I recently moved to a suburban neighborhood with some relatively “wild” parkland and a few rugged wooded areas. After a tiring day of writing silly lists about Call Of Duty, I like to take a walk in the woods in the evening. Woods are a major preoccupation of mine, actually — see this ponderous think piece I wrote about Alan Wake 2 — but they’re also places where I can retreat and contemplate, shake off boredom, and lose myself in the view of the sycamores and birches arching over the path. But. But sooner or later, I start thinking about roots.
Roots are everywhere, and they are invisible. I can track their presence by the different acoustics of the soil beneath them, but I can’t map them exactly. I never know for sure if there’s one under my feet at any given moment. According to my amateur understanding of tree physiology (there’s probably a more precise term than “tree physiology”), roots drink water and soil nutrients. It sounds harmless, but drinking is an open-ended practice. A root that drinks water can certainly drink other liquids. Blood, for example, or tears. The liquefied matter of the human soul. The terrifying drops of bad dreams.
I'm stoking these fears because I just read the blurb for Roots Devour. It's a strategy management experience and card game where you play a truly terrifying eldritch tree trying to become the ultimate Elder God in a forest full of equally terrifying creatures. This must be accomplished within 30 in-game days by spreading your roots and “organs” (do trees have organs?), harvesting the blood of other organisms, and dealing with unspecified threats. You can also, apparently, gain the allegiance of wild-eyed human tribes or determine their fate from the shadows.
The whole thing is presented as the act of spreading cards across a tableau, which I like because I now think of other card games as secret forests, hopefully not carnivorous jungles. You can read more and watch a trailer on Steam – I think a full English localisation is on the way. For a real-time version of the idea of being a greedily expanding vine swamp, sink your teeth into Carrion.