I have a penchant for puzzle games, especially those that focus on deduction. TR-49 is from inkle, the same devs behind Heaven’s Vault. Both focus on language as the key puzzle component.

The principle interface is above. You have text on the left, and a code on the right. Through combinations of XX-## you navigate through what’s effectively a broken wikipedia, trying to restore the links. The main goal of the game is to wipe a particular record, and depending on your choice, there are multiple endings.

There are some automated note taking tools that help you deduce some pieces together, and milestones that let you know if you’ve hit a particular point. That adds a sort of boundary on the puzzle, which is key when you are presented with seemingly infinite options.

Each set of coordinates follows a particular pattern, which can be used to infer other links. The format always follows a XX=object and ##=date structure, it’s how they are intertwined that matters. The text itself may present something like ‘6 years before their death’, which gives a ## pivot for the same object. You can brute force the ## portion as it’s 100 choices if you’ve found an object code. There are other object codes that are used once, or coordinates that act for separate purposes.

While you’re solving this, there’s ongoing dialogue for the setting. It’s a weird setting and one that is best experienced fresh as it tightly bound to the multiple endings. This does add a lot of voice acting, where you will want to play with headphones in order to isolate the sound and truly focus on the puzzles.

The total journey isn’t exceptionally long, maybe 6 hours, but it is quite fulfilling. Well worth the purchase if you’re into this style of game, of which I am a HUGE fan.