I started playing TR-49 last night and felt I had to recommend it to players of IF. Without giving too much away, the core gameplay consists of entering codes to reveal pieces of text. It reminds me of Sam Barlow’s games. There was a recent text game where you put in codes based on what room people were in, I didn’t play it, but this seems similar to that also (edited to add: this is Type Help). TR-49 doesn’t seem to have a ton of plot but it’s a great puzzle-box. And it’s pretty inexpensive. Just wanted to bring it to your attention.
4 Likes
I kinda regretted the 4 hours I spent solving it, so a few warnings. The big one is that it’s HEAVY on the timed text and animation delays when entering a code, so maybe watch a little gameplay of the beginning to see if that’s going to bother you. And the plot is a pretty predictable “look at us being dramatic and mysterious” analogy for one specific aspect of LLMs are bad which I found disappointing. There were really only a few types of clue, so once you started seeing the patterns it got a little tedious. And although they’ve made an update that gives you the option to turn off the most heavy-handed “hey, look over here!” unasked-for hints, your notebook is also pretty spoilery, so if you want to solve the puzzles by yourself you’ll want to avoid looking at anything except the notebook page where you match up clues and titles.
But yeah, it’s short and cheap, and there were several fun bits in the puzzle-box part, so if you’re looking for more deduction games, have at it!
+1 TR-49 is fun.
If you like TR-49, you gotta play Type Help. It’s the top rated game on IFDB published in 2025, by a wide margin. I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t with the “Game of the Year” IFDB award (and/or XYZZY, if that ever runs again).
1 Like