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Review
Originally written on the intfiction forums. Some edits were made.
The emphasis on “perfectly normal mystery” is a dead sign that we are not, in fact, dealing with the mundane here. Something, or rather, some things are missing when the protagonist ventures inside City Hall. It was at this moment when I knew for a fact that the initial premise was mainly an excuse to go through the building and deal with item puzzles rather than do some social deduction with city officials. I had to use the walkthrough for many puzzles I considered unintuitive. I am also, admittedly, Bad At Puzzles, but most people were in the same boat from comments made on intfiction and the Neo Interactives Discord.
Functions such as ABOUT/CREDITS, UNDO, and TALK TO are unimplemented. While there are some grammatical errors around objects that I assume, to my Inform-illiterate mind, are related to how items are created and treated by the development system, I did not find any other typos nor did I find anything that was outright bugged.
Finishing a game, especially your first, is a milestone to be celebrated and I am glad to sample the content and the thought put into it. If the author makes more creations with the lessons they learned from The Missing City Council, I’d love to experience them.
(the following paragraph spoils a puzzle solution)
(Spoiler - click to show)Still, if I were one of those guards, I would not take drinks from strangers nor would I drink from the exact same cup my colleague drank from 10 seconds ago. But the mental hoops my mind had to jump over to suspend disbelief at this section, and the deadpan stoniness from the guards juxtaposed with King George V out of nowhere were funny enough, so I liked this implementation.