic genealogy used in the series is a lot more scientific and difficult to replicate in a game-type environment, the logic-based genealogy of The Roottrees Are Dead is a great way of presenting a similar kind of mechanic. 

With all of that in mind, it also reminded me of my own family-tree exercise for the royal and imperial families in my fantasy series, The Qarran Tales. For example, a while back I created a family tree for the Belvatrian imperial families (The Fall of the Black Masks), as well as a family tree for the Sissan imperial families (The Pirates of Sissa). I thoroughly enjoyed the activity; crafting fantasy family histories and delving briefly into the major events in a range of characters' lives is a fun exercise to not only create lifelike characters and richer history and lore in your story, but also to open avenues for short stories and prequels that may be written later on down the line. There are so many mysteries that could be revealed with each branch of the family tree - and so much of what the characters do learn about their predecessors could be highly affected by bias, politics, and more - which makes the mystery of who the characters are all the more intriguing.

But while this fantasy series is a book series, and not a game series or interactive fiction series, I can't quite use it as an example for the kind of genealogy-mystery game design I want to dip my toes into. I did briefly consider trying to change the books into games, but that idea was swiftly discarded; the project would be huge, and I would never finish it, which would only lead to frustration and disappointment. We're not about that negativity. 

And so, it brought me to another fantasy story, which does have a family-tree dynamic already in place, and which could work just as well - especially since this one is an interactive fiction game. 

 

Family Ties in The Black Hare

In The Black Hare, the player plays as a character whose main goal is either to take down the notorious eponymous thief and conman - or become his apprentice. The game is set in a fantasy world, and takes place mainly in the city of Talesmoth, the capital of a kingdom I've yet to name. 

The theme of family is critical to the story - all of the major plot lines, and many of the major choices, boil down to family. And, as icing on the cake, I've already unwittingly created a family-tree-type framework through the "Antiques Catalogue", a magazine that the player can read on the train which features a range of valuable and expensive antiques from noble and royal families. Each item comes with its own backstory, including who owned it and some interesting facts about them. There are tragic deaths, freak accidents, curses, and more.

 

Coupled with the Journal mechanic, players are already able to save information they find of importance, including clippings from magazines, newspapers, journals, letters, and so on. It's quite similar to the note-taking mechanic in The Roottrees, apart from the fact that it's a lot less interactive (you can only save/discard documents, clippings, etc. from your journal). 

This means that the game has the basic mechanics down already - everything is set for a sub-plot in which the player must solve a family-tree-type mystery in order to successfully complete a task or obtain a critical piece of information to progress in the story. In other words, The Black Hare is fertile soil for a mystery sub-plot related to family ties, and I'll be exploring that concept a little more as I revisit my plot post-prologue.

It's a nice surprise, because it means that I can use the same code I've included in the game in order to achieve different effects and game mechanics - hitting two birds with one stone. 

This ties in with something else that's important to me: using my medium of choice to its full extent. Recently I've been considering how I can go about making sure that the mechanics in the games I design make full use of the medium of choice - whether that's Twine, or RenPy, or a platformer, or a browser-based game, or - heck - a PDF game! I like the idea of making use of the functions that are provided by the game engine, the game genre, and so on, to create a range of different ways of approaching tasks and playing the game. 

What that means for The Black Hare? I've already been playing around with it a little bit. For example, the card mini-game I included was a little bit rough to code - so many passages for such a short game - but it was worth it because I was able to explore how to use Twine to do different things that perhaps aren't quite obvious at first glance. My hope is that by continuing to do this, I can craft a game that provides more value for the player than they expected.

In reality, however, I'll have to see what I can come up with. This idea - a family tree mystery element - is a good next step. Additionally, observing how other games - even if they're not Twine-based games - present different mechanics will continue to give me ideas. Who knows? Maybe The Black Hare will become a game that really pushes the limits of the Twine framework. Maybe it'll offer players a gameplay experience that they can't really find in other interactive fiction works. The chances are slim, but it's worth exploring nevertheless.

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