This is an exercise in patience, one where your character knows as little as you do and has to work it out from first principles.

You play Abbi, who finds herself in a cellar communicating with an unseen voice through an intercom. With the lights back on, the machine on the desk beckons. It came from Bletchley Park, the voice tells you, and it was fed with books. Not the classics, but obscure and arcane bits of literary detritus. The aim was to "crack the code of reality." What you need to do (the voice says) is find the book at the heart of things before it's too late.

Too late for what you can find out yourself. I am still working it out.

I am an hour in but have played for about twice that, having restarted the game once I thought I understood what was going on. Or more to the point what I was doing. Which I am still a little unsure about.

Long story short, the machine is in essence an archive, one that operates on 4 digit codes. Your task, should you accept it, is to winkle out those codes and link them to book titles, eventually/hopefully leading to the elusive sought after book.

Entering a legitimate code will whisk you to that part of the archive, where further clues to further codes might be found. Or to clues as to where further codes might be found. Or the associations that might lead to those clues ... etc.

As well as a piece of the story within the story.

Oh, and did I mention the archive is corrupted? You need to manage that as well.

It might (and still does) all feel a bit bewildering at first, but rest assured Abbi is as bewildered as you. So, chat a bit and then start fiddling. And quickly become intrigued, which is the impetus that is drawing me on.

It's all point and click, but keyboard commands exist as well. The game keeps track of all sorts of things for you, most especially relevant associations, but my pen and pad remain at hand. It autosaves exclusively.

TR-49 is different to most things, and I confess to being hooked. I suspect I have a long way to go and am looking forward to it.

Thank you so much for your impressions so far, flotsam!

Thank you, Drac!

Ana

Thanks flotsam and Drac!

Is that autosave only at checkpoints, or does it save on exit and start back up exactly where you left off?

Thank you, flotsam (and Draclvr) 🙂