The machine hums. It’s looking for something; so am I. We’re both seeking answers, trying to speak each other’s languages, parsing out information. People are depending on us. We better make this next attempt count.
I am, without a doubt, completely enraptured by TR-49, inkle’s new game that’s out today. I spent hours locked into the literal machine — my Steam Deck — so I could interact with the steampunk-like archive within the game. I wrote a week or so ago about TR-49’s trailer and interactive pinboard preview, showcasing how inkle has been inspired by Bletchley Park for its latest title. TR-49 is a brilliant enigmatic puzzle narrative; it is some of inkle’s finest work-to-date.
TR-49 is a game whose delights and ever-so-slight scares will appeal to fans of Immortality and Return of the Obra Dinn. While it’s much shorter than Dogubomb’s Blue Prince, TR-49 invites the same feeling of re-investigation. Blue Prince released in early April 2025, when it was still cold and dreary (at least in Philadelphia, where I was living). To me, TR-49 represents 2026’s opportunity to keep the chills away with another all-consuming enigma.
Can You Hear Me?
The first five minutes of TR-49 are mysterious from a story perspective but ultimately straightforward in gameplay. A young woman named Abbi awakes, having lost her memories, to the sound of an old machine and the buzzing of an intercom. She is guided solely via radio by her boss Liam on the other end. For reasons that will become clear, it is absolutely imperative that Abbi hack into this machine successfully. Liam guides Abbi to enter codes into the machine that bring up an archive of entries.
While it’s much shorter than Blue Prince, TR-49 invites the same feeling of re-investigation.
There is a brief burst of plot clarity — but then the tables turn. Now, it’s the gameplay that becomes unclear. I was confused and even a bit frustrated for several minutes, just like Abbi. I couldn’t figure out how to make things work or find what we needed. The machine is a holdover from World War II times, whirring and clicking as it awakens from slumber. It holds many secrets, and Abbi must discover them before it’s too late.
The radio buzzes. Liam tells Abbi to buckle up and focus, so I did, too. And, sure enough, within 10 minutes, I felt I had figured out the logic of the game. Suddenly, everything clicked. I felt my mind expanding like the very machine I was dealing with. It was an incredible feeling. I was memorizing codes, quickly making my way through entries.
I had sent an alarm to tell myself to wind down for the evening at 9:45pm. I couldn’t hit snooze fast enough. It was only when my husband left the living room, turning off a light as he went, that I realized it was past midnight.
Now, Focus
TR-49 asks you to pay attention. Very close attention.
The game explains your tasks clearly to you, and so I won’t ruin the surprises or challenges here, but the gameplay consists of inputting codes and reading through strange, archived material in pursuit of information that could change the world. There is an impressive amount of math, context clues, and details. Similar to Blue Prince and how fellow editor David describes The Roottrees are Dead, I found myself taking notes on an actual piece of paper to accompany me.
Whenever I struggled to make progress in the game, the machine would become clouded, reflecting my and the characters’ real-time mental state of questioning the best path forward. TR-49 succeeds at that delicate balance of making you, the player, feel smart, while still enabling you to feel you were inventing that path all along.
inkle’s games have always been a love letter to reading. The studio, founded in 2011 in Cambridge, U.K., by game developers Jon Ingold and Joseph Humfrey, has created a reputation for award-winning narrative games as well as a unique, open source coding language for making text-driven games. (I even interviewed Ingold a few years ago about writing in 2024!)
TR-49 demonstrates inkle’s commitment to story on a whole new level.
TR-49 demonstrates inkle’s commitment to story on a whole new level. There are profiles, made-up newspapers, invented books, and letters in TR-49. There are interwoven lives, found between words. To succeed in TR-49, you must read the lines, and read them closely. It does not hold your hand — you are expected to read to solve the layers of logic puzzles and mysteries.
What’s more, inkle has thoughtfully connected the dots between that gaming experience with the physical one.
Are You There?
There have only been a few times in my gaming life that I have truly marveled at the game’s relationship to its hardware. First, blowing into a Nintendo DS in 2005 to make a campfire in Lost in Blue or flipping it on its side two years later to play Hotel Dusk: Room 215 as a book. Around that time, the Wii years were impressive — what a delight it was to swing a remote in Wii Play tennis. A decade later, in 2017, I also admired the PlayStation 4’s wireless controller chirping like Aloy’s device in Horizon Zero Dawn. But overall, I have mostly seen gaming hardware and consoles as a means to an end. That’s changed now, in 2026, with TR-49.
In promotional materials, inkle shared that they had designed the game to make specific use of the look and feel of the Steam Deck. I was curious to see what they meant by that.
Immediately, I understood. The haptics were incredible — I could feel the whir of the machine in my hands. As I moved a toggle a certain way, I felt like I was truly pulling the levers and code punching in a 1940s-style machine. The UX design of the game mirrors the physical reality of playing on the Steam deck. TR-49 is also releasing on iOS, and I’m sure it’ll still be great to tap on an iPhone or an iPad — but it’s awesome to see inkle embrace how hardware can empower its software.
I played the game with headphones on, which further amped up my experience. The quietly haunting strings-and-piano music combined with appropriate sound effects — water dripping, machines beeping, paper flipping — made me feel fully rooted in the experience. Abbi’s only contact is through an old-fashioned radio, and whenever the static crackled in my ears, I was delighted. When a character threatened Abbi through her radio, I shivered. The voice actors — such as Paul Warren who was in another recent favorite of mine, The Séance of Blake Manor, as well as Ingold and his family — all do a great job at making the characters come to life purely by their voices.
Even when I went to bed that night, I felt bad, leaving the machine — and Abbi — down there in my living room. For a few days, TR-49 had turned my Steam Deck into a war-time device capable of saving lives.
Glitches in the Matrix
There were very few moments while playing TR-49 that I felt it stumbled.
Like I said, at the beginning, the game throws you into the deep end pretty quickly — and it’s up to the player to swim. This is aligned with what protagonist Abbi is going through in-game as well. I kept playing not only because I had agreed to review it, but because I trusted inkle (more on that in a moment). This is not a game for the type of player who wants every quest outlined and pinged for them on a mini-map. TR-49 feels like the puzzle game equivalent of the opening of Elden Ring — just go for it and figure it out. I ultimately liked this approach, but that first 10-15 minutes could be a turn-off for some.
The beta test version I reviewed had no typos (impressive!) but there were a few small bugs, none of which are significant enough to warrant any real concern and that the team has been diligently patching. These minor problems were, to me, few and far between. Additionally, there were some gameplay instructions I felt could’ve been clarified, like a button that cleared up the legibility of the text after many unsuccessful code entries.
Some of the dialogue felt a little melodramatic or trite, but I excused it because the game felt quite serious and perhaps warranted that level of intensity. The voice acting always carried the meaning and gravity of those words well.
My biggest criticism is that I simply wanted more. The game does not overstay its welcome — I finished everything within seven hours — but part of me wishes it would have. This is an impressively rich and complex world that has been created with layers of stories and characters. I wanted the mystery to take just one more turn, the resolutions to go just a bit further… But this is not because the story was lacking, rather that it was so good that I just wanted more. Like I said: inkle knows how to tell a damn good story.
The Makers of the Machine
I have been a big fan of inkle games for a decade now. The rate at which they create is honestly incredible. Most of their titles are games that serve as basically visual novels on steroids, like the resource-management and travel-planning escapades of their award-winning 80 Days!, the D&D-like adaptations of Steve Jackson’s Sorcery!, or the private school trouble-making machinations of Expelled!
inkle has experimented outside of this format a few times, first with 3D explorations of ruins in Heaven’s Vault and platforming across Scotland with A Highland Song. TR-49 feels like a perfect blend of their “specialty” style and something new.
I am always impressed with inkle, and to see that they’ve made something adventurous with TR-49 is pretty damn cool. Even the press release for this game featured jumbled letters and an interactive pinboard with torn out pages and red string. TR-49, like many of inkle’s projects, is driven by a strong central vision and passion for telling a very particular story.
Final Thoughts: Don’t Stop
I was absolutely riveted by TR-49. I played in two long sessions, finishing the game in about seven hours. However, I wanted more — and so I did something I almost never do, and spent extra time getting 100% of the achievements, discovering multiple endings.
Even when I wanted more from the mystery or resolution, this was of my own greed. I simply wanted more. TR-49 achieves everything it sets out to do.
TR-49 achieves everything it sets out to do.
Furthermore, for its amazingly low price point of $6.99, TR-49 is an absolute bargain for an experience this good. If you love books, weird games, games that make you think, great audio design, code-breaking, war-time stories, and/or poignant reflections on what it means to be alive in the world, then you’ll love TR-49. I could hardly bear to put TR-49 down, and once you try it, neither will you.
Score: 9.6/10
TR-49, developed and published by inkle Studios, releases today, January 21, 2026, for PC and iOS. MSRP: $6.99. Version reviewed: PC (via Steam Deck).
Disclaimer: A review code was provided by the developer.
Amanda Tien (she/her or they) loves video games where she can pet dogs, solve mysteries, punch bad guys, play as a cool lady, and/or have a good cry. She started writing with The Punished Backlog in 2020 and became an Editor in 2022. Amanda also does a lot of the site's graphic designs and podcast editing. Amanda's work has been published in Unwinnable Monthly, Poets.org, Salt Hill Journal, Aster(ix) Journal, and more. She holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Pittsburgh. Learn more about her writing, visual art, graphic design, and marketing work at www.amandatien.com.
