No Dialogue Wheel
There are no reply menus. You do not pick A, B, or C. You ask, examine, confess, accuse, remember, or pry in your own words, and the game connects what you mean to hand-authored characters, quests, evidence, and consequences.
Coming to Kickstarter
A dark-fantasy visual novel where you speak in your own words, investigate without dialogue menus, and uncover a story that changes with what you notice, who trusts you, and which secrets you pull loose.
Say it in your own words. The world is already listening.
Rootwoven is coming to Kickstarter. Join the launch list for campaign updates, demo bonus access, and early-backer options.
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The demo is coming to Steam and Android, with iOS to follow.
In roughly 30 minutes, you will:
- Meet the main characters and feel how the same words land differently.
- Try the natural-language conversation and investigation systems.
- Get ready for the pre-alpha release and the first Act I quests.
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Rootwoven is a dark-fantasy school story about eleven broken teenagers learning each other's wounds, set against something that has been growing beneath them for five hundred years.
The Academy is a place of classes, meals, rivalries, friendships, and ordinary evenings that sometimes stay ordinary. But beneath that year is a mystery older than anyone living there, and the deeper you dig, the more the school begins to answer back.
Some secrets reveal themselves to anyone. Others require trust, evidence, skill, timing, or a question nobody else thought to ask.
No dialogue wheels. No guessing which menu option means what you wanted to say.
Investigation That Feels Like Thinking Out Loud
Type what you want to examine in plain English.
I look closer at the soot around the hearth.
Hidden discoveries surface when your words, skills, evidence, and timing line up. Clues you uncover pin themselves to your case board automatically, tagged by source: testimony, evidence, observation, rumor, or fact.
Characters Who Remember The Shape Of You
Every major character has their own personality, history, emotional state, relationship with you, and private wounds. Say the same thing in two different playthroughs and the answer may change because the person hearing it has changed, or because you have.
One Year, Many Paths
Follow the heart. Treat the Academy as a case. Dig into buried history. Sharpen the skills that decide which questions you can even ask. Or let an ordinary evening stay ordinary.
Most players will braid several of these together. The weave is wide enough for any hand, and it remembers which threads you pulled.
Every copy of Rootwoven includes one complete Story Mode playthrough.
Every copy of Rootwoven includes one complete Story Mode playthrough: all three acts, from the first evening to your ending, with no story tokens, no per-message fees, and no mid-plot paywalls.
Optional Exploration Mode is for players who want to slow the world's clock and dig beyond the main story: more questions, more lore, more secrets, and more time in the roots.
You never need Exploration Mode to finish the game or reach an ending. The story you came for is complete.
Joining the launch list is the best way to support Rootwoven before Kickstarter.
- Get launch updates when the campaign goes live.
- Get access to demo bonuses as they become available.
- Get the first look at early-backer and VIP options.
- Help the campaign build momentum on day one.
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Answers to common questions about the demo, AI use, art, and the team.
Is Rootwoven actually playable?
Yes. The backend exists. The Unity client exists. Deployment and monitoring systems exist. The Academy, cast, story spine, world details, and a large portion of Act I are already built. Most importantly, the demo proves the central risk: you can speak to the world in your own words, and it can answer through authored characters, quests, and consequences.
Does AI write the story?
No. Rootwoven uses a large language model at runtime so players can speak in their own words instead of choosing from a dialogue menu. The model does not invent the plot, quests, cast, or world. Those are authored by us. The AI layer is the interface between your words and the story systems we built.
Do you use AI-generated art?
Yes. We use AI-assisted image generation as part of our art pipeline, with open-source models, self-trained LoRAs, and custom ComfyUI workflows. The outputs are directed, reviewed, selected, and integrated by us.
We know some players are uncomfortable with AI-generated art. That is fair, and we would rather be clear than evasive. Our promise is transparency and human direction: the story, characters, quests, emotional logic, worldbuilding, systems, prompts, guardrails, and final creative choices are ours. If funding allows, we want to bring in targeted human support for key art, UI, polish passes, and high-impact assets.
Who is making it?
Rootwoven is made by a two-person team with experience in AI-backed software, production infrastructure, and player-focused game development. We are not building an AI toy. We are building a hand-authored story game that uses AI to open a new kind of door.
Join The Launch List
Get campaign updates, demo bonus access, and early-backer options before Rootwoven launches on Kickstarter.
Play demo on AndroidSoonPlay demo on SteamSooniOS demoSoon