Build routes through the forest, manage blood as fuel, and push toward the human frontier.
The new year has kicked off, and with it comes a wave of great news. One of the biggest is definitely the release date for an intriguing project that will let you grow the forces of evil, and now I’ll give you a few more details about it.
Roots Devour is a strategy game from Rewinding Games, published by GCORES PUBLISHING, built around exploration and a card connecting map. It is set in a quiet, Lovecraftian forest where you play as an ancient root born into hunger, pushing outward by linking cards into traversable paths and feeding on whatever gets caught in the web.
The core idea is simple, but it changes how you read the board. Cards are the terrain, the encounters, and the obstacles. Your movement is the act of extending roots from card to card, creating corridors that turn the map into a routing problem.
The game frames it as a frantic spread through swamps and snowy regions that eventually reaches human lands, and it leans hard on that feeling of growth as a form of pressure. Each connection is commitment, because the route you build is the route you live with.
Blood is both the theme and the main resource; it is something you spend to reach objectives, while many objectives pay you back with blood, which is not always enough to cover the trip.
That creates a loop where you plan around net gain, and the tension comes from overextending a turn too far away from the next refill. When a stretch gets too long, players can use water as the fallback cost, and water is described as much harder to replace, so long routes feel like a real risk.
Even though it is tagged like a deckbuilder and roguelite, the deck side is tied to the map. The Steam description promises hundreds of cards and “shifting combinations,” with runs shaped by the cards you draw into the forest and the cards you uncover while expanding.
Opening card packs could grant eldritch abilities, and hunting stronger creatures lets you acquire organ cards that help form a “blood supply network,” which suggests your engine building is less about hand math and more about building a sustaining system across the run.
The Gameplay structure sits on four distinct regions and a mix of resource management, deck building, puzzles, and card collection with a cast of humans, and a choice between observing them or intervening, with bonds tied to up to seven key characters and multiple endings.
The nice thing is that you are not just choosing which node to touch next; you are choosing what kind of presence you become in the forest and what you leave standing when you move on.
The progression leans into what the roguelite usually does with gifts, upgrades, and abilities unlocked over time with the use of blood.
There is a free demo available that includes the first level, offering about 60 minutes of gameplay, while the full game is scheduled to launch on January 27 2026, on PC via Steam. Below, I share the release date trailer.
