Concrete Genie Review – Ain’t Never Had A Friend Like These

Restoring the place which harbors your fondest childhood recollections is a cute and virtually noble objective. In Concrete Genie you get to take one thing drab and lifeless and convey it again to life with color, love, and heat. It’s a quite simple and quick expertise that focuses primarily on gentle puzzling, 3D platforming, and a bit of stealth, however its allure and basic sense of playfulness actually make it a worthwhile journey.In Concrete Genie you play as Ash, a boy who goals of bringing his former house, a fishing port referred to as Denksa, again to life. The city has been corrupted by an oil spill and destructive feelings, and is now a desolate maze-like neighbourhood by the water. Ash’s love of artwork and recollections of higher days draw him to the run-down space, regardless of his mother and father’ warnings. Unfortunately for Ash, his bullies additionally get pleasure from operating amok within the ghost city; they tear up his artwork e-book and push him right into a cable automobile sure for Denska lighthouse (recognized for housing a ghost), beginning him on a brand new journey.Small drawings of the genies Ash drew as a baby are scattered across the metropolis and, when mixed with the ability of the lighthouse ghost, carry his work to life. These pleasant genies bid him to make use of his inventive skills to color the city utilizing a brand new magic brush, which restores the electrical lights within the space. He units to work, utilizing his vibrant artworks to push again the darkness infecting the city. The premise does not make a tonne of sense, however its message and execution are candy and stuffed with coronary heart, very similar to the remainder of the sport.Ash is decided to revive Denska to its former glory and every space of the city, together with the lighthouse, has hanging fairy lights over some components of buildings. Painting these areas will clear the darkish vines that block your path to the following part. Mechanically, portray is extra like inserting giant dynamic stickers fairly than utilizing your personal brush strokes. You select whether or not you wish to paint one thing like a rainbow or a flower, use both movement controls or the fitting stick to decide on its location, then drag throughout the display to find out the overall dimension and form of the article.Concrete Genie fills in the remainder, including superb particulars that may fluctuate relying on the sticker. Flowers might create additional grass, and timber can develop further branches, nevertheless it all works to make no matter you are creating way more spectacular. The paintings is made of sunshine and genuinely fairly beautiful–if a bit of overbearingly vivid at instances. Much like projected gentle artwork or vivid neon indicators, they work properly moderately however can get overly busy. You do should go fairly overboard to create one thing that is truly ugly, which makes the act of portray the city actually satisfying–you get to look at a boring uninteresting surroundings turn into one thing fairly fairly with very minimal effort.To gentle up the hanging lights, any portray will do. This signifies that typically, for simplicity’s sake, I used the identical artwork time and again, overlaying the partitions with butterflies or stars out of laziness. Occasionally, you might want to color one thing particular, however even then it may get a bit of repetitive. All of the paintable objects come out of your sketchbook the aforementioned bullies tore aside, and these pages are scattered throughout Denska.Sometimes you may not have the web page you want but, however getting down to discover them offers you a real cause to discover the surroundings and fortuitously, it is actually enjoyable to take action. Ash is only a child and does not have superpowers, so he cannot bounce significantly excessive or survive giant falls, however he does have a spirited spring in his step. Clambering up the perimeters of buildings is fast and environment friendly whereas nonetheless feeling grounded and by no means floaty. Even in the event you do fall to your dying, you are instantly returned to the place you fell from, and daredevil actions like sliding down energy strains make getting round pleasing with out worry of punishment. There’s a very nice fluidity to his actions, which emboldens you to discover each nook and cranny to seek out your strewn pages.Along the best way, you will additionally discover spots to create new genies, which can in flip assist you to remedy puzzles and entry new areas. These genies have set colors which permit them to resolve completely different elemental puzzles–red genies can burn down a tarp, for instance, whereas blue ones can blow on particular objects, and yellow ones generate electrical energy to energy varied doorways and switches. The draw back to the puzzles is looking one genie to resolve an issue calls all who can be found to return, so usually there’s not a lot energetic work in your half to resolve them–Instead, the genies come alongside and, except for a couple of exceptions, they will simply remedy it on their very own. As genies are nonetheless technically work that exist on the partitions they had been painted on, they will solely journey on linked partitions and are locked in their very own areas. This means you might must have discovered the portray spot for the kind of genie you want first, however this nonetheless is not very tough.You even have a good quantity of management over how your genies will look, relying on what number of genie design pages you’ve collected. The decisions you make can impression their personalities, which may make interacting with them extremely endearing–it’s additionally very straightforward to make some scorching mess genies, however they do not appear to thoughts their look. The interactions between Ash and the genies are very sweet–you can hang around with them, play video games collectively, and paint issues for them. Keeping your genies comfortable additionally makes them extra seemingly that will help you remedy puzzles and offers you with Super Paint, which is required to color over some surfaces, so the entire interplay with the genies feeds again into the positivity of the sport.Concrete Genie takes a stunning flip within the ultimate act, when fight all of the sudden makes an look. As part of the narrative, it is smart and is an pleasing twist, however as a result of it is such a short-lived mechanic it feels under-developed. Like the weather of the genies, you might be granted three completely different elemental assaults that should be used to take down completely different shields. The half-hour devoted to fight, largely involving boss fights, does not give a lot alternative so that you can experiment with it. I’m nonetheless unsure if all of the assaults did injury or whether or not some simply brought on standing results as a result of there wasn’t sufficient time or enemies to organically work it out.When you are granted fight, you additionally achieve new motion skills, which embody paint skating. This means you not should run a lot and may as an alternative primarily skate on magical painted sneakers. It makes getting round much more fluid than it was earlier than, and in contrast to your capacity to shoot parts, you get to maintain this one even after the principle story is accomplished. Because it is launched pretty late into the sport, it makes leaping again in after the story to scrub up collectibles actually pleasing. The sport itself solely takes about six hours to finish on an preliminary playthrough, and as soon as it is “over” you actually do wish to play extra. But even with the 10 or so hours I spent discovering all of the secrets and techniques and collectibles, it nonetheless seems like some ideas might nonetheless have been explored to a higher diploma.Most of what Concrete Genie has to supply is enjoyable and delightful in a kind of childlike manner. The sport shouldn’t be significantly tough, and overcoming a puzzle or fight situation is not at all times satisfying. But it is in the end nonetheless an endearing expertise all through. There’s loads of enjoyment to be discovered simply from the act of exploring, and little hidden secrets and techniques alongside the best way assist make it worthwhile; I simply want Concrete Genie had extra journey ready for me.