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However, you don’t just paint the town. As
well as daubing Denska in delightful designs, you
conjure genies from the concrete walls. Drawn
from a separate library of stamps, these inked
imps add variety to the painterly proceedings,
requesting specific designs and interacting with
your master strokes in charming ways.A GOOD SCRAP
Most of your time in Denska is spent avoiding
the other disaffected youths – usually by
skittering across rooftops – while you try to
brighten up the place. The rundown village itself
is beautiful in its own way even before you take a
paintbrush to its darkened walls. While it’s dingy,
it doesn’t look bland without your designs, and
provides a complementary contrast to your bright
brush strokes and splashes of colour.
Denska is a place perfect for platforming and
exploration, in spite of its (at times) difficult-
to-parse map. However, its tight alleys are often
not as well suited for decidedly less non-violent
pursuits. We don’t want to spoil one late-gamemechanical shift too much but
Ash finds a few new uses for
his painterly powers. These
encounters can go on a bit as
they are designed to make the
most of new mechanics that
see limited to no use outside
the final chapter. The tiny
gamers in your life will love
this late-game surprise but it
feels a little too surface-level
for us to be fully endeared to
it. That main switch up aside,
we do enjoy Ash’s newfound
ability to skate around town on
magic paint and wish we’d had
access to this speedier way of
getting around much earlier.
That said, the late-game
twist speaks to Concrete
Genie’s scrappy sensibility; it’s
a game you can’t help rooting
for even as it doesn’t always
manage to join up all the dots.
As we’ve already said, we love
its stop-motion inspired art
direction but wish it let its
visuals do more of the talking.
As it is Ash is a character who
states the obvious when thegame’s visual storytelling has
a strong enough foundation
to say it best when he says
nothing at all. Occasionally,
Ash’s lines are necessary to
hammer home a moral point
for tiny wees, but we feel it
would be a stronger experience
if the spoken dialogue were
entirely removed – and that’s
before we even get into the
bullies’ trite torments.SKETCHY AT BEST
We do appreciate the point the
story is trying to make. Each of
Ash’s bullies is revealed to be
struggling with something at
home, offering an explanation
for their actions but, as the
game is quick to point out,
not a justification. It’s a bit
more nuanced than what we’re
used to in children’s media,
the bullies warranting our
empathy but not our pity or
outright scorn. There’s even a
neat little redemption arc, with
Ash’s art being the conduit
for understanding between“DENSKA PROVIDES A
COMPLEMENTARY CONTRAST
TO YOUR BRUSH STROKES.”
Right Sadly,
you’re not just
left to sit and
paint. Beatrice
and her fellow
bullies look
down on Ash
and his art.Left As you
scurry across
rooftops, you
need to draw
away bullies
from that
perfect patch
of wall by
pressing 6.