TR-49 (Nintendo Switch Version) by inkle Ltd.
I want to start off by saying that I think TR-49 might be one of inkle‘s best games.
The storied developers of games like A Highland Song and Heaven’s Vault know how to craft a game that mixes adventure, narrative, and puzzles into an unforgettable experience. They’ve done so more times than I can even count at this point.
Even taking all of that into account, I think TR-49 has the potential to be regarded as one of their masterpieces.
I just wish I hadn’t had to play the version of it that I did.
Computer Blue
Waking up in an abandoned church, researcher Abbi is faced with a mysterious machine. She’s soon contacted by her guide, Liam, and given scant details: this machine has been fed and absorbed books, and you need to find a specific one. The fate of the world depends on it.
The problem? Nobody knows how it works.
TR-49 tells a compelling mystery through a combination of its narrative and gameplay. Learning to navigate the machine’s databases via codes is intuitive but requires you to pay attention to information and make logical deductions. The act of identifying which book title belongs to which data entry is immensely satisfying, and calls to mind other deduction games like Return of the Obra Dinn.
Meanwhile, the mystery at the heart of the game’s plot constantly urges you forward. Abbi isn’t sure what’s going on, and Liam is anything but enlightening on the subject. Tense atmosphere combined with a growing sense of dread constantly spurred me on to dive further into the game’s secrets.
That is, of course, when the game wasn’t preventing me from doing so.
Flagrant Error
I have my criticisms about TR-49 as an experience itself, but they’re minor ones. Sometimes Liam loves to chime in when I’m trying to think of a solution. Other times, I hit an obscure hint that takes far longer than usual to figure out. These are all forgivable.
What isn’t forgivable is the state in which the Nintendo Switch version of the game, for which I was given a review code, was released. It has some of the usual issues of trying to use a controller to navigate a game meant for keyboard and mouse, but that’s ultimately not the biggest problem.
The problem is that the game has awful technical performance. It frequently froze when I was simply scrolling through text, sometimes taking a good 10 seconds to unfreeze, other times requiring me to exit to the Switch menu and back. Worst of all, the game outright crashed to the Switch menu several times.
This has continued even after the game’s most recent patch.
The Verdict
As I said above, TR-49 is a fantastic experience by inkle and a game I would wholeheartedly recommend…on PC. If your only option is the Switch version, though, I can’t in good conscience tell you to buy it.
Hopefully, the situation is ultimately resolved with more patches, but the fact remains that it shouldn’t have been released in this state in the first place.
The Swith version of TR-49 is available via the Nintendo eShop.
Watch the trailer for TR-49 below:
