TR-49 review: The mystery game template of snooping through computer files has never been this engrossing

Rachel Watts, 21 January 2026

Rummaging through files on an old, clunky computer has become a mystery game staple over the years. Her Story, The Operator, Home Safety Hotline, Crossroads OS, Hypnospace Outlaw, Type Help, Immortality - the list goes on. Snooping through a desktop is a must-have skill in any puzzle-lover’s arsenal, and TR-49 - the latest game from Inkle (Heaven’s Vault, 80 Days) - is the newest game in a long lineage of engrossing database detective mystery games. It’s also one of the best.

The story feels like something out of a pulpy sci-fi novel. Playing as Abbi, you need to search through the files of an old machine looking for a specific book hidden somewhere in the labyrinth of files. The machine contains an archive of books, letters, and journals, each one fed into it by its mysterious creator. You have no idea why you’re here, how you got here, or how to work the machine. 

Your only source of information is Liam, a man talking to you through a crackling walkie-talkie-like speaker. He’s the one encouraging you to find the book, prefacing that it has the power to alter reality. As you search for this book, you discover the history and science behind the machine, learning about the people who built it, the philosophies they had, and the academic minds who theorised that a machine like this was even possible. These histories might be lost, but the machine remains.

So, it’s time to search for a book that can potentially rewrite history! Fun!  Each document in the machine is categorised with an alphanumeric code, so to find the book, you need to find its assigned code. This is the crux of TR-49’s puzzle-solving. You’re entering codes into the machine to uncover files, and you read those files to find other codes, which leads to more files, so on, so on. However, these codes aren’t stated outright, so you’ll need to find clues. For example, this review on Thinky Games could potentially be assigned the code RW-26, RW being the initials of the author (me!) and the year it was published, 2026.

If you’ve played Immortality, Her Story, or last year’s excellent Type Help, this will sound familiar. You’re scanning entries looking for clues - dates, people’s initials, journal numbers - anything that could be interpreted as a 4-digit code. Learning about a single code can cascade into further discoveries, and I had plenty of those moments in TR-49.

Part of this puzzle-solving comes from keeping track of the game’s non-linear story, one told through the content of the files you find. Many of the entries discuss the construction of the machine and the scientific history of how it came into existence. With longer entries, such as a book, the file will include a paragraph or two from the source, accompanied by a summary from the person who entered it into the machine. Don’t worry, you won’t be asked to read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland cover to cover, although it certainly feels like you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole.

This investigative side is wonderful. As you map out the machine, it feels like you’re also mapping out an imaginary history of discoveries and philosophical thought, keeping track of dates, relationships, academic rivalries, love triangles, and even missing persons. Thankfully, you’re also given a digital notebook where Abbi will take notes and have profiles on each character, making it easier to follow different narrative and puzzle threads. There’s a lot to take in. There’s a lot of reading, progressing through the game and learning new codes requires an understanding of the characters and story. This is not a game where you can only engage with the puzzles and not the story. I would go as far as to say that it’s almost a visual novel, one where someone has ripped all the pages out and muddled them out of order.

I wouldn’t say the game is difficult, but it is dense. It’s overwhelming at first, and finding your sea legs will take time. As much as I loved exploring the machine, TR-49’s onboarding isn’t the best. I understand that I’m role-playing as someone who doesn’t know how the machine works, so it’s expected that I’ll be a little confused at first. However, understanding how to digest and apply the information you're given can be unclear for the first hour (out of a total of ten hours). Unlike other desktop games, where you understand how to access information and, critically, what to do with that information, in TR-49, that understanding is not made entirely clear. At first, you’re not really following a thread of thought, but poking around inside a machine, which isn’t necessarily bad, but it feels illogical, which may urk some puzzle fans. It’s a game that takes time to warm up.

An absolute highlight of the game is the machine itself: a mass of wires, clunky equipment, and strange buttons. There’s a purposeful clunkiness to its inputs, making it really feel like an old relic. The ring of letters and that frame the circular screen look like sharp teeth in an open mouth, like it could bite my nose clean off if I look too close. The whirring sound it makes as it loads files is so satisfying. Sometimes the machine feels like it has a mind of its own, the screen glitching and showing you strange things like it’s decided you’re worthy.

The round screen is my absolute favourite part. It looks like you’re peering into a bronze pool, visions and text dancing on its surface. When you correctly assign a code to a document, the pool ripples and shimmers, the garbled text now readable. Some entires have ghostly portraits of their authors behind the text, and they occasionally blink, making it feel like their souls are trapped inside. It’s a marvel. 

The voice acting is spectacular too, with Abbi and Liam played by Rebekah McLoughlin and Paul Warren, respectively. Warren’s performance in particular adds a deliberate tension to the story, playing a mysterious stranger who is encouraging but, strangely, also anxious and impatient. (Is that also a hint of familiarity? How interesting.) However, I wish with all my heart the game had a dialogue log to look back through. I like the option to re-read and cross-reference what was said to me, especially in a mystery game.

Typical of Inkle, TR-49 is a totally different game from anything the studio has done before. For puzzle fans familiar with Heaven’s Vault, TR-49 is another fantastic game from Inkle that will satisfy the same code-breaking itch.