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 writing stupid listicles about Call Of Duty. Forests are a critical preoccupation of mine, actually – check this 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.
I’m entertaining these fears because I’ve just been reading the blurb for Roots Devour. It’s a strategy management experience and a card game in which you play a really awful eldritch tree, which is trying to become top Elder God of a forest full of equally awful creatures. This is to be achieved within 30 in-game days by spreading out your roots and “organs” (do trees have organs?), harvesting the blood of other organisms, and dealing with unspecified threats. You can also, seemingly, earn the devotion of wild-eyed human tribes or mastermind their fates from the shadows.
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 can read 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 into Carrion.
