Concrete Genie

Concrete Genie is a story-driven adventure about a boy named Ash who uses a magic brush to bring paintings to life on the walls of the decaying harbor town of Denska, and with their help drives back the darkness that has spread through the city. The core game is played on a standard screen, but PSVR offers a separate, supplementary game mode in which the player finds themselves directly inside one of Ash's paintings and can freely interact with the colorful creatures from his artwork in a fully three-dimensional, painted space. In this mode, the player uses the Move controllers to paint strokes of light and color directly into the air around them, bringing to life small, playful beings reminiscent of the adorable creatures from the main game.

The visual style continues the bold, colorful art design of the core game, where dark, gray wall surfaces contrast with vivid, fantastical paintings full of animal and plant shapes. The VR portion is deliberately designed as a calmer, contemplative addition to the more action-oriented main story, focusing chiefly on free-form creative play and observing the creatures' reactions to the player's brushstrokes. The music and sound design evoke a dreamlike, fairy-tale atmosphere that matches the game's overall gentle and optimistic tone.

The VR mode of Concrete Genie was received as a pleasant, if brief, extension of the experience of the core game, one that showed how even a non-essential, supplementary VR passage can let a player physically look around and experience an artistic world they would otherwise only observe from a distance on screen. For fans of the main game, it's a welcome bonus that underscores the whole title's creative, artistic theme and lets the player briefly become part of the painting they had previously only watched. PixelOpus, Sony's internal studio focused on experimental projects, used this add-on to show that even a smaller VR passage can meaningfully enrich a game's storytelling without needing to offer dozens of hours of its own content.

Why play it: For fans of the main game looking for a welcome bonus on top — the short VR mode lets you physically explore an artistic world you'd otherwise only watch from the sidelines of the screen.