The Council

The Council is an episodic mystery adventure game with supernatural elements that takes place during late 18th century. The player takes a role of Louis de Richet, a member of secret society that operates around Europe. Louis arrives on a mysterious island in search of his missing mother after getting invitation from Lord Mortimer, a mysterious figure of an apparent great influence in the world. Upon arriving on the island Louis find that he wasn't the only guest, and that all other guests are prominent figures such as the Duchess of England, or George Washington, the President of the United States, or Napoleon Bonaparte, a young Lieutenant in the French army. What was Louis' mother doing here, what happened to here, why and how could she just disappear? He thought he'll find the answers, but instead he found even more questions that intrigued him.

The game offers strong character skill system which lets the player select what type of person Louis is, which in turn will make some skills more accessible by costing lower number of skill points. Each skill can be upgraded maximum to level 3 where it will be available for free to use whenever applicable. Otherwise, using skills require more or less points, depending on the skill's level. Skills are automatically prompted for use during dialogues and are mainly used to open new conversations which are not necessary to further the story but provide additional information and give a better insight into things that are happening on the island. The game plays in 3rd-person with directional movement, not the tank controls. Camera can be rotated around the character to give better view of the surroundings. During conversations some replies wait for players to select them, while in certain dialogues there is line bar that shortens giving the player a small window to act or the default option gets selected. Based on acquired skills, certain scenes may pause giving a player short time to react and select suspicious elements he noticed (i.e. noticing that someone is lying because of the way they reacted, or noticing details and how someone gets fidgety when certain topic is mentioned).

Each episode is split into couple of chapters, and at the end of each chapter the game shows all successful accomplishment by the player as well as where he failed in his endeavours and alternate paths he might have taken. When trying to get characters to trust you and give you an item or confide in you, the player will start a confrontation sequence. Each confrontation usually requires 3-4 successful replies and also gives exact number of failures (or none) that are acceptable. Failing or succeeding in confrontation forwards the game, but may cost the player some key info to help him in things to come. There are also some branching choices which force player to choose one thing or another, thus missing some key information while gaining some other relevant or irrelevant piece of information (i.e. helping the person or staying idle while they struggle, or eavesdropping on a conversation or following another person of interest). At the end of each chapter, as well as after going to bed, the player gets to assign certain number of point to skills to unlock. Additionally, collected books and scripts can be selected to be read and thus grant additional skill points toward unlocking certain skills. There are also many tasks that once accomplished grant you a specific talent which additionally adds points toward unlocking a skill.