Happy about: TR-49

While I didn’t care about most of their projects, inkle have established themselves as a small but inspired team that always tries to find new ways to make narratively driven games mechanically interesting and non-linear. My only proper experience with their titles has previously been Heaven’s Vault, which I found to be highly flawed, but also very cool and definitely unforgettable. With TR-49 the team is doing something that is a bit easier to explain and understand, especially if you have played Her Story and The Roottrees are Dead.

Mechanically, the game is very simple. You’re presented with a terminal that you control by inputting specific index codes – two letters, two numbers. The terminal contains information that you must find. And as you go along you will be gradually understanding (hopefully) what the logic behind the index is, how does the machine work and also will be slowly uncovering a very odd, but quite engaging story. Or, rather, many separate stories that support each other. It’s very simple, there’s a little element of correctly naming things reminiscent of the games like Return of the Obra Dinn, and as you might’ve guessed the process of going through archives and understanding what to look up next is similar to Her Story. But the game has its own voice, which is quite strong. And, as usual for inkle, there are some clever narrative possibilities here, done through systems, than in most games of this kind.

There are some odd choices – some of the “current” story is a bit distracting and by default, without changing it in settings, there are way too many hints that get in the way. But with the settings tweaked, the game works like a charm and feels very good to play. It’s not my top pick for a game “of this kind”, but you should still give it a go if you are in any way interested.