Concrete Genie (2019)

When people come up with ideas for these games do they just have a meeting and be like "Hey, you know those games where like the world is drained of color and you have to like restore light to it? Let's do one of those." There are so many of these games, it's crazy. I wonder where it started. Okami? That couldn't have been the first one.

I like this game. I has a bit of creative expression for the player, a story that looks at the behavior of people and places and some very cool visuals. I was happily playing around with my kids watching or vise versa until the very last boss, which just proved to be an annoying, repetitive boss that added nothing good to the experience of the game. That was true to all game bosses, but at least the earlier ones were easy enough as to not annoy.

The addition of combat to this game is an unfortunate choice. The additional traversal skills are welcome, but combat feels out of place and even shoehorned in. It feels like an addition to stave off potential player complaints that painting and platforming isn’t sufficient enough to justify this as a game. Which is unfortunate. I think there was something worthwhile in being a non-combat game, but once combat is forced in during the final quarter of the game it looses a bit of its unique charm and becomes a little more conventional.

Cute game with a great anti-bullying & anti-industrialization message. Perfect for those that want to play an uplifting game for a few hours beautifying a town with wall art. Best if you take your time to really create art pieces on the walls. Create individual genies along the way to help you clean up the town. Avoid bullies and slowly change their hearts with you kindness and art. Relaxing and easy-going game for the most part. Towards the end you actually need to fight the bullies who have been corrupted with evil ooze. That part can be much more intense and takes a bit of gaming skill. Overall a fun interactive art game that takes your 'creations' into account and animates them. Takes 1-2 days to complete. Great for all ages No prior gaming skills required.

The art is great, the gameplay is based enough in exploration (and artistic expression) to stay engaging despite the simple mechanics, the story is familiar in its shape but novel in its details, and for its target audience it's got great lessons about empathy and community. A fun 4-hour distraction for an adult, but I could see a kid spending much more time with it, especially with the Free Draw mode.

The artwork is front and center for Concrete Genie which is appropriate for a game about painting. Everything about how the game looks is great: the graffiti monsters that are full of life, characters reminiscent of stop-motion animation from yester-year, and all the bright and interesting things you cover the walls of the town with. While everything looks great, the gameplay falls a bit short of the creative painting dream you might imagine when you first see the game. Painting is more akin to using stamps and the game places several limits on how and where you can paint. With the only activity you can do in the first ¾ of the game being that painting mechanic, things feel repetitive and get stale pretty fast. A late-game shift in the gameplay is welcome but does not control particularly well and feels like something out of a PS2 game. Overall, Concrete Genie feels like a really creative and passionate product that falls a bit short of the polish, gameplay depth, and length that you’d want from a modern game. There is a lot of charm and a lot to like here though and the friendly and mischievous graffiti monsters never failed to put a smile on my face.