TR-49 is interactive fiction for fans of deep research rabbit holes

While the catalog contains brief excerpts from each of these discovered works, it is the additional notes added to each entry by later researchers that place each title in its full context. You’ll explore these research notes for clues about the existence and chronology of other authors and works. Selecting specific names and years points to codes and titles needed to unlock even more reference pages in the computer, which will push you further down the rabbit hole. picture something like this his storyBut replace the Cinema Verite surveillance video clips with library card catalogues.

You’ll slowly begin to understand and appreciate how the countless writers in the sports world are influencing each other with their cross-pollination of writing. The texts, novels, pamphlets and magazines discussed in this database are full of academic sarcasm, intellectual intrigue and mutual co-mingling in the work of several generations. It all culminates in a long-running search for a spiritual key to life, which most writers manage to reach but never reach full understanding.

As you explore, you also begin to learn more about the personal affairs of the researchers who collected and cataloged all this reference material and about the vaguely defined temporal capabilities of the information-synthesis engine in the computer on which you all worked. Ultimately, you will stumble upon the existence of key commands that can unlock hidden parts of the computer or transform huge research databases, which turns out to be the key to your ultimate goal.

Through all of this, a parallel narrative slowly unfolds involving Liam, the unseen voice that guides you through the research process. Through occasional voice clips, Liam eventually hints at the existence of a powerful and increasingly encroaching threat that seeks to stop your progress by any means necessary, adding a bit of dramatic tension to your academic pursuits.