Painting A Town Back To Life

Concrete Genie

byTim Augustin (GameAxis)

Concrete Genie takes the simple joy of doodling and asks: What if we could bring our creations to life? What if those creations could live with us, take care of us and help us? This is a simple, charming and relatively short game about making friends - and bringing your adorable Genies to life.

Concrete Genie centers on Ash - a young boy who constantly, almost obsessively doodles in his little notebook. A group of bullies his age come along and rip his notebook apart, scattering its pages all around the abandoned, polluted town of Denska. Hurt and confused, Ash discovers a magical paintbrush - one that can bring his drawings to life, and maybe even save the town if he’s up to the task.

This story is made great by its presentation. Every once in a while, the game will switch to beautifully animated 2D cutscenes to shed light on certain characters’ backstories. Those moments are really special, and capitalise on Concrete Genie’s best quality - its big heart. The writing is rather predictable overall, as you’ll see every line spoken and story beat coming a mile away. But that’s easily forgiven considering how charming this game is.

The game isn’t very long - in fact, you’re looking at around 5-8 hours of playtime, or more if you really want to grab all the collectibles and score every story. Personally, I view that as a good thing, as the story unfolds and ends pretty naturally over the course of those 5-8 hours. However, some might consider this to be way too short for its price ($41.90), so that’s something to keep in mind.

The game was clearly made by a small team, and yet is still a whole lot prettier than a lot of Triple-A games I’ve played recently (*Cough* Man of Medan *Cough*). The town of Denska is initially quite dead, drenched in depressing blacks and greys and sombre music. That’s where you come in, as Ash has the ability to paint up the town to colourful high heaven.

A big part of the game is its painting mechanic. Over the course of the game, you’ll run into many diﬀerent pages from Ash’s notebook - each one giving him a new design to paint with. These designs range from art pieces like flowers and trees, to Genie designs and accessories. Bringing your first Genie to life is quite an experience - as you realise just how much freedom you have in drawing your creations, and then how well the game brings them to life each time.

The painting controls are a little iﬀly for me. You’re given the option of using a PlayStation controller’s motion sensor and paint by moving it around in the air, or by using the control sticks. Personally, I liked moving the controller a lot more, but it never felt as accurate as I’d like it to be.

This game is pretty impressive from a visual and technical standpoint, especially when you’re admiring the beauty of your wall-to-wall creations and realise how steady the framerate remains. The camera gets a bit annoying sometimes, but that’s about the extent of the game’s technical issues.

My primary issue with this game is its ending. The last few hours of the game suddenly introduce half hearted combat elements and repetitive ‘go here, kill that’ missions. The switch between relaxed painting segments to clumsy combat sequences was jarring, to say the least. It was also wholly unnecessary.

The Genies are undoubtedly the highlight of this game, with their adorable little animations, colourful personalities and customizability. Diﬀerent Genies provide diﬀerent uses in gameplay. For example, fire Genies can burn down red objects to clear the way forward, and electrical Genies can activate fuse boxes and operate machinery.

There are some light puzzle elements too, but nothing too demanding. You’ll never get stuck, as the game always makes the next step very clear to you. That makes everything feel a little too easy, especially since the puzzles aren’t that creative or fun to figure out. You’ll breeze by these segments very quickly, leaving you wondering why they were even there in the first place.

Concrete Genie’s visual style and art design is simply breathtaking, and its relaxing painting mechanics make it a truly unique oﬀering in today’s slew of blockbuster games.

All your designs come to life gorgeously in this game, whether it’s a particularly misshapen Genie you’re misguidedly proud of, or the billion stars and moons you’ve painted all over Denska. Your paintings never fade away, so you can return at the end of the game and see Denska still lit up like a Christmas tree.