The Town of Light Preview

Few places are as scary as an abandoned asylum, and game developers know this very well. Broken wheelchairs, dirty stretchers, scratched walls and rusty metal lockers; psychiatric hospitals create a chilling atmosphere that is difficult to shake off even after we walk away from the computer. And the jumpscares! It is no surprise that games like Outlast became the muse of every squealing teen streamer. This is why it may sound puzzling that The Town of Light’s setting and style does not result in a spooky game. Italian studio LKA has reversed-engineered asylums as seen in scary games and turned them into an eloquent approach to clinical psychology, from a very personal perspective.

The Town of Light is set in one of Italy’s largest psychiatric hospitals, Volterra’s Ospedale Psichiatrico, which was shut down nearly 40 years ago due to its habitual cruel practices. Indeed, until very recently, psychiatry has inhabited a grey area of medical disciplines, where science was used as a justification to keep disruptive people confined away from society – be them deranged or not. The building in the game is a near-exact recreation of the hospital itself; a ‘place of no return’, where patients never managed to leave safely. This location has become one of the more picturesque and significant venues for urban explorers, an idea that LKA has utilised to situate Renee, the game’s protagonist, on an exploration journey in the hospital itself. However, Renee’s story is not just a banal excuse to spook you, but rather, she’s revisiting the hospital after having spent some time there 37 years before. This becomes a gateway to explore outdated methods of psychiatry, as well as some of the terrible off-the-books practices carried out.

Embodying Renee herself, you will walk along the hospital corridors, search every room and experience flashbacks of her past, all giving clues away in order to solve puzzles and advance into subsequent areas. Rather than puzzles, the game is more like a walk in the park - I mean, asylum. You will pick up notes, push buttons and open doors, occasionally taking care of a little doll that used to mean the world to Renee, and getting cutscenes throughout the way. There is a clear dichotomy between the blurry, black-and-white fragments and the present-time gameplay. These flashbacks have distorted characters, and depict broken scenes of madness and abuse. The latter are set in a bucolic sunny Italian villa; a rural landscape that, although abandoned and lonely, still evokes the smell of carbonara and wine.

It is clear that the care that has been put in the reconstruction of the hospital itself, with great particle effects as you see dust floating in the air as the sun leaks through the windows, and the ample array of worn out objects and tools that were once used by the hospital staff and patients. In terms of visuals, The Town of Light is a homage to urban exploration, and to the imagination that builds stories within long-forgotten locales. In terms of narrative, this game is denouncing a series of practices and people, dehumanising them and giving voice to those who were neglected and mistreated. Above all, however, The Town of Light attempts to instil hope for those hospitalised due to psychological illnesses. It acknowledges the hardships and the baggage that having a disease like Renee’s episodic schizophrenia may entail, but it encourages their recovery, asserting the possibility of a normal life in spite of the burden.

The Town of Light promises to be an emotional and insightful game about mental illnesses and their clinical treatment. However, in our preview, we were a bit confused by the way this game tries to tell a story. Flashbacks border the line with dreams, becoming confusing and messy. The series of hand-drawn pictures are disturbing, but they feel out of the blue. On top of this, the studio has not completed the translation of the game, which meant that many found fragments were either in Italian or irrelevant to the story. Renee is supposed to be over 50 years old, but her voice-acting is closer to 20, changed from earlier footage. To top it off, navigating around the asylum, and figuring out where to go and what to do can become annoying at times.

Nevertheless, this game looks very promising. As I said, it twists the traditional conception of what an asylum has traditionally been in videogames, and attempts to look at them in a deeper and more historical level, albeit less conventional. Even though at the time of writing this game occasionally shows need for refinement and polish, its intentions and ideas alone make it worth checking out.