Plus, there are lots of fun side activities to do, such as luring a genie to pet a cat or looking for the lost pages of Ash's sketchbook (the bullies tear them out at the start) to enhance your selection of painting options.Įven more impressive, though, are the timely themes and messages organically weaved into story.
You'll also need to put your thinking cap on from time to time in order to solve puzzles, like figuring out how to get a genie you've drawn to restore power to dead machines. Don't worry the game doesn't grade your compositions, it just needs you to make an effort to create. Just pick a doodle, tap the trigger, and start moving the controller around to begin a fresh masterpiece.
Players are provided broad freedom to paint whatever they like - so long as they've collected a picture of it - in order to bring life back to the village. Running around the town feels great, especially as Ash climbs buildings and slides along power lines like a parkour professional.
Concrete Genie replaces traditional video game combat with a series of puzzles, paintings, and collectibles that prove to be very entertaining. Show moreĪnyone who thinks fighting is essential to making games fun ought to give this one a go. This game was designed for PlayStation VR, but can also be played with a standard gamepad controller. As the game progresses, players learn more about the disaster that has befallen the town, as well as the history of both Ash and his bullies, who, it turns out, have had a pretty hard time of it (which explains - though doesn't excuse - their naughty behavior). These murals bring light and energy back to the town while also removing the "darkness" - a physical manifestation of the town's negative emotions - from the streets. The art comes alive as it's created fire flickers, clouds pour rain, and two-dimensional creatures dubbed "genies" follow Ash around on the walls. As the game begins, Ash comes into possession of a magical paintbrush that he uses to paint sprawling murals on the sides of buildings. The streets are mostly barren, save for a group of bullying kids intent on dogging the game's hero, a boy named Ash who loves art and refuses to give up hope. When that most obvious of lazy game tropes appears - the sewer level - it almost feels like an intentional joke.CONCRETE GENIE places players in an empty coastal town filled with shuttered businesses that went bankrupt in the wake of an oil tanker spill that destroyed the community's economy. The moments of cinematic storytelling where players learn more about Ash’s parents or an individual bully is spotlit are forgettable the instant that they’re over, and Denska’s various districts are some of the least compelling environments to navigate in recent memory, whether they’re covered in glowing paint or not. Platforming is very fidgety, the stealth aspects are mostly nonexistent and disposable, and whatever puzzles do emerge are so straightforward they feel like mere padding and distraction.
What’s unfortunate is that little else in the game seemed to have received a comparable amount of polish or consideration. It’s clear that studio Pixelopus prioritized the painting mechanics during Concrete Genie’s development which, of course, was a very wise decision. You can even end up with a whole squad of genies bumbling around each level, asking you to paint objects and rewarding you with special paint that eradicates corruption-like blockades.
Once they’ve been created, they can follow you along walls through the entirety of an area, and three different base-types of genies offer different elemental powers that factor into occasional puzzles. The act of creating a new genie with whatever accouterments you like - go ahead and give them five spiraled horns, three tails, and a mustache, if you like - seems like it would get old, but their beaming big-toothed smile as they shimmer to life is always a genuine delight. The first few times you use the brush may elicit a gasp, with each modest stroke creating a buzzing collage of luminescent figures. To be fair, some of this lack of tension is due to the focus on the painting itself.