All Games > Early Access Games > Rootwoven
Community Hub
Rootwoven
Type what you want to say in a dark-fantasy visual novel where the Academy listens back. Investigate secrets, question suspicious classmates, and shape trust, clues, and consequences through natural-language dialogue.

Sign in to add this item to your wishlist, follow it, or mark it as ignored

Features
Single-player
In-App Purchases
Family Sharing
Profile Features Limited 
Requires 3rd-Party Account: Clerk 
Languages:
Interface Full Audio Subtitles
English ✔ ✔
Content
Includes Interactive Elements

In-game purchases

Coming Soon To Early Access

The developers of this game intend to release as a work in progress, developing with the feedback of players.

Note: Games in Early Access are not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you should wait to see if the game progresses further in development. Learn more

What the developers have to say:

Why Early Access?

“Rootwoven's core idea — speaking to the world in your own words instead of picking from a dialogue menu — only proves itself with real players. We can author the characters, quests, evidence, and consequences, but the range of things real people actually type is impossible to fully anticipate from a desk. Early Access lets us widen that coverage alongside the people playing: catching the phrasings we missed, tuning how the world interprets intent, and sharpening which discoveries surface when your words, skills, and timing line up.
Rootwoven is our primary project, not a side experiment. We are committed to building it out to a complete three-act story and a 1.0 release, and to working in the open the whole way — shipping regular updates, reading feedback, and adjusting course based on what players find. We would rather launch into Early Access honestly, with players shaping the story as it grows, than ship a closed box and hope we guessed right.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“2 years”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“Current state of project is a short demo. We're currently working on Act 1. We plan full game to contain 3 acts ”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“The current Early Access build is a short, free introductory experience where you meet the main cast and try Rootwoven's two signature systems firsthand:

Natural-language conversation — you speak to characters in your own words instead of picking from a dialogue menu, and the world answers through hand-authored characters and consequences.
Investigation — you examine the world in plain English, and what you uncover depends on what you notice and how you ask.

This build is deliberately small. Its purpose is to let you feel the core of the game — the part we most need real feedback on — before the larger story arrives. It runs roughly 30 minutes and features 9 main characters.
Coming next, as free updates: Act I — the first of three acts — with its full story and investigation threads, followed by additional character routes and an optional Exploration Mode. Act I is in active development now. The "About This Game" section describes the full 1.0 target, and this section will be updated as each piece ships.
Because the conversation layer runs on a language model at runtime, Rootwoven requires an internet connection to play.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“We're not planning on changing the price when we leave early access”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“Community feedback isn't a nice-to-have for Rootwoven — it's built into how the game improves. Because you speak to the world in your own words, every conversation surfaces real phrasings we may not have anticipated. Those gaps become our authoring priorities: the things players actually try to say directly shape what the world learns to understand and answer back.
Concretely, we want players to influence:

Which phrasings, questions, and approaches the world recognizes
Investigation difficulty and how discoveries are gated by skill, evidence, and timing
Character writing, route pacing, and which romance routes we deepen first
Quality-of-life, UI, and accessibility decisions

Where to reach us:

Discord — our main hub for discussion, bug reports, and build feedback.
Steam Community Discussions — for threaded feedback and patch notes
Our newsletter / launch list — for longer-form devlogs and milestone updates

We read everything, and we'll be open about what we're working on, what we've changed because of feedback, and what's coming next.”
Read more
This game is not yet available on Steam

Coming soon

Interested?
Add to your wishlist and get notified when it becomes available.
 
See all discussions

Report bugs and leave feedback for this game on the discussion boards

About This Game

NOTE: ROOTWOVEN is only on start of it's journey. We're developing the game with support of community. Your messages, game time and input allows us to make the game we dream about. Thank you for support and understanding. We hope our transparency through the whole development, will give you as much joy as we have. We're starting Kickstarter soon, join us early to get access to new content first! 

ROOTWOVEN is a dark-fantasy mystery visual novel built around natural-language investigation.

Instead of choosing from a fixed dialogue menu, you type what you actually want to ask, accuse, hide, confess, or provoke.

At the Academy, every conversation is a thread. Pull the right one and secrets loosen. Pull the wrong one and people close ranks.

You are not chatting into a void. ROOTWOVEN’s world is hand-authored: its characters, clues, loyalties, quests, and consequences are built to react to the way you investigate. Trust is earned. Suspicion spreads. What you learn — and what you reveal — changes how the story moves around you.

INVESTIGATE IN YOUR OWN WORDS

Question characters naturally instead of clicking pre-written lines. Press for detail. Test contradictions. Change the subject. Deflect. Charm. Threaten. Confess. Stay silent when silence is smarter.

REACTIVE CHARACTERS, NOT DIALOGUE DISPENSERS

The people around you remember what you ask, what you hide, how you push, and whether they should trust you. Relationships can deepen, fracture, or curdle into rivalry and fear.

A MYSTERY YOU UNRAVEL, NOT JUST WATCH

Follow rumors, buried histories, private griefs, and dangerous loyalties through a story shaped by discovery and consequence. The truth is there — but not everyone wants you to reach it.

ROMANCE IS POSSIBLE, NEVER REQUIRED

Every major relationship can shift in its own direction. Friendship, dependence, rivalry, desire, resentment, devotion: how close you become is part of the story, not a side menu.

A HAND-AUTHORED DESCENT THROUGH ONE SCHOOL YEAR

From your first evening at the Academy to the choices that define your ending, ROOTWOVEN follows one long descent through secrecy, ritual, intimacy, and becoming.

FEATURES

• Natural-language conversations inside authored narrative scenes
• Mystery-driven investigation with clue chains, secrets, and contradictions
• Characters with memory, mood, boundaries, and relationship logic
• Major choices that alter alliances, scenes, and endings
• Optional romance routes woven into a larger dark-fantasy story
• A hand-authored world designed to respond to the questions you ask

Wishlist and follow ROOTWOVEN on Steam, follow us on social media. Kickstarter campaign starting soon

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Rootwoven uses AI-assisted image generation as part of its visual pipeline. We use open-source models, self-trained LoRAs, and custom ComfyUI workflows to create consistent characters and backgrounds under our direction.

The images are directed, selected, reviewed, and integrated by us. They are not random prompt-to-asset generations, and they do not replace the authorship of the story, characters, quests, or world.

We know AI art is a dealbreaker for some players. We would rather be honest about that than hide it.

Mature Content Description

The developers describe the content like this:

Character responses generated by LLM's might contain sexual content if user strongly tries to drive conversation, but it's not intentional and we try to block it.

System Requirements

Windows
macOS
SteamOS + Linux
    Minimum:
    • OS: Windows 10 64-bit
    • Processor: 1.8 GHz Dual-Core CPU
    • Memory: 4 GB RAM
    • Graphics: Integrated graphics
    • Network: Broadband Internet connection
    • Storage: 12 GB available space
    Minimum:
    • OS: macOS 12 Monterey
    • Processor: Intel Core i3 or Apple M1
    • Memory: 4 GB RAM
    • Network: Broadband Internet connection
    • Storage: 12 GB available space
    Minimum:
    • OS: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS / SteamOS 3.0 64-bit
    • Processor: 1.8 GHz Dual-Core CPU
    • Memory: 4 GB RAM
    • Network: Broadband Internet connection
    • Storage: 12 GB available space
There are no reviews for this product

You can write your own review for this product to share your experience with the community. Use the area above the purchase buttons on this page to write your review.

Review Filters