The Town of Light

The Town of Light is a psychological horror adventure game developed by LKA. It was released for PC on February 26, 2016 and PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on June 6, 2017. On February 1, 2018, a Nintendo Switch version was confirmed.

Plot
The game is set in a hospital in Tuscany, Italy called the Ospedale Psichiatrico di Volterra. The player character is a girl named Renée who was a patient at the hospital in the 1940s. The game begins as Renee enters the now dilapidated asylum to relive her stay there. As the game progresses, it becomes known that Renee was admitted due to promiscuity, depression, and a volatile relationship with her mother. Renee found comfort in her doll Charlotte.

Renee walks the corridors of the derelict asylum which triggers flashbacks of both her inpatient stay and circumstances prior. It is implied that Renee was a victim of sexual abuse within the asylum perpetrated by a male nurse or doctor. Renee discovers Amara, another patient and a romance ensues. When the nurses discovered this relationship they were separated.

Renee finds her old medical files which imply that Amara did not exist and that they are figments of her imagination. After thorough investigation in the patient property section, Renee finds Amara's possessions, thus proving her existence and that the medical team falsified some aspects of her mental illness.

A note found by Renee reads that Amara passed away in 1942. Medical notes found whilst searching the facility imply that Renee was verbally and physically aggressive and often spent time tied to her bed. Renee receives electroconvulsive therapy and multiple sedative injections to ease behavioural symptoms.

Renee discovers that correspondence from her Mother does not reach her and this is also discovered in the patient property section.

After several years of communication censoring by hospital staff, Renee discovers that her mother passed away and tried to take her own life on multiple occasions. Following this, the game's conclusion shows Renee receiving lobotomy surgery. The story ends with a doctor narrating that the long term recovery for Renee post surgery is unclear.

Reception
The game received mixed reception with an overall score of 64/100, according to Metacritic. According to Mike Diver, The Town of Light is scary with up to 6000 psychiatric patients. In The Daily Telegraph, Tom Hoggins says that a pacifying drug was not discovered until the 1950s, as told by di Piazza. Also, a score of 3/5 was rated for The Daily Telegraph, where Tom Hoggins says "When you are mad, you cease to exist". In Rock, Paper, Shotgun, it was claimed by Luca Dalco that this is not really a horror game. Also, it said that the goals for the game were to be a recreation of the Volterra asylum and to be aware of things no one really talks about. A three-part series for PC Gamer explains how Lorenzo Conticelli designed the asylum setting for the game.