Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've found ourselves playing over the last few days. This time: antique chairs, lighthouses and properly great pixelart.
The lighthouse at the start of Concrete Genie might be one of those rare perfect locations in a video game. I adore it. Beyond the gate is a little courtyard with a fountain. There's a door to push through and then an entryway where the wooden planks on the floor have become warped and bowed, and eventually cave inwards, curved like pieces of a ship. Below you is a cellar where treasures lurk and above you is a network of iron ladders and gantries leading you back outside, where you can curve your way upwards until you reach the light itself.
I never tire of playing around here, spotting the detailing, no two pieces of wood exactly alike, no railing without a twist or a kink in it. And before even that, I love the part of the game where you learn how to handle paint by filling in creature designs in your sketchbook. The paint is lovely - watery and occasionally thick, uneven, the sense of a powder or paste in suspension. You move it, but it moves too - the colour is something you have to tug around on the page.