I haven't had a game hit me emotionally quite as Concrete Genie has. An emotional story blended with beautiful artwork and seamless gameplay creates an incredible experience. I am beyond impressed with Pixelopus's work and you can easily see all the blood, sweat and tears poured into the game. Concrete genie may not scratch the gameplay itch that you have but rather it delivers an important story to tell. I highly recommend it for any hardcore gaming fan as well as the creative types.
I cannot begin to say how impressed I am with Concrete Genie. Going into the game, I had a mindset that this would be a fun, artsy game. Yet, I had no idea how emotional and breathtaking the game would be. From the opening sequence, all the way through I was hooked into the characters and story. And as time went on, I appreciated my art, in the game, way more. This was a really emotional game and it hits on different levels. The way the game portrays negativity and hatred as darkness is really awesome. Not in just how it is visually portrayed, but how it affects the characters and their actions.
There was one scene in particular that I believe captures what this game is truly about. The main character, Ash, is able to paint different types of genies that help him traverse through the town of Denska. In this scene, the bullies who have been messing with Ash, break his paintbrush and brutally beat him. Noticing that his brush has been broken, he gets mad. As a result of his negative emotions, one of Ash’s genies becomes a large, dark monster that attacks the bullies. Once the monster disposes of the bullies, Ash looks back at his creation and says “was that my genie?” He immediately realizes what he did wrong. It hit Ash that it is wrong to fight hate with hate.
There are other subtle hints of this theme that hate does not win. Another part of the game that I enjoy is, when encountering certain bullies, Ash is able to see their past. He gets to see why they are the way that they are. At one point, some kids’ father is in jail and they don’t get to see him. Ash even says, I know I should dislike them but why do I feel bad for them?” Touching moments like this are not hard to come by in Concrete Genie.
Concrete Genie has a very straightforward story. Ash is a creative yet troubled boy who lives in the once-thriving, now devastated town of Denska. He is constantly terrorized by the aforementioned bullies. The bullies are so rude to Ash that they rip up his favorite artbook and push him onto a tram leading to the haunted lighthouse. While at the lighthouse, Ash is looking for pages from his artbook but finds much more. He finds that the ghost of the lighthouse is actually one of his favorite drawings that come to life, Luna. Luna shows Ash how darkness has taken over the city and she live in the darkness. She asks Ash to clear out the darkness using his creative abilities and to fill the town with his magnificent artwork.
The gameplay of Concrete Genie is pretty basic, but not so basic that it’s boring. You are able to run around, jump, and climb buildings, in a way that is like Assassin’s Creed. Not so much in the vein of parkour, but much more the idea of you can climb more than you realize. Eventually, you can perform attacks and that is pretty basic of mashing a few buttons.
The main bread and butter of the game is painting. You aim somewhere with the right stick, then press R2 and it will open paint mode. After that, you use the D-Pad to choose which design you want to paint. After you have selected the design, you then aim the cursor, hold R2 to begin painting, and let go to stop. Very much like a brushstroke. You can move the cursor to either make your art expand or maneuver it a certain way that depends on the design. The game defaults to motion controls, which I dislike in any game, but thankfully you can turn them off in the menu and use the right stick to aim your cursor. You also have a special ability that is called “super paint”. Super paint allows to paint over dark areas on walls. The dark areas on the wall are nothing more than roadblocks for the genies. In my opinion, the idea of super paint is very underwhelming in the grand scheme of Concrete Genie.
As I mentioned before, the genies help you get from point A to B. Despite that, they are much more than a means of moving through the game. Genies are their own characters that you create. You pick the body, draw that and then add any features that you want. Genies have personalities too. They like to interact with you and do funny things. You can give them high fives and play basketball with them. Genies give you super paint for painting certain things that they want to see.
There are many different designs that you can paint. They are broken into four categories that don’t really mean anything except when you obtain said design. You get stars, grass, and trees early in the game when you create the first type of genie. All the designs have unique color schemes that look really beautiful and pop no matter where they are painted. A small feature that I really enjoy is that each design has a piece of unique music not attached to it. You will hear the background music from the game, then begin to paint and hear some extra-musical notes hit. Rose notes will be different from mushroom notes and so on. A very small thing in the game that just adds to the gorgeous atmosphere.
A game about art should have a good look to it. Concrete genie has fantastic graphics. There are two different kinds of graphics we see. The game is played in this cartoonish style that reminds me of Coraline if it wasn’t a Tim Burton film. Then there are flashback cutscenes that are portrayed in a 2D hand-drawn format that is also very pretty. I think the fact that the flashbacks are a different art style adds to the value of emotion and beauty.
One of the most impressive parts of the game to me was how seamless it was. I never once encountered a loading problem, or frame rate issue. Nothing rendered in, everything was just there. Also, the transition between cutscene and gameplay was seamless very much like God of War. This seems like one of the only games on the PS4 that would not need an update to fix bugs.
I think it is up to the person playing the game to decide if everything is in Ash’s mind or not. Certainly I don’t think anyone will disagree that the bullies are real but the question lies with the genies and the artwork. No one else sees the genies or points out how Ash is using an absurdly large paintbrush to create living art. I am not saying that the game is bad because you can’t tell what is real or not. This is a strength of the game! It’s fun to think about what’s actually there and what isn’t. The game is about a kid dealing with negativity, he may imagine things. Concrete Genie is a fun game highlighting positivity and creativity.