Platinum Trophy #14: Concrete Genie
Date Earned: 8th October 2019
Dopamine Index:
Concrete Genie has an air of sadness about it, despite being a pretty joyous experience to play.
It was only the second game produced by developer PixelOpus, but it was much bigger in scope and offered something quite different from Sony's slate of exclusive titles at the time. It would also be the last game the team would release.
The whole situation is a real shame, because Concrete Genie shows real potential and imagination. It's not a perfect game, but PixelOpus took an earnest swing to make something unique, and it certainly did that.
You play as a young boy named Ash who happens to stumble upon a magical paintbrush. Painting on the walls of the dreary town he lives in, Ash's creations spring to life, inhabiting a 2D realm that gives you the freedom to express yourself.
While you need to do specific things to solve puzzles and progress through the story, each dank wall on the streets of Denska is a blank canvas, on which you can create friendly creatures and various plants and objects for them to use.
There's a lot to like about Concrete Genie's rather sweet adventure. One moment that caught me off-guard, however, was in the final quarter of the game, it suddenly introduces combat, but because it's wrapping up it doesn't have any time to evolve beyond the basics.
It's an odd choice, but I have to respect the attempt to keep things fresh.
The Trophy list is just as light and playful as the game itself, I seem to remember. There are fun interactions to be had with your genie pals, and collectibles to find throughout the journey.
From memory it's a pretty natural list to work through, meaning I earned nearly all the Trophies just playing through naturally.
I didn't get all the Trophies for the PSVR mode, mind you. So, while I have the plat, I don't have 100%, which you'd think would bother me but I cannot express to you how much it doesn't.
Cheers, Concrete Genie.
Do you have the platinum Trophy in Concrete Genie? Tell us in the comments section below.
Comments 9
The three PSVR trophies are very easy to get and frankly make you realise the game would have been better with move controllers
I remember this game and platinum fondly, really enjoyed it!
Such a good game! Criminal of Sony to shut down the devs after this.
A very pretty game with a lot of charm and lovely environments. It isn’t talked about enough.
Always find it surprising that main actress of the Fallout TV show consider this as her favorite game. I respect it, though.
A beautiful looking and understated game, just the kind of short AA experience I enjoy between the bigger story driven/open world experiences.
PSA to anyone wanting to give this a try: when it comes to using the paintbrush, the developers did not take the time to offer the option to invert the Y-axis. There is no toggle in any part of the options menu. When using the brush, up is up and down is down and if that’s not how you prefer to play, too bad. You weren’t worth the time it would take to make such a simplistic option available. Stuff like this is why it’s best practice to play anything you’re unsure of on an alt account.
I really enjoyed this game, I don't remember any painful trophies off the top of my head.
I do remember struggling for a while to find one of the collectibles, but my platinum trophy says I must have found it in the end
Such an underrated game. I still wish there were more like it.
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