In a lovely extra touch, every sketch comes with an associated musical effect as you paint it, as if you’re adding layers to the soundtrack by bringing your latest masterpiece to life. Almost any blank wall can become your canvas, and painting is as simple as picking the sketch you want, then holding R2 while tilting the controller (marking this one of the only uses of Sixaxis motion control I’ve ever actually enjoyed) – it’s something like willing pastel-hued neon signs into existence. These range from the obvious (trees, plants, water), to the more abstract (turquoise gusts of wind, the stuttering appearance of lightning), to the odd (gigantic fantasy mushrooms, genie-covered totem poles). Ash’s magic-imbued paintings are made up of a collection of pre-existing sketches, earned by collecting those bully-scattered pages. Collectible newspapers tell the story of Denska itself, a seaside town lost to urban decay, a big, explorable metaphor for Broken Window Theory.īut the real reason I kept scrawling across Denska’s blackened walls was down to something far more positive: it’s so extremely satisfying to do so. It’s a charming (if slightly hackneyed) magical realist tale – Ash’s travels have him cross paths with his bullies, a group seemingly proportioned by Tim Burton, each with their own personal problems, who shred his sketchbook and throw the pages to the wind. In a story sense, you’re doing that because Ash – a budding, bullied artist – has somehow brought one of his cutesy monster drawings to life, received a magical paintbrush the size of a tennis racquet, and now must drive back the darkness creeping across his abandoned hometown, Denska. This is Concrete Genie’s crowning achievement. More likely, you’ll spend far longer than is technically required in each area, creating shimmering landscapes across the length of this shuttered city, and for no reason other than your own satisfaction.

Thing is, if you wanted to, you could cynically cover almost every wall in paintings of a few boring blades of grass and still be able to continue. Trees sprout and grow, 2D waterfalls pour from rooftops onto bobbing ponds, and stars sprinkle themselves across brick-backed skies like dropped glitter. If you’ve seen anything from Pixelopus’ second game, you’ll have seen that idea in action: lead character Ash pausing his semi-open world platforming to daub living drawings across the sides of run-down buildings. Concrete Genie’s best idea – the one you’ll return to over and again across its six-hour runtime – is, for the most part, sort of optional.

Concrete genie review