The Town of Light Publisher Wired Productions recently announced a year-long project that it will be undertaking to raise awareness of mental illness. Today, both the publisher and developer LKA.it announced that a free demo for The Town of Light has been released on consoles to provide gamers the opportunity to explore the life of someone suffering from mental illness.

In The Town of Light, players take on the role of protagonist Renée, a 16-year-old girl who finds herself locked away in the Volterra Psychiatric Asylum of 1938. Renée must explore the asylum, interacting with the environment and making a variety of choices that will determine the course of her life.

The free demo, which is available on both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, has been accompanied by a new trailer that can be found at the bottom of this article. According to Studio Head and Founder LKA.it, providing the free demo is about expanding the profound reach that the game has found with its players.

“We’ve had an overwhelming response from players who’ve followed Renée’s journey and how it made them compassionate to the psychological and physical effects people experienced whilst at the asylum prior to its closure. To reflect this, we wanted to provide more gamers the opportunity to play a portion of the game – for free – to understand more about mental health.”

DualShockers recently reviewed The Town of Light for PlayStation 4, finding its mediocre performance to not overshadow the developer’s aims of establishing empathy between the player and the game’s protagonist.

The Town of Light is currently available on PlaStation 4, Xbox One, and PC both digitally and at retail for $19.99. As part of Wired Productions’ year-long campaign, a percentage of the sales from The Town of Light will go towards charities, like TakeThis, Inc., that promote mental health awareness.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/qaRmUkNrJqQ