The camera and motion controls won’t be for everyone and at times, I did find myself wrestling with the camera during particularly claustrophobic sections indoors, especially during the game’s third act as things descend to a more confined area. With a great soundtrack and some unique animation that borders on stop-motion during cut-scenes, Concrete Genie gets a lot right but its not flawless. It’s such a poignant and reflective message, one that absolutely tugs at the heartstrings during the game’s final scenes. The way Concrete Genie takes its time to show just why the bullies are acting the way they are is something that adds so much more depth to the title and reinforces ideas around friendship and being stronger together. Thematically, there’s a really interesting concept at work here around violence not being the answer to all your problems.
Personally I didn’t care for this section but it’s still a welcome change of pace as everything builds up for the finale. This is arguably the weakest section of the game though, with simplistic boss fights utilizing the same attack patterns and most devolving to button mashing for the duration of these events. Once you’ve completed each open-world segment, the game injects some action into the final hour of the game, as you use your paintbrush as a weapon to fight off the darkness in a final showdown to save the town. While you can easily just paint the same drawing throughout the game, there’s a distinct satisfaction that comes from creating your own masterpiece, and the animated manner each of these drawings comes to life when you’re finished certainly adds an extra incentive to do this. In each, you paint the walls to turn on lightbulbs in that corresponding area, whilst collecting pages for your sketchbook along the way to add more variety to your paintings or to customize each genie. The bulk of the game is split into three digestible, open world areas. With these mechanics explained very early on, as you leave the lighthouse the game combines light platforming and puzzling elements with a lot of imaginative painting as you start to bring colour back into this lifeless world. Keeping these genies happy allows you to supercharge your brush which helps push back the darkness too. After discovering each one, you fully customize their appearance and in return, they help you clear environmental obstacles, courtesy of special abilities ranging from electrical charges and blasts of wind. Along the way, these mischievous, wall-dwelling creatures help you fight back against the darkness spread across Denska. Very early on, you’re introduced to the core gameplay mechanics, courtesy of a strange Genie called Luna. After throwing you into a cable car destined for the nearby lighthouse, what follows is a journey of redemption and forgiveness as you set out on a quest to recover the lost pages of your sketchbook and bring life back into the polluted town. You play the role of quiet painter Ash, who finds himself mercilessly bullied by a group of delinquents who steal your artwork, rip out the pages and scatter them across the town. From the clever use of the motion controller to the gorgeous neon-lit visuals, this game is a joy to play from start to finish and never once outstays its welcome.Īt the core of this one is the quaint seaside town of Denska where our tale plays out. In an age where huge open world games and 40+ hour play-times appear to be the norm for video games, Concrete Genie is a tight-knit, 5 hour Indie gem and one of the best games of 2019. It’s a beautiful, thematically relevant action-adventure game that not only taps into this idea of overcoming bullying, it presents this concept in an artistic, fun and inventive way, valuing quality over quantity.
At least for a little while.Ĭoncrete Genie then is a game that resonates deeply with me. Fast forward five years and I ironically ended up friends with those same boys who used to bully me. My only refuge came from drawing and writing stories in my room during the weekend which kept my sanity for the better part of secondary school.
I was called names, slapped, punched and ultimately all of this drove me to the point of contemplating suicide as a way out from the abuse. One day I had a hardback textbook thrown at my face, while another time that same group sliced my ear open with wire cutters. I was badly bullied at school for five years.
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