TR-49

It is perhaps about time we stopped being surprised by just how brilliant each new game from Inkle is capable of being, but I’m still delighted by how different TR-49 feels from, say, Sorcery!, Heaven’s Vault, and Overboard! Each game is an extraordinary demonstration of a mastery of language, and TR-49 is no different. Except it’s very different, not least in its paranoia over the power of language, its potential dangers, and indeed the explicit dangers of its exploitation and censorship. 2026 is a chillingly perfect time to release a game about a machine that learns the atomistic contents of books, destroying them in the process.

Beneath the confounding layers of text and big-brained puzzles, there are simple truths at the heart of Inkle’s latest. The challenge is salvaging those truths from a historical record compromised by fear, intimidation, and censorship. To solve TR-49 is to reconstruct a reality that was rewritten in real time.

There are still mysteries to uncover and sources to identify in my game, but after hitting two endings, it's difficult to regain that same headspace where I was lost in its world.