Hearsay

An audio archive puzzle

Hearsay is a PC puzzle game about sorting recordings in an uncatalogued archive. The archive holds 361 fragments cut from 82 public-domain recordings from the Library of Congress. Most are recordings made between 1900 and 1925, including brass bands, ragtime, opera, vaudeville and songs recorded in people’s homes. The other 12 are New York street interviews from the 1950s and 60s.

You start with no titles or search function. A cassette gives you no clue until you play it, so identifying each fragment means listening and deciding what it belongs to.