The Town of Light

Another unsettling hit from LKA, this one is inspired by actual events and letting us explore a real asylum (Volterra Psychiatric Hospital). The game is slower and has a lot more talking than Martha Is Dead (you move around a lot), which I did not like because you didn't know where to go most of the time, but it's still an amazing game that shows/tells you a little bit about the horrible things that were done to people in asylums in the past.

Picked this one.....♥♥♥♥
CW: HEAVY themes.
Okay in all seriousness I had no idea what I was getting into when I put this into one of my lists months ago, it's an educational game which I always appreciate, and on some level it's intended as a horror game, not in the conventional "survival horror" of key finding, puzzle solving, avoiding enemies sense, if the idea of a slow slowly narrated walking sim isn't for you well, I can't significantly challenge your opinion on the genre, it's not for everybody and that's fine, but I'd gladly contribute to the discussion of this game, if that alone might interest you.
Town of light centers itself around mental institutions nearing the 2nd half of the 20th century, it's an interesting subject to research because it represents a turning point for the development of health treatment, nowadays we understand medicine as 'supplements' whereas the way ethical concerns stood back then, it used to be that misbehaving was grounds for being castaway from the rest of the world, followed by having your personal belongings taken away, all means of communication being falsified, tied for several days to bathtubs of ice, and yes, specially to being a target to acts of sexual violence as facilitated by these institutions.
It's valuable in understanding that Medicine, despite being rooted in the well intended pursuit of development and betterment of humanity, should never be excempt from condemnation, hell the history of medicine consists largely of some of the stupidest ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ideas such as spirits and bloodletting, torture and racially motivated acts of violence, incapacitation as means to solve even the most benign of problems like, "oh my wife got sad and said something mean to me" this game looks at many of these themes, during the short window of time where causing permanent damage to your prefrontal cortex by puncturing it like a balloon was very popular.
She goes by many names, trepanation, lobectomy, doomscrolling brainrot at 3:00 am, she's the 2nd most prolific murderer on elm street after Freddy Krueger, you've known her well as far back as 7000 years ago, her name rolls right off the tongue, say hello to the one and only lobotomy baby cause she's not here to stay for very long, all it takes is a 10 minute appointment with a hammer and an ice pick and before you can say shaboioing we'll guarantee 100% satisfaction with your newly attained vegetation, or in the significantly more likely scenario that you don't come back alive, you can rest assured that our method, while not actually providing any significant evidence of improvement whatsoever, is also completely painless, or at least that's what thousands upon thousands of our satisfied customers lead us to believe, after all, it's not just a fancy slogan when we say that a lobotomite has never complained about their lobotomy, it's completely true!
So hopefully that illustrates why a lobotomy ban was placed after thousands upon thousands of reported deaths in the span of a few years, it's an actual cromagnon practice that somehow escaped the hellholes that tried to bring it back one final time and made its way into the lives of perfectly adjusted people who for all we know, could have simply needed an aspirin or some ♥♥♥♥, instead leaving them completely ruined with no hopes of ever recovering.
Going back to this game, it's a valuable resource in how it recreates a real derelict asylum for you to explore, letting you read all about the types of abuse that were conducted here, some of the reasons as to why people were tortured, about how women especially were abused in these prisons, the repugnant living conditions your sexual preferences or a light headache could earn you in the last few hundreds of years.
That's basically what horror in this game consists of, graphic violence and simulations of mental asylum practices, there's no jumpscares no nothing, it's just soul crushing. You play from the perspective of a former resident with difficulties understanding their situation, giving you an unreliable account of the events that took place during her stay.
Excellent music and illustrations are some of the highlights for this game, surrealist sequences and branching paths give it merit beyond a single playthrough, and it doesn't particularly explore any unique gameplay concepts but a number of story sequences are a delight to go through, it's hard to think that having you do anything more complex than examine your surroundings might have been in good taste.
You can tell the studio responsible are super talented and gave it their all for this title, it's got a great sense of aesthetics in every way imaginable, it's well researched and even manages to tell a fairly emotionally compelling story, it's a solid exponent for this genre, executed with care, one asking for a higher level of maturity than a lot of other games that released in close proximity to it, hopefully it'll earn its place in your library as it did mine.

epic, excluding the aggressive flash bangs scattered throughout the game. i found myself bracing for impact, scrunching my face, and squinting my eyes every time i turned a corner in fear of the next memory flashback.
(completely unrelated, but i am absolutely torn over the fact that the original music played during the last cut scene has been replaced. not that the new music is bad, not at all, but the impact the original had on me back in 2016 could never be replaced or forgotten)

This is one of those games that really hits you emotionally because of how much melancholy it carries in its story. It’s based on real events and tells the tragic life of Renée, a 16-year-old girl who had the meaning of her life stripped away from her.
It’s a deeply emotional and psychological game, and I highly recommend playing it. The weight of everything that happens in the asylum and inside Renée’s mind honestly gave me chills more than once.
As for the achievements, you’ll unlock most of them just by progressing through the story. There are about four that require replaying a few specific chapters, but nothing too complicated.
An absolute work of art. Seriously—give this one a chance. It’s worth every minute.

The Town of Light tells a haunting and thought-provoking story set within the walls of a real psychiatric hospital, but its minimal gameplay and slow pacing may not appeal to all players.

It was interesting to play this after finishing Martha is Dead, which was the follow-up to this title made several years later. The evolutionary path from The Town of Light to Martha is Dead is very clear, and it is nice to see that this studio has such a strong hold over their artistic direction. They know what their strengths are, and they lean into them heavily.
Unlike Martha is Dead, you can finish The Town of Light easily in a single sitting. It took me just over 3 hours, and that time surprisingly flew by quite quickly. It was surprising because of how unsettling and, for lack of a better word, unpleasant it is. And that is the point. You play these games to have an extremely uncomfortable experience. That is the assignment, and this developer understands that assignment very well.
Visually, The Town of Light is not spectacular to look at, even considering its age. I was actually quite surprised by how aged the environments looked. That criticism is mainly leveled at the outdoor sections, of which there are mercifully few. The interiors of the abandoned mental asylum feel believable and ruggedly unsettling, and before long I forgot all about my misgivings about the appearance of the exteriors.
As for the gameplay, The Town of Light has some good ideas; it does not have a compass or a minimap or an objective marker or a quest log or anything, but in most instances you can press 'H' in order to get a hint as to where you are supposed to go next. This was a life saver, and it made me feel accomplished when I would take a look at the maps posted to the walls and was able to figure out where I was supposed to go next. It is not rocket science, but it is well executed.
They tried something with the element of choice in this game; several chapters are supposedly different, depending on how you answer certain internal dialog options. The way that they communicate what each choice means is extremely esoteric and unhelpful, however, and I went through the entire game having no idea what my choices meant or what the game was trying to tell me about them. It feels like this element of the game was slightly under-developed. Martha is Dead has several similar elements that feel slightly under-cooked and under-utilized, but I respect that they are trying something.
The worst parts of the game were all in the ending chapters. Without giving any spoiler details, you are expected to navigate identical-looking hallways at one point, searching for seventeen collectible things. The game obviously wants you to find them all, but it was such an enormous chore because it was so easy to get lost and turned around in that bland environment that it felt like a massive mercy when the game apparently decided that I had toiled for long enough and just advanced me to the next section before I had found all 17 things. That felt bad, and it was a super frustrating interruption to the otherwise solid experience.
The Town of Light is my favorite kind of horror game. You are never in danger, and you do not even really have to worry about any jump scares. The horror comes from the unsettling, believable, inhumane experiences of the characters. It can be a minefield when you are dealing with mental health in fiction. It can very quickly slip into the realms of exploitation and insensitivity, but just as was the case with Martha Is Dead, I believe this team played their hand deftly. They do not pull any punches, but the suffering never feels voyeuristic.
This is a real gem in the walking simulator genre, and I am extremely interested to see what this studio goes on to do in the future.

This is a game that has a greater focus on story rather than gameplay.