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Estimated play time: 4 hours and 40 minutes (based on 2 votes)
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About the Story
A voice is saying your name. A WWII-era machine, long hidden in a church basement, whirs to life. Through a crackling speaker, a man asks you to find a stolen book. He only knows the title. Time is running out.
The machine, created by Bletchley Park engineers Cecil Caulderly and Beatrice Dooler, contains a vast archive of obscure books, letters, and journals fed in over the span of fifty years in an attempt to crack the code of reality. As their lives fell apart, the machine kept working.
Navigate the computer's archive. Link its obscure texts and uncover its creators' secrets. Communicate with the man behind the speaker to figure out your role in this mystery. Destroy the book at the core of the machine — before it's too late.
Ratings and Reviews
| Average Rating: Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 1 |
In the constellation of database/ research/ Obradinnlike games, this falls somewhere between Type Help's compelling gameplay (reveal a non-linear story by deducing/ guessing/ bruteforcing four-character filenames) and Her Story's multimedia excellence (audio clips and text rather than video). The files you reveal are also accompanied by comments from the archivists which adds a neat layer of extra personality to the proceedings, reminiscent of Analogue: A Hate Story.
Despite ostensibly being about a piece of 1940 analog tech, the story hits the 2026 zeitgeist, with subtle analogies to LLMs, fake/manipulated news, christofascism, and even women's autonomy (see also the current hit horror film Obsession). The writing is often deliberately obtuse, filled with weird esoterica and philosophy that will likely reward theory-crafting to fill in the many gaps.
2 Off-Site Reviews
Thinky Games
Snooping through computer files has never been this engrossing
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.
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Adventure Game Hotspot
With an initial runtime of around nine hours for me, finding and locating 50 odd books in an even odder machine takes more time than you think, but finally matching codes with titles is an extremely rewarding feeling. The content of the books, articles and letters you uncover is more cerebral than in similar titles, and TR-49 is an original move away from the popular ‘whodunnit’ theme into something more like ‘whatisit.’
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Game Details
First Publication Date: January 21, 2026
Current Version: Unknown
License: Commercial
Development System: Ink
IFID: Unknown
TUID: rfw2hvdyacxarygm
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This is version 7 of this page, edited by jakomo on 27 June 2026 at 11:32am. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page
