The Missing City Council

The author's comment from the STF website: “My first piece of interactive fiction. You’ve got to start somewhere, right?”

Yes! And this is an amazing place to start.

While I didn't get practically anything, I did learn that saunas are (supposedly) a common sight in Finnish buildings.

To win, and I'm basing this off of the walkthrough since I couldn't finish it myself: you have to (Spoiler - click to show)infuse a cup with the putrid stench of (?) oil, make the two guards of a prison cell holding some political leaders/councillors/long-dead heads of state inside sniff it, making them sick, while you free the guys inside.

10/10 idea, (but) flawful execution.

Before that though, you have to perform a strangely specific set of seemingly random actions that the average player would obviously never arrive to without being high on LSD. Just look at the walkthrough to see what I mean.

And speaking of the walkthrough. The game seems to have been updated since then, so the walkthrough's outdated, atleast in my experience, cause when I tried (Spoiler - click to show)giving the left guard and the right guard (I love it) my bewitched cup, they sniffed it and promptly returned it to me... I feel inadequate...

This transcends from one-star to two-star territory purely because of the fact that (Spoiler - click to show)the lift "makes some regular lift noises" while lifting you through all the lifting places. I LIFT IT.

And the politicians... say some confusing stuff right after (Spoiler - click to show)being released... before George V runs off to a (World War 1 Era — I looked it up — bi-) plane conveniently parked in the basement, and flies off... "Crisis averted", though I have no clue what. (Spoiler - click to show)(an invasion on Finland? Rereading it right now, I feel like I get it a bit more...)

Yeah, title of the review.

EDIT: I completely forgot to mention (Spoiler - click to show)Untitled. Untitled is an enigma. Behold the in-game description: "175 lbs of hard-boiled sweets, of many flavours. They seem to have mostly melted together because of the heat."

Weird, right? But this hits the perfect itch for me, one that I didn't even realise was there. Gives (the utmost vague) vibes of stuff like (Spoiler - click to show)MissingNo. from Pokémon or the Far Lands from Minecraft; it's like the start of a creepypasta or an ARG.

What you gotta do is (Spoiler - click to show)"hit" Untitled, whereupon you receive a drop of (randomly flavoured, I tested this unwittingly) "boiled sweet".

Yeah, it was probably never intended as any of those things, and I'm stretching it a bit, but it makes you wonder... An IF where you solve an ARG as the player would be epic. Even better if the IF itself is just one piece of the puzzle, and you gotta play a bunch of them to figure it all out.

I'd settle for either, honestly (seeing other people solve ARGs is entertainment enough for me), though the former would be more accessible for more people.

3 stars for inspiring me.

I believe this game hasn't been beta tested. (No beta testers are credited.) That means the game is incomplete.

Room exits are unlabeled. The primary puzzle of the game is inexplicable. Even playing through near the walkthrough, I couldn't make sense of what the game's objective was supposed to be, or how to solve it.

The main puzzle puts you in contact with an item called "Untitled." Inexplicably, you have to (Spoiler - click to show)hit untitled to win the game.

I don't think this game can be solved without reading its walkthrough.