The Town of Light Reviews
The Town of Light is a powerful experience and you'll certainly be affected by its story. There are a few issues with music breaks and some of the things you'll see may provide too upsetting, but overall you'll never forget your time in Volterra.
Uneven, bleak and unflinching. You won't enjoy it, but it's one of a kind.
Depicting the horrors of an asylum with animated pictures was a tender touch to sensitive imagery. Even the 3D animations conveyed moments with care. But the story is confusing and painfully disappointing and the translation errors make matters worse. So I can commend LKA's efforts, but I can't recommend The Town of Light.
[The Town of Light is] a game that tries to open people's eyes to the very real problem of mental health
An impactful exploration of mental health issues that presents a very different kind of horror.
Tackling such a difficult subject matter is laudable, but as a video game documentary this only really succeeds in terms of its good intentions.
The Town of Light is depressing, and not just for the intended reasons. It's painful to see a project with such noble intentions squandered by such a profound misunderstanding of how to effectively utilise them. It is very possible to create an artistic work that deliberately avoids being fun while still keeping its audience engaged. This game gets as far as the first step and then just gives up…
Using various narrative and visual devices, The Town of Light serves as an interactive historical textbook. With roughly 2-3 hours of gameplay, it covers a lot of ground in a short amount of time, yet its execution seems to cloud its intention.
Even though it is short and repetitive, The Town of Light's powerful, mature story along with its strong presentation makes it a worthwhile experience.
Even though the game touches upon very insightful ideas with a very critical eye, it's not engaging enough to actually make you have fun. The gorgeous landscape and the abandoned hospital are great settings, but this game's ambitions are too serious, and it often doesn't come across as such.
This exploration of Volterra and its practices by first-time Italian developer LKA is a gruelling, uneven but ultimately worthwhile trek through the peeling corridors of an all too real place. The story follows Renee, a young woman who was committed at Volterra shortly before World War II, as she returns to the hospital's abandoned husk decades later. While Renee herself is a fictional creation, her experiences are a patchwork of real-life patients pieced together from director Luca Dalco's extensive research. You are tacitly cast as a voice inside Renee's head, whom she talks to and questions as you explore the hospital, trying to piece together and make sense of her experience.
Genuine creative potential, but lacks polish
The Town of Light explores the most terrifying horror that exists, the kind man perpetuates on others on the basis of false beliefs and prejudices.
The Town of Light is a thoughtfully written, painstakingly designed walking simulator set in an early 20th century asylum. Though load times and sections that are less than intuitive cause frustration, they do not dissuade my recommendation. You'll quickly become caught up in the story of Renee, a young girl whose circumstances were depressingly real for many women during that time.
However, even if you're one to stomach these triggers in some way, you must also be open to the power of storytelling over gameplay. If you're looking for a jump-out action packed horror game, The Town of Light is not for you. But I urge you to open your mind and consider it a separate learning experience.
I encourage you to play The Town of Light, just don't say I promised you an easy ride.
Even though The Town of Light fails at any sense of creating a compelling gameplay experience, it does do a fantastic job of illustrating the difficulties individuals face with metal health problems, even if it does focus on the past and how such cases were handle.
A dark and depressing exploration of a dark and depressing aspect in history. If you like the idea of that it will probably deliver.
Overall, there is a lot of merit for a game that deals with a tricky heartfelt subject matter. That puts it into a very rare category of games. As a gaming experience it is frustrating, has no variation in pace and I’m not sure how successful its outcome is.
Whilst The Town of Light remains an atmospheric experience from start to end thanks to its fantastic yet harrowing location, the narrative elements don’t quite match up in quality. Renée’s tale has a lot of potential to offer an emotional trip through the treatment of mental patients back in the 1940s, but instead feels slightly fragmented and convoluted. Don’t get me wrong, it has its moments where it shines and you’ll genuinely feel absorbed by what’s going on, but then it’ll quickly move to another scene that’ll leave you a little baffled. I wouldn’t say The Town of Light is a bad game by any means, but I was left a little underwhelmed by it. There’s so much potential here thanks to the genuinely disturbing subject matter, but instead The Town of Light feels like just another average ‘walking simulator’ to add to the ever growing selection.