The Town of Light is a first-person psychological experience with locations and characters inspired by real events. It’s made by the independent studio Lka.it. Game is recreating the experiences, the anguish and the human drama of patients living in mental institutions up to the end of the last century. This story takes place in one of the biggest asylums that ever existed in Italy, which counted more than 5000 internees at one time and was located in the city of Volterra: an asylum with a most controversial though little known history. It should be faithfully recreated notorious area of this asylum, that included two pavilions called Charcot and Ferri.

See that thing up there? That’s a creepy doll, beloved of horror film directors and pre-horror-film children everywhere. Said doll, along with the rusty beds, dirty baths, and dilapidated asylum setting featured in the following trailer, make me a tad sceptical of upcoming horrorventure game The Town of Light.

I say ‘horrorventure’, firstly because I’m a terrible portmanteau man, and secondly because I’m not quite sure what The Town of Light is. Is it a horror game? Is it an adventure game? Is there really much of a difference? (Like, isn’t everything an adventure, man?) Developers Lka.it reckon it’s both, and who am I to disagree?

Two things I’m sure of are that it’s very pretty indeed, and that the voiceover/music made me feel sad. I’m as sick of asylums, and their often harmful depictions of mental health, as anybody, but I’m sensing a note of humanity/empathy to The Town of Light that I don’t often see in games of this ilk. Here’s a bit from the Steam Greenlight page that makes me optimistic:

“The Town of Light is a first-person psychological experience with locations and characters inspired by real events, made by the independent studio Lka.it. Our goal is to recreate the experiences, the anguish and the human drama of patients living in mental institutions up to the end of the last century: both the pain of mental disease and the horrors patients underwent within the walls of the institutions where they were being ‘treated’.”

We’ll know for sure in Autumn, which is when The Town of Light is due out, but for now I’m quietly hopeful about this game set in a real-world Italian asylum.

Behind this game stands Italian studio LKA.it and you can visit official site of the game Thetownoflight.com or follow us on Facebook for news about this title.

• developer:LKA.it
• publisher:
• date of release:TBA