"When you're mad, you cease to exist."
The Town of Light is a game set in an asylum, and several decades of games like it have taught us what those words mean. Spookiness. Evil experiments. Something sinister in the basement. Jump-scares. This doesn't have any of that, but don't for a moment think that means it's not a horror game. Its horrors are simply more grounded, in incarceration, in loneliness, in the loss of power, and complete subjugation by a system that, at best, sees you as an unperson incapable of not simply making your own decisions, but of holding your own world inside your head.
It's the story of a young girl called Renee, committed to an Italian asylum shortly before World War 2, as she explores its ruined, dilapidated hallways decades in the future. It's based on a real location, and while it's not as complex as many game spaces out there, The Town of Light does a fantastic job of rebuilding it in all its rusted over, graffiti-covered glory. Every room hangs heavy with history, haunted not by ghosts in the conventional sense, but certainly a lingering misery that suffuses every bit of brick and every bed fitted with thick leather straps.
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