Concrete Genie Confirmed for October Launch Including PlayStation VR Support

Having confirmed virtual reality (VR) support for artistic adventure Concrete Genie in March, developer Pixelopus and publisher San Mateo Studio went on to reveal the PlayStation VR compatibility would be on two specific modes. Today, the teams have revealed that Concrete Genie will be arriving in October.

Concrete Genie

A PlayStation 4 exclusive, Concrete Genie puts you in the shoes of protagonist Ash on his personal journey to paint his seaside hometown of Denska back to life. Bullies steal his notebook which he doodles in, ripping out the pages and scattering them throughout the streets. Whilst looking for them Ash finds a special paintbrush which can bring his creations to life. Using Ash’s magic brush you need to explore the grim and desolate-looking town, adding colour and life to the darkest corners.

The two VR compatible modes are ‘VR Experience’ and ‘Free Paint’. Supporting only PlayStation Move, the first mode is a story campaign heading beneath Denska’s ominous lighthouse. This needs to be completed before ‘Free Paint’ can be unlocked, allowing you to get creative in four unique Denska locations.

On PlayStation Blog, Pixelopus Creative Director Dominic Robilliard that a Photo Mode will be available at launch offering a  timelapse style ‘Replay’ ability which allows creators to show how they built their artistic compositions. There will also be a couple of version with pre-order incentives attached. The standard edition will retail for $29.99 USD/€29.99 EUR with the Digital Deluxe coming in at $39.99/€39.99, with lots of goodies: “You get a Digital Artbook featuring a ton of stunning development images created by Art Director Jeff Sangalli and our amazing art team, a complete soundtrack from the game composed by Sam Marshall, a Pond Design Pack to expand your design toolset, and an additional Dynamic Theme featuring the Lighthouse location from the game.”

Concrete Genie

If you pre-order either you’ll get an Avatar set as well as a special Dynamic Theme featuring a rooftop scene from Denska.

Concrete Genie will launch in North America on 8th August while the European version will arrive a day later on Friday 9th. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Concrete Genie, reporting back with any further updates.

Two PlayStation VR Modes Unveiled for Concrete Genie

Sony Interactive Entertainment’s (SIE) State of Play broadcast the other week displayed quite a few titles for PlayStation VR, one of which was Concrete Genie. At the time few details were revealed regarding how the virtual reality (VR) portion would work. Today, that’s now changed with Creative Director of San Mateo Studio, Jeff Brown detailing the two VR modes.

Concrete Genie

Developed by Pixelopus, Concrete Genie is about a boy named Ash who brings his ruined seaside town of Denska back to life through his painting.

On PlayStation.Blog Brown says that the first PlayStation VR mode is ‘VR Experience’ where: “you’ll follow a curious Genie named Splotch beneath Denska’s ominous lighthouse on a quest to unlock a mysterious power while using your Living Paint in a completely new way.” Players will need to complete ‘VR Experience’ to unlock the next immersive mode ‘Free Paint’, where players have four unique Denska locations to choose from. Once there they’ll be able to use Concrete Genie’s Living Paint and the Genie creation brushes collected in the main campaign to create as they wish.

Both PlayStation VR modes only support two PlayStation Move Motion Controllers – no DualShock 4 here – for maximum painting creativity.

Concrete Genie is due out this Fall for PlayStation 4 with PlayStation VR support. It’s another title that’ll allow PlayStation owners to get creative in new ways, with the other being Media Molecule’s Dreams. The big difference, however, is the fact that Dreams will allow you to create entire worlds of your own design, offering even grander scope for those with the imagination to do so. A Dreams early access release is planned for this month to showcase the creation suite but it won’t include VR support, unfortunately. VR will come in the final version it seems, which still doesn’t have a release window even after six years of development.

So for the time being Concrete Genie’s release later this year is the one to look forward to. That is unless you count all the other VR titles coming to PlayStation VR in 2019. VRFocus will continue its coverage of the latest VR videogames, reporting back with the latest updates.