XBF Spotlight: The Town Of Light
As a slight break from the norm I’ll be writing a regular feature shining the spotlight onto games that have maybe slipped under the Radar of most gamers. id@XBOX games will feature heavily as they are rarely marketed and easily missed.
First up is the creepy psychological horror The Town of Light which tells the story of a 16 year old Renée who is taken from her family and locked up in an Asylum. It’s a grim, often difficult story to digest made even more unpleasant by the close resemblance to cases from the 1900’s. The story takes place in the meticulously recreated Volterra Psychiatric Asylum as it would have been in 1938 and you get to experience everything through a unique perspective that will challenge you to dig deeper and deeper to uncover the truth. Told in the first person and using Renée’s voice to guide the player to her forgotten and blurred memories we get to experience them exactly how she would have. The choices you make during the game determine which of the 4 current endings the player gets an example of which is when given the chance to read her own medical records to fill in the blanks in her memory. It promises to be a shocking glimpse into real mental illness in a time where it was completely misunderstood and patients were frequently treated as dangers to themselves and others.
The Trailer shows the dark and creepy atmosphere of the Volterra Psychiatric Asylum full of eerie memories, tales of death, suffering and lies. By contrast the outside areas are bathed in sunshine butdecayed and are being reclaimed by nature. The use of creaking doors and whispered voices may hint at another game relying on generic scare tactics but in an interview with Eurogamer art and Technical Director Luca Dalcò explained their different approach. “The definition of horror doesn’t apply to what you experience with the game”. “There are a few moments when you can get scared, but it’s more suggestive. It doesn’t have jump scares. It’s not a horror in the classic definition of the term.” Hopefully this fresh approach carries it’s way to the finished game.
“We are really excited to start working with Microsoft in bringing Renee’s story to the Xbox audience,” commented creative director Luca Dalco. “Thanks to the amazing support id@XBOX is giving to us since we enrolled in the program we already working to deliver the best possible experience.” It’s great seeing these unusual projects getting all the support possible to get them running on the Xbox they add a sense of diversity that the platform is lacking.
Here’s hoping they can pull it off.
