I've manually entered thousands of people into my family tree sourced from government documents, family folklore and hyper-local history books. It can be grueling and frustrating for weeks and months on end, but making a breakthrough on a family branch that was once thought to be a dead end feels absolutely euphoric.

Of course, the vast majority of people are never going to dedicate that kind of time to tracking down some rogue third-great grandmother, so most of you won't ever get to experience that feeling.

But, you know what comes close? Spending about 18 hours playing "The Roottrees Are Dead."

This clever puzzle game is set way back in 1998, and it has a bulky beige PC front-and-center to prove it. The game starts off with a news report, alerting you that a family with an unusual surname has been killed, and you're quickly approached by a shadowy figure that asks you to track down six generations of blood relatives — for unspecified reasons.

You spend the entire game in a single room, searching the fake internet for clues, tracking down brief mentions in newspaper articles and making sense of a pile of family photos.

And, while that might not sound exciting right now, you'll be pumping your fist once you finally understand what's inside of that secret envelope that keeps taunting you.

Originally developed for a game jam with some cruddy AI art and released for free, this new $20 release features hand-drawn art, proper voice acting, a delightful soundtrack and a full-fledged sequel story built right in. Better yet, you can play it on Windows, Mac and even Linux.

While my wife isn't a genealogist or an avid gamer, we sat down together to start playing one night in January, and we accidentally stayed up till nearly two in the morning because we kept feeling like we were on the verge of a major breakthrough.

We ended up cracking the first campaign after around 10 hours, and we only needed to use hints a handful of times. Hints will gently point you in the right direction so you're not wasting time, but the game won't hold your hand unless you're extremely stuck.

This game has been repeatedly compared to all-timers like "Return of the Obra Dinn" and "Her Story," and for good reason. The same parts of your brain are needed to deduce the answers for each of those, but there's something particularly special here.

We're still very early on in the year, so I can't say for sure, but "The Roottrees Are Dead" is looking like an early game of the year contender for me. And, for the rest of you, I can only hope that it sparks your interest in genealogy. You never know how many long-lost relatives are just a few miles away until you check.

[Image: eviltrout]