New game: "TR-49"

New game!

A totally new gaming experience in the deduction sub-genre, TR-49 is Inkle Studio's lastest mysterious puzzler. I'll only be posting once about this title, because, well, the entire game pretty much looks the same throughout, and truthfully it's not a traditional adventure game at all. It's more of a narrative puzzle game. This is the first game by Inkle Studios I've actually finished, after giving up on Overboard! after two hours of trying to get a good ending; and I haven't dared touch another one of their games since.

The machine...

I'm Abbi, and I wake up in a basement in front of a strange machine. Turns out it contains a database of books, authored by a group of people and commented on by a handful of others who at one time controlled this database like a type of librarians, you might say. Each book has a four digit code: two letters followed by two numbers. I'm suddenly contacted by a guy named Liam, who wants me to locate one particular book in this database and destroy it for reasons you will have to find out on your own if you decide to play it. To find this book, I need to dig my way through the maze of entries and correctly identify 50 books by matching the titles with their codes.

Searching through the database...

There's a lot of clicking and reading involved. Sometimes the job is easy, sometimes you have to do some deduction. There are many references to other books and to important dates, and often you have to resort to some basic math to figure things out. Thankfully Abbi keeps track of everything in a notebook with lists, which is very handy if you get lost for a bit. But there's also lots to hear. Abbi and Liam are almost in constant conversation. I don't think you really have to listen to everything, because you have to acknowledge one hailing the other by clicking on the blinking sender/receiver, and only then do they start or continue talking to each other.

Flipping through the notes...

I must admit I was scared to play this game, because I assumed it would be very difficult. And it is, but still quite manageable. In order not to lose my marbles, though, I limited myself to identifying 10 books at a time, which usually took a playing session of roughly one hour to 90 minutes. After 4 hours of playing time and 33 books out of 50 identified, I got the feeling this game would take me many more hours to get a grip on those last ten titles, since it was starting to get harder and harder to make progress. I wanted to move on, perhaps keep TR-49 as a puzzle to return to in between other games.

Got 'm all!

But suddenly, I started to make more connections and discovered new leads. I was suddenly able to raise my total to 40 books, then 43, then suddenly 47, went to 48 almost by accident you might say, and with only two books left - one I needed a code for, another I needed the title of - I dug into all the additional log notes. And yes, there was the final title! But that final code, that took a while longer. Then in a leap of logic, I might say, I happened to find that last code, and after almost 7,5 hours of puzzling I was finally able to go ahead and erase the book Liam told me about. And what happened next, well, that's history...

I'll NEVER be too old for fairy tales!

TR-49 definitely isn't for everyone. It's certainly no classic point 'n click adventure game. It's a narrative, mouse-controlled puzzle game that offers quite the challenge and has a very intricate storyline I must admit haven't completely figured out yet. There's an expansive lore behind this game and I would very much like to talk to Jon Ingold about it all now. Who knows, perhaps at the next AdventureX?

Before taking on another classic game from the 90s, my next blog will be about a new release as well, but a more classic style point 'n click adventure game about ghosts and possessing people that I'm sure will appeal to more people...

You can find TR-49 on Steam.