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In strategy card game Roots Devour you are that tree the villagers warn people away fromIf an Elder God falls in the woods with nobody around to hear it…
If an Elder God falls in the woods with nobody around to hear it…
Image credit:GCORES PUBLISHING
Image credit:GCORES PUBLISHING
I recently moved to a suburban neighbourhood where there is lots of relatively “wild” parkland and a few raggedy patches of woodland. I like to walk in the woods around evening time, after a hard day of writingstupid listicles about Call Of Duty. Forests are a critical preoccupation of mine, actually - checkthis lumpen thinkypiece I wrote about Alan Wake 2- but they’re also spaces for retreat and reflection, where I can shrug off the angst and lose myself in the spectacle of sycamores and silverbirch, arching over the path. Except. Except that sooner or later I start thinking about the roots.
The roots are everywhere, and unseen. I can trace their presence through the differing acoustics of the soil beneath, but I can’t map them precisely. I never quite know whether there’s one underfoot, at any given moment. According to my layman’s understanding of tree physiology (there is probably a more precise term than “tree physiology”), roots drink up water and soil nutrients. Sounds harmless, but drinking is an open-ended practice. A root that drinks up water may surely drink up other fluids. Blood, for example, or tears. The liquefied substance of the human spirit. The direful drippings of bad dreams.
Image credit:GCORES PUBLISHING
The whole thing is presented as the act of spreading cards across a tabletop, which I like inasmuch as I’m now thinking about other card games as secret forests, hopefully not carnivorous ones. You canread more and watch a trailer on Steam- I think there’s full English localisation on the way. For a real-time spin on the idea of being a ravenously expanding morass of tendrils, sink your teeth intoCarrion.
