Art triumphs over bullies
Children’s game teaches lessons while promoting creativity
Concrete Genie is a kids’ game about the agonies of bullying and the joys of art. Its optimistic storyline, akin to an old after-school television special, offers a lesson in empathy.
It’s a bit too straightforward and unironic for a sourpuss like me, but I’d like to think that it may help some kids come to terms with the fact that children can be cruel to each other for reasons that aren’t immediately obvious. Since Concrete Genie is a kids’ game (and it’s not made by Nintendo), I wasn’t betting
I’d play through it, but I was disarmed by its novel gameplay which, for the most part, is oriented more around creation and problem-solving than confrontation.
At the beginning of the game we are introduced to Ash, an artistic kid who loves drawing fanciful-looking creatures with horns and plumage in his notebook.
Ignoring his mom’s wishes,
Ash elects to while away a day in Denska, a ghost town.
Exacerbating the once-thriving fishing town’s woes are gnarled vines that blanket walls and clog up machinery. This mysterious substance, which is colloquially referred to as the “darkness” is a byproduct of negative mental energy.
Ash’s day is upset after some unruly kids snatch his notebook and scatter its pages. The kids then push Ash onto a tram that goes to a tiny island guarded by a purportedly spooky lighthouse.
Inside the lighthouse Ash discovers one of the pages of his notebook on the floor. Suddenly Luna, the creature from his notebook, comes to life on the wall. Luna mends Ash’s torn notebook and gives him a magic brush.
Luna signals that she’d like Ash to paint a few specific designs from his notebook on the wall. Using the control pad, you can select a design from the notebook and paint it on a wall by pressing the right trigger and guiding Ash’s brush using the Dualshock’s motion-control sensors. By the time Luna’s tutorial is complete, it’s clear that she would like for you to revive Denska by painting throughout it.
To clear away those tangly tendrils of solid mental anguish, Ash must use super paint. Super paint can be acquired by fulfilling a genie’s request for a particular mural design.
You spend much of the game painting the walls of the town, lighting up bulbs in each area and using super paint to remove the darkness.
As Ash goes about his task, he must avoid the bullies who roam around the area or risk being thrown into a dumpster.
Concrete Genie excels at capturing the feeling of what it’s like to be a kid happily engaged in his own thing and the annoyance that comes from being interrupted by those with nothing better to do.
Ash comes to understand that his tormentors all suffer from their own inner conflicts which lead them to lash out. The plotline unambiguously sides with a nurture, as opposed to nature, reading of human failings.
I never would have guessed that I’d enjoy creating murals and watching funny-looking creatures scamper about them, but I did because I found it all mostly relaxing. Though a VR mode is available that allows you to paint different designs using the Playstation Move controllers, it’s a bite-sized offering that makes for little more than a pleasant, if not particularly memorable, diversion.