Painting from a few different base types, I could brush the body of a genie onto a wall with the flick of my controller, while adding a few extra elements like branches or spikes as horns or tails, to the body. But of course, as the name implies, the genies you populate the world with are the most fascinating element. And while I did need to keep a watchful eye for bullies walking the streets, who would chase after me if they spotted me, I never felt rushed in my painting of all those little or big happy trees. It’s an oddly serene and therapeutic gameplay mechanic. But I found myself theming one wall as a sunny hillside, while the next would be a starry night bursting with life from the aurora borealis I painted. Ash needs to, essentially, literally paint the lights of his town back on, and literally drawing a line of stars across them is easy. It sounds a bit limited on paper, but every wall is a blank canvas on which to paint, and there’s just enough freedom offered in the motion controls, alongside a generous amount of paint element options that I never felt my creativity limited as I painted. But, with responsive movement from the DualShock 4’s motion controls, you adjust the size of a sun, the slope of a hill of grass, or the angle at which the branches of a tree bend. The foundational way each element looks remains the same, so you won’t be tasked with painting every blade of grass or perfectly forming the circular shape of the sun. Players have a palette of options to pull from in Ash’s notebook, which expands as you find more pages in the world, to paint trees, stars, grass, suns, and more. Without any combat (well, until later in the game, but we’ll get to that), navigating Concrete Genie’s world is all about painting life back into Denska with Ash’s magical brush. How Painting and Genies Work in Concrete GenieI encountered some light platforming and collectibles meant to enhance your knowledge of the town and its current, disparaging state - but the main hook of Concrete Genie is its magical painting gameplay. Ash, finding his way to a rundown lighthouse in search of the scattered pages of his sketchbook, stumbles across some magically imbued pages and a paintbrush that bring his creations, the titular genies, to 2D life. Their dialogue to one another, and to Ash, quickly establishes unique personalities - clearly some of the group is not as sure-headed in their bullying as others - and relationships among one another that I hope are explored throughout the rest of that story. Though Ash is the focus, he’s also plagued by a group of bullies, who get a small amount of screentime at the start but left a surprisingly deep impression on me.
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