Concrete Genie Preview: Shawn Layden said "We have to make this game" it's perfect for PS4 (Pic: SONY)
“At the greenlight presentation for Concrete Genie several years ago, PlayStation Worldwide Studios chairman Shawn Layden said this is what we need on PlayStation,'" explains PixelOpus' creative director Dominic Robillard after we tried out the PS4's latest exclusive.
"He said: 'We have to make this game.' That was his sign-off – we have to make this game”
You can see why. Concrete Genie is the quintessential PlayStation title. Even amongst the strong shape of Sony's exclusive catalogue on the PS4 – a library that contains God of War, Spider-Man, Horizon: Zero Dawn and The Last of US – Concrete Genie feels special, like another pillar of that special PlayStation identity that Layden and his team have been building over the last generation.
The game – a heartfelt tale about a bullied kid expressing himself via his art – is fuelled by the same passion that the other triple-A games on the platform are, but comes from a much smaller studio than the likes of Guerrilla Games or Sony Santa Monica.
In fact, this is PixelOpus' second game, following on from 2014's arthouse rhythm game, Entwined.
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The fledgling studio has found its feet on the PlayStation platform because Sony isn't scared of leveraging its weight as a platform holder to make Concrete Genie realise its full potential.
"There are certainly lots of things in Concrete Genie that you can see the DNA of," explains Robillard. "We love the Sly Cooper games, theres some Jet Set Radio in there, and theres some Ico and The Last Guardian in there, too."
From the second we picked up the pad, we could feel the old PS inspiration in the game – the third-person platforming goes from feeling like Sly Cooper to Jak II, depending on if you're walking around of surfing on your magical paintbrush.
The actual act of painting your creations on the wall is reminiscent of LittleBigPlanet, in its own way: that toolbox of creativity that's offered to you is brimming with Media Molecule charm.
And that's all intentional, Robillard tells us. Because Concrete Genie is a game that's been designed to take full advantage of the PlayStation platform.
"The whole team at PixelOpus is formed of super hardcore gamers, and they are very well-read, I guess you could say.
"Were comforatable in acknowledging our influences, but also knowing that we need to use them as something new… something to build an interesting new experience on. Our hope was that by investing in the intuitive creativity of the painting mechanics that wed make it feel like something new and unique."
And it does. Concrete Genies is frankly unlike anything we've ever played before – the exploration and movements may feel like a PS2 3D-platformer (that's not a bad thing!) but the painted genies that protagonist Ash has to create on the wall are ostensibly your creations: procedurally generated entities that behave differently depending on how you paint them.
"I dont think wed ever imagine wed get to make a game about an artist in this way… especially at a huge company like PlayStation," says Robillard.
“Everyone in the company was inspired by the theme of a bullied kid expressing himself via his art – a theme that is very relatable to kids and to adults. Bullying as a theme is not something that stops when you grow up – so it was a very rich vein that we could tap into.
"Making the creative mechanics as creative and intuitive as possible, then, became the most important thing – we want you to become attached to your artwork, we want you to be upset when the bullies are draining the colour out of it or ruining it. Its your art as much as it is Ashs – the main character's. Thats the most powerful thing about games, right? They allow you to think of something from a totally new perspective."
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It seems like it was this perspective that captured the attention of PlayStation Worldwide's Shawn Layden. It was this Okami-cum-Neil Gaiman aesthetic that made the Sony bigwigs sit up and listen.
It helps that the game has been designed with sharing in mind. Not only is the core action-adventure gameplay a family-friendly offering that supports the more mature PlayStation exclusives out there at the moment, it's also a game that encourages you to share the genRead More – Source
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