![]() Even when you’re not in the moment, even when you’re in your happy place, doing whatever fills your life with joy and colour and light, having bullies in your life means they’re always there, around the corner, waiting. Therein lies the simple yet elegant metaphor at the heart of Concrete Genie: when you’re the victim of bullying, it can feel like your whole world is wrapped in darkness. It’s such a sudden and uncomfortable mood change that even without the threat of a traditional game over, one incident of getting caught was enough to make me want to never let it happen again. Without his brush in hand, all of the light Ash has brought back to the Denska disappears, and his paintings fall dark and lifeless until he manages to find the brush again. Though the penalty isn’t harsh from a game design perspective- Concrete Genie isn’t the sort of game that’s interested in testing skill and punishing failure-but the shift in mood is a stark. Get caught, and they’ll steal your brush, forcing you to either try and take it back or, more likely, wait for them to get bored and toss it away somewhere, then find it. It’s all about supporting one another.Īt the same time, the bullies are constantly roaming Denska, and will chase down Ash any time they see him. Sometimes, they’ll fall deep into a depressed funk and refuse to move until you come along with the pick me up. The Genies also depend on Ash as a friend, too, and will often request him to paint certain things to help cheer them up. You can wave at them, tickle them with your brush, paint a campfire and then all sit around it, watch TV together (if you find the right place on the map), high five one another… the list goes on. Concrete Genie offers a lot of ways for you to interact with your creations that aren’t strictly necessary, mechanically speaking, but are thematically crucial. These Genies are the living embodiment of the escapism and self-expression that Ash’s sketchbook provides, but they’re also more than that-they’re friends. Though they’re confined to the town walls, these Genies are very much alive, and will help Ash make his way through the town and reach all the bulbs he needs to light up. (Your imagination plays a big role, too-when painting a Genie, you can customise it using different parts found in the lost pages of Ash’s sketchbook that serve as collectibles). With his new magic paintbrush, Ash can also paint “Genies”, outlandish creatures born straight out of his imagination. Light up all the lights in an area of the town, and the strange black ooze-simply known as “Darkness”-that’s encroaching and gumming up machinery will fade away. On top of the colour they bring to Denska in their own right, these paintings will also light up any nearby lightbulbs that dangle from many of the town’s walls. She gives him a magical paintbrush that, when used on any of Denska’s many walls, will cause Ash’s landscape paintings to come alive-painted grass sways in the breeze, painted stars twinkle in the night sky, painted waterfalls roar down the wall. There is a spirit living in the lighthouse, but she’s not a malevolent one rather, she’s saddened at the state of Denska, and she sees in Ash the chance to bring some light back to the town. Sure enough, they manage to corner him and steal his book, before ripping out the pages, scattering them to the winds, and shoving Ash into a cable car destined for the town’s rumoured-to-be-haunted lighthouse.Īs it turns out, the rumours were only half right. However, Denska is also a known hangout for bullies, and a quiet, arty kid like Ash is a prime target. The game opens with our hero, Ash, sitting on a pier in Denska-the aforementioned abandoned village-scribbling away in his sketchbook. “Bullying is bad” isn’t exactly a new or profound idea, but it’s still such an important topic to discuss, and Concrete Genie approaches it with care and consideration. It’s an exploration of bullying, both how it impacts its victims and how cycles of bullying perpetuate themselves. That sort of premise demands something special from the game’s art direction, and the combination of pseudo-stop motion animation and sketchbook street-art aesthetic gives Concrete Genie a truly unique and utterly gorgeous look.īut more than just something beautiful to look at, Concrete Genie is a game with something to say. It ought to be-at its core, Concrete Genie is about bringing light and colour back to an abandoned, industrial fishing village by covering the walls with magical graffiti. In an industry that’s obsessed with content, it’s so refreshing to play a game that takes a simple idea and delivers on it beautifully, without trying to be more than what it needs to be.Īnd when I say “beautifully”, I’m not kidding. Concrete Genie might be one of my favourite games of the year so far.
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