I really wanted to like this game. I love walking sims and the fragmented narratives that come together in an often disordered way. So when in an article I saw this game lumped with other games I enjoy, I thought that it might be perfect for me. It wasn't.

The things that pushes a player forward in a successful walking sim are the questions "what happened to x?" or "how did we get to the present?". These games don't have the same fast-paced linnear narrative of a traditional story, but by answering these questions one loose fragment at a time - and not always in chronological order - they play on the tension that lies in that gap between knowing and not knowing. It's a difficult balance to strike, but it's one that games such as "Dear Esther" and "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter" get right.

"The Town of Light", contrastingly, didn't get it right. It's pretty obvious from the start what's happened, and anyone who has studied the history of hysteria or recognises the name Charcot on the ayslum's exterior, will immediately know what kind of a story they're expecting. The narrator is a cliché representation of a childish madwoman (relies on a doll, scolds herself, vascilates between first and third person...etc.), so the unfolding of the character isn't much of a driving force either. I've seen other comments complain that it's long, and although I usually don't have a problem with that in games, on such a narratively stagnant one, the length plays against it.