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‘The Town of Light’ Aims to Illuminate What It’s Like Living With a Mental Illness
Asylums have become synonymous with haunted houses at this point, and that makes it exceedingly easy to write off another game that’s set in one. The problem is we’ve been trained to see them as frightening places where unspeakable acts are committed by or on damaged people. We’re okay with this because while they might’ve been normal once, whatever humanity they once had is gone and now they’re dangerous
In other words, we’ve turned mentally ill people into zombies.
This isn’t a speech, it’s just my way of explaining why I’m so interested in The Town of Light, because while it’s setting — a real asylum that once operated in Tuscany — may be woefully familiar to us, it’s not being used in the stereotypical way.
Set in the Volterra Psychiatric Asylum, The Town of Light gives us the chance to see through the eyes of one of its patients, a 16 year-old girl named Renèe who suffers from schizophrenia.
Italian developer LKA.it is going to great lengths to give its familiar asylum setting an unfamiliar twist that’s grounded firmly in reality. That’s all it needs to do to stand out in a market that’s been saturated by games like Outlast and The Evil Within.
That’s not an attack, all I’m saying is the world is plenty scary without actual monsters.
The Town of Light arrives on February 26, 2016 exclusively for PC.
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war, but it was a cheerful illustrator from England who helped to define the terrifying war-torn imagery that inspired what we now know as Grimdark (a hybrid genre combining horror with sci-fi/fantasy).
Unfortunately for fans of Warhammer 40,000, Trench Crusade and countless other sources of Grimdark thrills, veteran artist John Blanche passed away this week after struggling with health issues for the past few years.
While the artist retired back in 2023, he leaves us with an enormous legacy of iconic artwork that continues to inspire gamers and storytellers around the world to this very day.
The news is especially gloomy as it was only last year that Daniel Lowman and Napoleon Dynamite himself Jon Heder released The Grim & the Dark: The Search for John Blanche, a documentary following Heder’s exploration of the Grimdark genre culminating in a heartwarming encounter with Blanche in his own home.
Below is one of my favorite pieces by Blanche, his highly influential depiction of Warhammer 40k’s God-Emperor of Mankind on his Golden Throne.
We send our deepest condolences to John Blanche’s family, friends, and fans.
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