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.
