The Town of Light is a Good Representation of How Real-World Asylums Worked

gamerant.com:

The Town of Light is a psychological thriller in which the player takes the role of Renee, a 16-years-old girl who struggles with mental illness. All the characters depicted in the game are fictional, but the asylum in Tuscany where the entire game takes place is real.

In order to make the best representation of how asylums used to work, the indie developers conducted numerous interviews. They brought all the testimonies and information they acquired during their research into the game in order to try and make The Town of Light the most accurate representation of a real societal ill possible.

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Renee is taken from her home in 1938 after disrupting the peace with behavior caused by her mental illness, most likely schizophrenia. The asylum that the player visits is based on a real psychiatric hospital in Tuscany called Volterra, despite the fact that the characters are made up. Volterra was forced to close its doors in 1978 after its practices were deemed too cruel.

Unlike other games set in asylums, there are no jump-scares or crazed enemies to be found. It's not as outlandish as Outlast; instead The Town of Light depicts the reality of vulnerable women being abused by those who are supposed to help but don't know how. The Town of Light isn't just about the specifics of institutional abuse in this one place at this one time; it's about the disappearance of the sick and those who cause discomfort. While some people were deliberately targeted, others were simply misbehaving at the wrong time.

Renee is a composite character with a backstory created based on research on actual inmates. There's a danger that her story could become a compilation of every extreme, a catalog of the