Roots Devour is a Lovecraftian deckbuilder where you expand your reach consuming every living thing in your path

Roots Devour: A Lovecraftian Deckbuilder of Lurking Insanity and Starved Chaos

ByMusu Murray

Roots Devour, developed by Rewinding Games and published by GCORES PUBLISHING, is an upcoming title that flips the script on survival horror games. Instead of running away from the eldritch monstrosity hiding in the woods, you get to play as the monster itself. Having been summoned onto the mortal plain, you must extend your roots and devour every living thing in your path.

A New Cthulhu Has Come

Roots Devour lets you play as a newborn Eldritch horror ready to consume the world
Screenshot of Eldritch Newborn Emerging, Courtesy of Musu Murray via Steam

In Roots Devour, you’re welcomed into the world as a newborn Eldritch entity, summoned to only grow and extend your reach. Literally. With your winding roots, you will pierce through the landscapes and drain the lifeblood of anything that moves. As you consume every ounce of life in the land, you will grow in size and strength, spreading from the dim forests, treacherous swamps, over frozen mountains, and into human cities. You must manage the biological fuel from your enemies to maintain your expansion.

A Sinister Cardplay Mechanic

Roots Devour uses roots to consume any living thing on cards
Screenshot of Roots Devouring Living Things, Courtesy of Musu Murray via Steam

Roots Devour stands out for its strategic exploration and innovative deckbuilding. The distinct “card-connecting” mechanism allows you to create a network for your monster’s expansion directly on the map. Laying out cards determines how your horror spreads, making this system central to your tactics and the atmosphere of terror.

Devour Anything Your Way

Roots Devour has a head figure called Mother watching you progress through your expansion
Screenshot of Eldritch Mother, Courtesy of Musu Murray via Steam

The game’s distinguishing feature is its deck variety. With 14 unique decks and hundreds of cards, Roots Devour encourages diverse playstyles and strategy customization, reinforcing that the deckbuilding mechanic is the heart of the experience. What and how you consume along the way will shape your expansion and ending.

The game spans five chapters and features unique biomes with their own rules as you progress. A frozen mountain is going to offer different resistance than a squishy, biological swamp. This suggests that Roots Devour will require players to constantly adapt their strategies. You can’t just spam the same “attack” card over and over; you have to reconstruct the world to fit your needs.

The Human Factor

Roots Devour allows you to use humans as food or as followers, woman saying she isn't worthy of Mother
Screenshot of Mournful Follower of Eldritch Mother, Courtesy of Musu Murray via Steam

One feature of Roots Devour is that there are other ways of interacting with the local human population. You can just plow through and gubble up every human you encounter OR!…you can use them as pawns. You will come across survivors, madmen, and cultists—the usual Lovecraftian suspects—clinging to their sanity. You can intervene in their lives by choosing to trade with them, talk to them, or claim them as “Dependents.”

The dark morality pulses within the game as you debate how to deal with a survivor. Should you bend this terrified person to your will, or do you need a quick human snack for the road? The developers have stated that these choices will pave the path of destiny and lead to multiple endings. It’s always fun when a game asks, “What kind of monster do you want to be today?”

Roots Devour! Who Wants To Be An Eldritch Terror!?!

The full release of Roots Devour is hitting PC via Steam on Jan. 27, but the demo for it is currently available on the Steam store. If you want to get a taste of this Eldritch experience, pop on over and check out the feast. Expand your roots, forge your path of destruction and corruption, and be the reason for the screams and abrupt silence in the distance. Let your hunger rain chaos and despair!

Musu Murray is a graduate of Winthrop University with a B.S. in Multidisciplinary Chemistry & B.A. in Illustration Visual Communication. She can understand the technical jargon but prefers writing easy-to-digest reports that get straight to the point. She is a massive horror fan and loves the arts. When she's not writing, you can find her either at her easel desk painting, or bundled up in the dark watching cult classics. From gaming to gardening, she will get her hands on whatever topic she finds.

More Great Content