I will not deny it – ROOT is one of my favorite asymmetric titles, with strong wargame flavor. I have played it since the base game was published, acquiring also The Riverfolk and The Underworld expansions. So it should come as no surprise that I was excited when I first heard that the digital version of the game will be developed!

Other articles regarding ROOT game:
[UNBOXING] ROOT
How to introduce ROOT to new players?
ROOT – playing more with base game
Playing solitaire ROOT using Mechanical Marquise
ROOT  – yet once again playing with 1st expansion
Winter ROOT during winter season
ROOT – Underworld Expansion – first impressions

So, we have two versions:

As the former one was released much earlier then the latter one, I will focus today on it. But rest assured, both implementations are of superb quality. Also, picture being worth a thousand words, I will do the short overview using the screenshots from the game.

The Law of Root – ready for a digital journey into the woodland struggle for dominance?
The game allows for pretty detailed set-up of both solo as well as multiplayer modes
When playing, you can stay in overview mode – my preferred one, as it clearly shows the exact situation on map. With one glance you see how many units of each faction occupies the clearing.
Alternatively, you can zoom-in and see the pretty graphics of the forest creatures. Of course, the greater details level and fine graphical effects come at the expense of overall strategic situation clarity.
The battles are pretty dynamic and nicely animated.
When battle resolution screen shows the result, it also highlights any special conditions like defenseless, special hits, etc. Still, I wish you could skip the animation and jump right to the outcome.
During the turns of your opponents the major developments are clearly visible on the screen. You will not miss them!
While in game, when clicking on particular faction, you can see details of its skills and capabilities as well as the current status of their “empire” development (just see above the examples)
Once you beat the game on all difficulties with all factions, there is possibility to test your skills against set of challenges. It is not only very demanding add-on but also allows you to familiarize with different strategies – great lesson material!

My impressions

I have seen many digital implementations of fantastic boardgames. Sadly, some of them were far from perfect. Thus it is with great pleasure that I can firmly say that ROOT version is great!

  • Rules implementation – first and most important thing – does the game works as per the rules? Yes! The amount of bugs / issues is minimal and all Base Game factions are implemented perfectly.
  • Artificial Intelligence – sometimes you do not have friends to play with. But is AI challenging? Is it behaving in more or less optimal way? Oh yeah, believe me the algorithms within the digital ROOT are really demanding despite occasional strange moves by computer.
  • Graphics and Music – the game is beautiful but not overly resource consuming. And music is fantastic – especially the one on the main screen!
  • Theme – the forest creatures are not only great looking but also funny! Just watch how do they play the theme song in Main Menu. Or how the AI was depicted on set-up screen, with computers as their heads. Somebody did a lot of great work not only mechanically implementing the game but to give to it so much needed depth and climate.
  • Drawbacks – there are couple of things which I do not like, like battle animations which you cannot skip or sometimes not so clear buildings on the main map, but they are minor nuisances.

I am really glad that this implementation is so good and that I can wholeheartedly recommend it. ROOT is great game and its digital port keeps the high standard of the analog version. Highly recommended!