Concrete Genie

The player controls Ash and uses the DualShock 4's motion controls to create landscapes in the town of Denska. These landscapes turn into living portraits.[2] How the player paints creatures and what color he/she paints them will affect their personalities.[3] For example, red paint will grant a creature fire-breathing abilities.[4] In addition to free-style drawing, there is a set of core puzzles in the game that the player has to solve through their artwork.[4]

The player gains more access of Denska over time, but at the start of the game, the player only has access to a single neighborhood.[4] Throughout the game, the bullies will move through the town and cause the artwork to die. They can also bully Ash, so the player must avoid the bullies as Ash traverses the town. The player can also fix the ruined artwork.

Project manager Brent Gocke says the game is between five and six hours long.[5] The developer is currently looking into a multi-player component to the game.[4]

The story takes place in a small town named Denska, which has been mostly abandoned and polluted. A young boy named Ash regularly doodles in his notebook. A group of bullies steal the book, rip out the pages and scatter them throughout the city. Ash goes on a quest to recover his pages. Along this quest, he discovers a paint brush that can bring his creations to life.[4] Ash must overcome the bullies and bring life back to his hometown.[6]

Pixelopus served as the game's lead developer. Creative director Dominic Robillard says the game is heavily inspired by Sega's Jet Set Radio, while the concept of painting street arts came from one of the team members, Ashwin Kumar, who grew up in India.[7] The game would not rate any players' creations because the team did not want to judge players' creation. The game features a story mode that deals with themes like bullying.[4] The game was later delayed to late 2019, though Pixelopus confirmed that the game would be released with a mode for the PlayStation VR headset.[8]

Concrete Genie was positively received upon release; the game holds a score of 75/100 on review aggregator Metacritic based on 83 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[9] Praise was directed towards its visual style, atmosphere, thematic elements and art-based gameplay, while criticism was pointed at the game's easy difficulty level and combat.