I had trouble sleeping last night, due to a combination of press trip excitement, chugging too many complimentary coffees, and my hotel room being opposite a strange, insistently symmetrical building that reared over my dreams like Sauron’s penthouse.
So to settle my nerves, I got up and played a game about being a horrible tree. Just the worst tree. A total shit of a tree.
That game was Roots Devour - and great news, if you’re having trouble sleeping you can play it too, for there is a demo in the wilds.
Roots Devour is a vegetal horror cardgame in which you, a monstrous sapling grown from the mind-flaying manure of the Lovecraft mythos, spread your tendrils through a forest, harvesting fluids from its creatures and working your way up the food chain until you are top Tam-ash, Oakranos or [insert superior Lovecraft tree pun here].
To do this, you click-drag roots between cards. The basic constraints are, firstly, that you need a clear line of sight between cards, so you’ll need to expand around obstacles such as dense rival root networks, and secondly, that you need blood to grow, and each unfortunate lifeform you snare only has so much to share.