The Town of Light

Rate it

Return to the asylum where a sixteen-year-old girl was locked away in 1938.

Platforms: PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch
Price: Paid
Rated: Mostly Positive on Steam (79% of 2,835 reviews); Metacritic 64 (PC)
Players: 1
Made by: LKA
Released: 2016

Get it on Steam PlayStation Store Xbox Nintendo eShop (Deluxe Edition)Official site

What frightens You walk the empty wards of a real Italian asylum as Renée, locked up there at sixteen in 1938, and her memories return in pieces: restraints, treatments and the staff who held her, with the dread that comes from knowing such things were done to real people.
Content: mental illness, strong sexual content, nudity, intense violence, blood.

The Town of Light is a first-person psychological adventure from the Italian studio LKA, set in a real asylum in Tuscany that has been rebuilt in detail. You explore it through the confused memories of Renée, a girl committed there in 1938, and your choices change how her story unfolds.

About The Town of Light

The Town of Light was made by LKA in Italy and published with Wired Productions. It came out on Steam in February 2016 and was later released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox, with a Deluxe Edition on Nintendo Switch. Its asylum is the Volterra psychiatric hospital in Tuscany, a place that really existed, rebuilt in detail from extensive research and real events.

On 12 March 1938, sixteen-year-old Renée is taken from her life and shut away, labelled by the police a danger to herself and others and a cause of public scandal. Years later you walk the grounds and empty buildings of the hospital with her, and her memories of what happened there return in fragments. Her view of events is not reliable, and some of what you choose decides how the story develops.

You explore in first person, pick up documents, letters and objects, and trigger memories some of them shown as drawn, black and white scenes. There is no combat and nothing chases you. The makers say outright that there are no zombies or supernatural presences: the only horror is the truth of how patients were treated.

Players describe it as slow, heavy and deeply upsetting rather than scary in the jumpscare sense, and several warn that it depicts restraints, electroshock, lobotomy and sexual abuse. The makers say it is meant for adults only. It suits players of slow, story-led psychological horror and those who liked LKA's later Martha Is Dead.

How to play The Town of Light

Walk the grounds and buildings of the abandoned asylum in first person.
Pick up and read the documents, letters and objects you find; they move the story on.
Watch the memories that open up as you find things, some told in drawn scenes.
Make the choices the game offers about what Renée remembers and does; they change how her story develops.

Screenshots

The overgrown grounds and arched brick building of the abandoned asylum on a sunny day

A derelict treatment room with a checkered floor, old cabinets and surgical lamps lit by a tall window

A black and white drawn scene of two nurses dragging a screaming girl by the arms

A doorway in a dark room whose walls are covered in large painted figures and eyes

Tips

Take your time and examine rooms closely; the story is in the records and objects you find.
One player lost a chapter's progress when the game stuck, as it saves by chapter, so try to finish a chapter in one sitting.
Read the content warnings first if abuse or psychiatric treatment are hard subjects for you.