Welcome to Hanwell
You wake up in a underground laboratory and have no idea how you got there. You find find notes from a mysterious man only known as The Doctor. You find hints throughout the game and you decide to find out what happened in the town of Hanwell.
Created by Nathan Seedhouse, The Council of Hanwell is a Survival Horror game that was released in 2018 on PC through Steam. Welcome to Hanwell is the 2017 demo of the full game where you wake up in a cell at Hanwell's jail and try to escape the prison.
Tropes present in this game:
- Abandoned Hospital: One level of the game takes place in Hanwell General Hospital. While much of the town has slightly out of date buildings, most locations like the hospital are relatively modern.
- Asshole Victim: Every member of the Council you find dead throughout the game really deserved what happened to them, with the exception of Isable Miller, one of the only potentially good council members, is found dead in the jail. You also find Sam's body, the insane priest, in there who died trying to free her.
- Bad Ass Normal: Walter Young, the power plant engineer, managed to kill at least 9 anomalies by himself. You find his corpse in a room where he's piled up their bodies.
- Benevolent Boss: The mayor calls the other Council members many times to remind them to get out of town. She does force essential personnel to stay in the science facility up to an hour before the anomaly outbreak, but it seems that left them enough to escape. She is the only one who stays behind in the facility besides for the Doctor. Doesn't make her less evil, though.
- The Warden, implied to be Isabel, is also benevolent, complaining about how decrepit the jail is and that his/her employees are disgusted by the conditions there. The lot of them are annoyed that the Council is getting a bigger and bigger budget but that they only seem to use it to make their lives more comfortable. The guards and the Warden also listen to the prisoners' complaints and they unhappy that the prisoners aren't getting timely trials. She also orders one of her subordinates to look into the unsubstantiated claims that Brett is doing unspeakable things to some of his students.
- The school master, Brett Chambers, evacuated the school before the mayor ordered it. This didn't stop him from trafficking some of the children.
- Taylor Walsh made sure all of the patients in the hospital were evacuated and transferred out of the city before the anomaly event.
- Driven to Suicide: At least one Council member kills herself probably to avoid being murdered by an anomaly. You find Taylor Walsh hanging from the ceiling in her office in the hospital.
- Extranormal Institute: This small town can somehow afford a huge science facility to research the anomalies.
- Ghost Town: The City of Hanwell has recently been evacuated due to an outbreak of anomalies. Unlike most examples, they knew the exact time and date that the outbreak would occur so most people made it out in time.
- Gotta Catch Them All: You will be collecting Witch eyes and Doctor DNA throughout the game.
- Human Traffickers: The school headmaster has a chamber for displaying kidnapped children in the school basement. He is murdered by one of the kids who was transformed into an anomaly.
- Laser Hallway: The science facility has several. They are used to kill escaped anomalies as much as to kill intruders.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: The Doctor likes to experiment with creatures called "anomalies". For use in the experiments, the Council will only give him prisoners who have been found guilty in a fair trial. When they run out of condemned prisoners, the doctor resorts to kidnapping people off the streets.
- Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: The Council is more or less united except The Doctor and one of the Council members, Isabel Miller, who suspects the Doctor.
- Pragmatic Villainy: The Council only uses condemned prisoners for experiments, refusing to use people who haven't yet had a trial. The Doctor gets impatient waiting for the justice system.
- The Quiet One: Your character never speaks except in the text logs in between levels. The Mayor quips that the 1% of doctor DNA that you didn't inherit is his tendency to talk.
- Sinister Minister: The church in town has a sacrificial chamber in the basement and it's implied the local religion in someway includes the anomalies.
- Smug Super: The Doctor is this by the end, arrogant in the extreme. He uses powers very much like the Witch near the end.
- Town with a Dark Secret: The town of Hanwell is home to many monsters designated as "anomalies". It turns out that many of the creatures were either created by or captured by the Council for the supposed purpose of furthering mankind, but it's really so the Doctor can create an army and give himself powers.
- Turned Against Their Masters: At least one of the anomalies decided to turned against the Doctor. It's you. As his designated successor, he is furious.
- Uncertain Doom: All of the Council members are found dead or are killed by your hands by the end of the game. While several minor named characters are not found, it can be assumed they escaped. The only exception is a man named Daniel who betrayed the Council to the Doctor. When you go to the Doctor's house, you find a message to Daniel from the Doctor saying that he can hide out in his house and that his loyalty will be rewarded. All you find is a blood trail leading up what is presumably a window covered up by some pretty big curtains and his abandoned cell phone in the corner of the room.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: There are two Hanwells in the world and both have elected mayors. One is in Canada and the other is in England. A ministry is mentioned in regards to recreational development. A "minister" is also mentioned in the game. Canada has the Ministry of Heritage, Sport, Tourism and Culture Industries and England has the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. You might think that we're talking about the Canadian Hanwell, but the man in charge of the DfDCM&S in England specifically has the title of minister. Both locations are drastically different from the in-game Hanwell. Furthermore, the school is called HHS, presumably Hanwell High School (despite also teaching very young students there). No school with those initials exist in either Hanwell.
- White Sheep: The Doctor's clone, you, is the only good anomaly. It probably helps that you are more human than anomaly.
