During my time visiting Pixelopus, developers of the new PlayStation 4 exclusive Concrete Genie, I got a chance to talk to the studio a little about how the game was created. In the game, Ash can paint genies on the walls to whatever specifications the player wants. You can place wings all around a genie, make their body tube-like or chubby, give them different faces or put vines for their arms, and all of this decides the genie’s personality type.
Jokingly, I asked creative director Dominic Robillard whether there was ever any personal competition in terms of which Sony studio is making the better creative generation game, Pixelopus with Concrete Genie or Media Molecule with Dreams.
“No, actually,” Robilliard chuckled. “We actually worked together, some of the tech in Concrete Genie is thanks to them. We have these things where Sony studios meet and talk here in San Francisco. We show each other our games and exchange ideas and technology. We were talking to someone at Media Molecule and saying ‘We’re working on this thing but we haven’t ironed everything out with this one thing yet.’ And then they went ‘Oh! We know how to solve that!’ So we ended up working together and they supplied us with technology for a while after to make the game possible.”
Dreams is available in early access form on the PlayStation 4 as Media Molecule works to add more to the game. Concrete Genie releases on October 8 for a discounted price of $29.99.