TR-49 review: detective games get extra cryptic with this mystery

We’re living in a pretty great time for detective games. Over the last few years, developers have been experimenting with all kinds of different ways of turning the act of investigation into a compelling game, which has led to the likes of Her Story, Return of the Obra Dinn, and the Golden Idol series, to name just a few. Now you can add TR-49 to that list — a game that builds on the genre by introducing a bizarre code-breaking computer.

Developed by Inkle, the studio behind 80 Days and Heaven’s Vault, TR-49 is confounding from its very first moments. When you start the game you have no idea what’s going on — and neither does your character. You play as a woman who wakes up inside of a church basement with no memory of who she is or how she got down there. In front of you is a strange WWII-era computer. It has a big circular screen and you control it by using the kind of lever more closely associated with factory machinery than high-end computing. Soon, you hear the voice of a man who tells you what you need to do: find a missing book.

To tell you much more about the premise would be to spoil the 1984-esque dystopia that unravels; not that my description would make much sense anyway. TR-49 is a game where discovering the narrative is woven directly into the gameplay. The machine is the only thing you can interact with, and it’s a device packed with information, but the trick is finding it. Each file has an associated code which you have to input to open it. The idea is that by reading through the various files you uncover, you’ll learn new information, which will in turn help you learn new codes for more files.

I found myself poring over documents I didn’t really understand at first, seeking out names and dates that could be relevant, and then trying my luck coming up with a code. You also don’t really need to carry around a notebook as the game keeps track of important people, organizations, and books through a file system you can reference at any point.

Playing TR-49 reminded me a lot of Her Story, a game you interact with by searching for keywords in a police database. In this case, a story starts to reveal itself the more you read and start to piece things together. But there’s another side to TR-49, as it’s also part audio drama. While your character is alone down in the basement, you have a radio that lets you communicate with a man on the outside. It’s mostly one way, as the radio will light up when it’s time to talk. He gives you directions, answers questions, and occasionally gives subtle hints when you’re stuck.

It’s a well-acted drama, and this structure makes the big revelations feel a lot more important than just opening a new file on an ancient computer. It adds a real sense of urgency to a game that is otherwise just inputting numbers. And there’s something very organic and satisfying in the way you reveal the scope of the story bit by bit. It feels almost like you’re uncovering things, rather than them simply being told to you.

And while most of this unfolds naturally, TR-49 does suffer from the same problem as most games in the genre: there’s a good chance you’re going to get stuck. I certainly did. Usually, I just had to take a break and re-read something with fresh eyes, and the clues would jump out at me on a second look. But I also resorted to guesswork a few times, plugging in codes that seemed maybe right, and then hoping for the best. I’m not ashamed to say this typically worked. It helps that it’s a fairly tactile experience, at least on mobile where you rotate dials and pull knobs, so there’s satisfaction in simply using the machine, even if you’re guessing.

Those roadblocks can be frustrating, but at least in my experience I always found a way to get past them, whether it was taking a breath or taking a guess. Either way, TR-49 managed to do what all the best detective games do: make me feel like I was part of the story, piecing it together as I progressed. You just have to be willing to be bewildered before it all pays off.

_{TR-49 launches January 21st on Steam and iOS.}