Games like The Council
If The Council is your kind of game, the closest matches are Life is Strange: Before the Storm, The Wolf Among Us and Zombie Apocalypse Survival Simulator — picked from the ranked list below. Reviewers single out its choices have real consequences, atmospheric and dark. Each pick is ranked by what players of this game also play, shared genres and tags, and review-mined similarity — not a generic popularity list.
Get personalized picks →The Council is a narrative-driven adventure game set in 1793 that tasks players with joining a secret society and uncovering the mystery behind their missing mother. Developed by Big Bad Wolf and published by Focus Entertainment, the game combines character-politics, dialogue-systems, and puzzle-solving within an episodic structure. Players develop their character through skill-checks that influence how encounters unfold and determine which paths remain accessible. Reviewers highlight that choices carry meaningful weight throughout the experience, with a rich story woven around themes of manipulation and intrigue. The game earned an 80% positive rating from over 2700 Steam reviews and runs as playable on Steam Deck. It is currently free to play.
About The Council: Experience a Narrative Adventure where your choices and character growth truly matter. As a member of a 1793 secret society, live a tale of intrigue and manipulation on the hunt for your missing mother.
Players who liked The Council also play
Steam players who put hours into The Council also tend to own these titles — a signal called collaborative filtering. imho.run cross-references millions of library ownership patterns to surface games whose real audiences overlap, regardless of whether their genre tags match.
Life is Strange: Before the Storm
WHY THIS
Shares an atmospheric mood with The Council.
Top pick for The Council fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Adventure with The Council.
Life is Strange: Before the Storm is a new three part standalone story adventure set three years before the events of the first game. This time play as Chloe Price, a rebel who forms an unlikely friendship with Rachel Amber in a dramatic new story in the BAFTA award winning franchise.
The Wolf Among Us
WHY THIS
Shares an atmospheric mood with The Council.
Second-strongest match for The Council fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Adventure with The Council.
From the makers of the 2012 Game of the Year: The Walking Dead, comes a thriller based on the award-winning Fables comic books. As Bigby Wolf you will discover that a brutal, bloody murder is just a taste of things to come in a game series where your every decision can have enormous consequences.
Zombie Apocalypse Survival Simulator
WHY THIS
Third-strongest match for The Council fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Adventure and RPG with The Council.
From the creators that brought you The Test Trilogy & many other experiences, comes Zombie Apocalypse Survival Simulator. Will you survive in the new world? Or will you become just another victim to looters, bandits, or worst of all... The Voracious Dead. There's only one way to find out...
The Test: Hypothesis Rising
WHY THIS
Ranked #4 for The Council fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Adventure and RPG with The Council.
The second chapter in The Test trilogy. Answer a series of in-depth questions to reveal hidden truths about yourself and unlock secrets to discover how your life can change drastically with just a few, slight modifications. ...But are you sure you want the answers you seek?
Batman - The Telltale Series
WHY THIS
Shares a dark mood with The Council.
Ranked #5 for The Council fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Adventure with The Council.
Enter the fractured psyche of Bruce Wayne and discover the powerful and far-reaching consequences of your choices as the Dark Knight.
Tell Me Why
WHY THIS
Shares an atmospheric mood with The Council.
Ranked #6 for The Council fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Adventure with The Council.
Tell Me Why is the multi-award winning episodic adventure game from Dontnod Entertainment in which twins use their supernatural bond to discover the truth of their troubled past.
The Deed II
WHY THIS
Shares an atmospheric mood with The Council.
Ranked #7 for The Council fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Adventure and RPG with The Council.
Can you commit the perfect murder? Outside a brothel in 1930s Paris, a man recognises one of the orderlies who had cruelly abused him while he was in a mental asylum. Some deeds cannot be forgiven ...
Pentiment
WHY THIS
Shares an atmospheric mood with The Council.
Ranked #8 for The Council fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Adventure with The Council.
Step into a living illustrated world in a time when Europe is at a crossroads of great religious and political change. Walk in the footsteps of Andreas Maler, a master artist who finds himself in the middle of murders, scandals, and intrigue in the Bavarian Alps.
Reviewers mention these as similar to The Council
Surfaced from review text: when other players write 'if you liked X, try Y', we catch the name and resolve it back to a Steam game.
Oxenfree
WHY THIS
Shares an atmospheric mood with The Council.
Reviewers of The Council cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Adventure with The Council.
Oxenfree is a supernatural thriller about a group of friends who unwittingly open a ghostly rift. You are Alex, and you’ve just brought your new stepbrother Jonas to an overnight island party gone horribly wrong.
The Wolf Among Us
WHY THIS
Shares an atmospheric mood with The Council.
Reviewers of The Council cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Adventure with The Council.
From the makers of the 2012 Game of the Year: The Walking Dead, comes a thriller based on the award-winning Fables comic books. As Bigby Wolf you will discover that a brutal, bloody murder is just a taste of things to come in a game series where your every decision can have enormous consequences.
The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series
WHY THIS
Shares an atmospheric mood with The Council.
Reviewers of The Council cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Adventure with The Council.
The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series contains all 4 Seasons, 400 Days, and The Walking Dead: Michonne, which includes over 50 hours of gameplay across 23 unique episodes.
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments
WHY THIS
Shares an atmospheric mood with The Council.
Reviewers of The Council cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Adventure with The Council.
Become the most celebrated detective of all time: Sherlock Holmes! Use your impressive talents as a detective to solve six thrilling and varied cases: murders, missing persons, spectacular thefts and numerous investigations that sometimes lead you into the realms of the fantastic.
Detroit: Become Human
WHY THIS
Shares an immersive mood with The Council.
Reviewers of The Council cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Adventure with The Council.
Detroit: Become Human puts the destiny of both mankind and androids in your hands, taking you to a near future where machines have become more intelligent than humans. Every choice you make affects the outcome of the game, with one of the most intricately branching narratives ever created.
Elysium
WHY THIS
Reviewers of The Council cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Adventure with The Council.
Wake up on a paradise-like abandoned island with your friends. Explore the lands of an ancient civilization and uncover the mysteries behind their collapse as you build, craft, and tame corrupted machines. Most importantly, survive the unwelcome lands of Elysium!
Firewatch
WHY THIS
Shares an atmospheric mood with The Council.
Reviewers of The Council cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Adventure with The Council.
Firewatch is a single-player first-person mystery set in the Wyoming wilderness, where your only emotional lifeline is the person on the other end of a handheld radio.
Martha Is Dead
WHY THIS
Shares an atmospheric mood with The Council.
Reviewers of The Council cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Adventure with The Council.
Set in 1944 Italy, Martha Is Dead is an award-winning dark psychological thriller where the lines between truth, superstition, and tragedy blur. Explore a haunting countryside, uncover disturbing memories, and peel back layers of mystery. Every choice shapes the nightmare…are you ready to face it?
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Head-to-head comparisons
Plays great on Steam Deck
Valve-Verified or Playable picks from the similar pool — ready to go on Deck out of the box.
The Test: Hypothesis Rising
WHY THIS
Deck Verified — runs on Steam Deck out of the box. Shares Adventure and RPG with The Council.
The second chapter in The Test trilogy. Answer a series of in-depth questions to reveal hidden truths about yourself and unlock secrets to discover how your life can change drastically with just a few, slight modifications. ...But are you sure you want the answers you seek?
The Deed II
WHY THIS
Shares an atmospheric mood with The Council.
Deck Verified — runs on Steam Deck out of the box. Shares Adventure and RPG with The Council.
Can you commit the perfect murder? Outside a brothel in 1930s Paris, a man recognises one of the orderlies who had cruelly abused him while he was in a mental asylum. Some deeds cannot be forgiven ...
Pentiment
WHY THIS
Shares an atmospheric mood with The Council.
Deck Verified — runs on Steam Deck out of the box. Shares Adventure with The Council.
Step into a living illustrated world in a time when Europe is at a crossroads of great religious and political change. Walk in the footsteps of Andreas Maler, a master artist who finds himself in the middle of murders, scandals, and intrigue in the Bavarian Alps.
Frequently asked about The Council
- Does The Council run on Steam Deck?
- The Council is rated Playable on Steam Deck — it runs, but expect some manual adjustments (control remapping, text size, or graphics settings) for the best experience.
- Is The Council free to play?
- Yes — The Council is a free-to-play title on Steam. You can install and play it without buying anything, though some games include optional in-app purchases.
- What games are most similar to The Council?
- Based on Steam play patterns and shared genres/tags, the games most often recommended alongside The Council are Life is Strange: Before the Storm, The Wolf Among Us, Zombie Apocalypse Survival Simulator.
- Who developed The Council?
- The Council was developed by Big Bad Wolf and published by Focus Entertainment.
imho.run ranks Steam game alternatives using a mix of collaborative filtering (ALS / iALS / EASE / LightGCN), content scoring over genres, categories, Steam tags, developers, and publishers, plus AI-extracted vibes mined from review text. The page above is generated in seed mode anchored on The Council.
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