Concrete genie moments list4/24/2023 He does so successfully, which triggers the two to celebrate with a high-five. The genie then spots a basketball on the concrete outside of the painting and asks Ash to shoot it through a nearby hoop. Once it’s done rubbing its hands together, it asks for a field of flowers to run through - I oblige and watch its jaunt, pushing through the stalks in excitement. One genie asks me to paint a campfire so they can warm up. The landscapes I paint are undeniably beautiful but they lack the character I need to really care about them. It’s seeing these creatures come to life in the image I give them that has me invest the level of emotion into my paintings that the developers want me to. “How you paint the creatures affects their personalities,” Sangalli explains. Now, not only do your own hand movements directly conduct nature’s forces, you can detail curly horns and spiky antlers on small monsters known as genies. “I was just like 'oh my, we've gotta try to achieve this'.” “They did this pre-visualisation where trees were coming to life - I wish I could show you - and grass was growing,” Sangalli gleefully recalls. The solution came after asking the team’s twin artists, Becky and Lucie Roberts, to use their skills in traditional animation to reimagine the painting mechanics. Art director Jeff Sangalli says these worked “fine” but he wasn’t happy enough with the result. Next they tried stencils that you selected and then painted over to get the desired shape. “That wasn't working because you just didn't feel connected to it enough,” Robilliard says. The team’s first trial with the painting mechanics involved splotches that you chucked at the walls and then filled with faces. “The moment we over-assist, you stop feeling like it's your artwork,” Robilliard reasons. The controls have to allow enough freedom for creativity but, at the same time, always be intuitive. But it requires a careful balance that PixelOpus took a while to figure out. ![]() That’s why it’s vital that paintings have a hand-authored feel. Because of this, when the bullies start ruining them, you get as upset as he does. ![]() “Mainly because they've turned out to be so critical to the theme, the story, everything - they're the linchpin of the whole formula working.” The idea is for you to feel the same sense of ownership over each painting as Ash does. “It was very stressful getting them to that point,” PixelOpus’s creative director Dominic Robilliard tells me. This is the third and final iteration of Concrete Genie’s painting mechanics. ![]() For a moment I forget I’m painting on the salty bricks of a defunct sardine factory. It all grows rapidly in front of me and then calmly sways in an imaginary breeze. Then I hold down R2 while tilting the PS4 controller to draw lines across the grotty canvases that sprout seeds, branches, and lights in the sky. I’m able to select stars, aurora, trees, daffodils, grass - elements from a whole bucolic landscape. Using my actual hand movements, I have the freedom to tailor compositions to my taste when applying paint to the walls. Using a magical paintbrush he finds early in the game, he’s able to literally bring his paintings to life - except it’s me who’s doing the painting, every stroke and splat. He’s trying to rejuvenate Denska, his dilapidated seaside hometown, by covering the walls with colourful street art. The kid being bullied is a teenage artist called Ash. It’s a sudden moment of violence that drastically shifts the tone of the game. That probably makes me sound sick in the head, but up until that point the bullying had been pretty soft. I was worried about Concrete Genie’s depiction of bullying until the main character was pushed to the ground and hit hard in the gut.
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