The American development studio Pixel Opus, part of Sony, has created the rhythm game Entwined They first made a name for themselves. The developers are pursuing a similarly artistic, playful, but somewhat more complex approach with their latest project. Concrete GenieWe tested the dark and colorful adventure and will tell you whether it's worth buying.
Gone with the wind
In Concrete Genie We step into the shoes of artistically gifted teenager Ash. He's out with his sketchbook in the deserted port city of Denska when he's surprised by a group of kids about his age who promptly steal his drawings and literally scatter them to the winds.
In a nearby lighthouse, Ash rediscovers one of his sketches, depicting a mysterious being. This being suddenly comes to life and reveals itself to be a genius named Luna. Luna gives the young aspiring artist a paintbrush with magical powers, enabling Ash to bring color, light, and life to the gloomy town. With this gift, the young artist sets off to find his scattered drawings and restore the former glory of his hometown.
On the rooftops of the city
Denska is deserted, dark, and seems frozen in time. Imagine it as a cross between a British city during the Industrial Revolution and a run-down New Jersey ghetto—only without the inhabitants. They've fled in droves, as we learn from newspaper articles. It seems a dark energy has spread here, taking over the city to such an extent that it has become uninhabitable. Our task is to reverse this process—and that's where the magic paintbrush comes in.
The gameplay loop of Concrete Genie The gameplay works as follows: In the game world, we find images of geniuses that we can bring to life. This makes them our companions, and they lend us a hand. The geniuses possess useful abilities: they can set things on fire, generate electricity, or move heavy objects with a gust of wind. However, they dislike darkness. Therefore, we must light strings of lights by painting walls with our magic brush, thus opening up new paths for the geniuses. The unique aspect is that the geniuses are two-dimensional murals and can only move along adjacent walls. So, we have to figure out how to get our companions to where we need them.
Occasionally, dark energy blocks our path and prevents us from progressing. We eliminate this by illuminating all the strings of lights in an area. In this way, the game's semi-open world gradually opens up, allowing us to access additional areas. However, we must be careful: the nasty kids who stole our sketchbook are also lurking in the deserted streets and constantly get in our way. So we have to find ways to sneak past them. Ash is a good climber, though, and skillfully leaps from rooftop to rooftop – which is incredibly helpful for remaining unseen and shaking off pursuers if necessary. The gameplay... Concrete Genie So it's somewhere between an action-adventure and a 3D platformer. And even though the controls are occasionally a bit clunky and the puzzles don't offer any real brain teasers, the core gameplay feels very satisfying. The second act of the game introduces a few more gameplay elements, which we won't go into further to avoid spoilers. Suffice it to say, the game isn't terribly complex, but it entertained us superbly for its roughly five-hour playtime.
Painting by numbers
Concrete Genie It has a unique feature that we'd like to highlight here: the painting mechanic. It works like this: We select motifs from a menu to project onto the wall. Using the controller's motion controls (or optionally a joystick), we paint them there and combine them into veritable works of art. It's so intuitive and so well-designed that the result almost always looks great. The resulting images are animated and, with their vibrant neon look, offer a direct contrast to the gloomy cityscape. As the game progresses, we rediscover lost pages from the sketchbook, expanding our artistic repertoire to create even more diverse murals.
But it also offers beyond that Concrete Genie A whole lot of visual appeal: The entire game design is inspired by stop-motion films like "Coraline." The characters have a convincingly doll-like quality: For example, they don't have fluid facial animations, but rather their mouths and eyes move using stop-motion techniques. This stylistic approach perfectly complements the story, which is both fairytale-like and dark. It's clear that the developers wanted to express their love of art – and in our opinion, they succeeded brilliantly.
