Played on: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4
The Artful Escape is another game from the Annapurna Interactive catalogue, and one that got away from me during its now-ended time on Xbox Game Pass, before it later expanded to PlayStation consoles and Nintendo Switch. I hadn't even realized that The Artful Escape had popped up again on PlayStation Plus Extra/Premium some time later, until it was announced that it was about to leave Sony's competing game subscription service earlier this Spring. Fortunately, I managed to squeak The Artful Escape into my playthroughs before it was removed. I seem to be doing that with quite a few indie games I've been meaning to play throughout 2024.
The Artful Escape is developed by Beethoven & Dinosaur, a developer that seems particularly fascinated with the Gen-X era of music, as confirmed by their recently-announced follow-up game, Mixtape, another game that will initially be exclusive to Xbox and PC. The Artful Escape meanwhile is Beethoven & Dinosaur's debut offering, one published by Annapurna after it failed to raise funds via Kickstarter campaign. It's said to be heavily inspired by David Bowie's evolution into Ziggy Stardust, most notably.
This journey is reflected by player character, Francis Vendetti, who is about to make his on-stage debut at a music festival commemorating his deceased uncle, a famed folk singer named Johnson Vendetti. Set in the early 90's, and beginning with Francis struggling with his creative identity, The Artful Escape opens with Francis living a mundane, aimless life within a fictional Colorado town, only to eventually be contacted by an interstellar personality and his crew, who take him on a cosmos-spanning journey to all of the deranged corners of the known universe, filled with increasingly bizarre alien life that all become strangely invested in Francis' journey to 'jam' with the galaxy's most celebrated alien artist, the GlamourGonn.
So, naturally, The Artful Escape gets pretty weird, in a good way. The game itself is a very simple 2D platformer, with players spending most of it running forward, occasionally jumping across platforms, hitting buttons to jam out on their electric guitar, and occasionally playing a simple rhythm minigame in order to appease aliens, perform at venues, and open paths ahead. All told, the game is incredibly easy, almost by design, and seems actively conceived with the idea of accommodating even the most rhythm-inept players. That's good for me, because, while I have nothing against rhythm games as a concept, I tend to be pretty terrible at them. I have no idea how I managed to earn that ultra-rare 'Dancing Machine' achievement in Pikuniku shortly before this. ON TWO DIFFERENT PLATFORMS! My elementary school self is very proud (IYKYK).
The flip side to The Artful Escape's super-accessible gameplay is that, while it engages the imagination, it never truly creates a sense of stakes or danger. Francis' journey is certainly fun, especially when you can start customizing his personality via a suite of crazy outfits, and a combination of custom stage names that you can select for him (even if they're 'bleeped' out by guitar riffs every time he says them in dialogue), but despite so much hanging in the balance, the eye-popping, intergalactic journey of Francis never leaves the player in doubt of their success, or even their survival.
I also wish there was just a BIT more to the gameplay. Like I said, I immensely enjoyed just how much sheer, eccentric imagination is pumped all throughout The Artful Escape. The game's style is impressive, and none of that style was lost when I played the PS4 version, despite it predictably taking longer to load than its upgraded PS5 cousin, albeit without a noticeable hit to performance, on the plus side. The PS5 version also offers some pretty cool uses of the DualSense controller's haptic feedback capabilities, making me feel even more powerful as a would-be glam rock god, even if, like I said, I never truly doubted that Francis would make it home. That's really the problem right there; The gameplay is so simple that it never requires any thought, nor does it elicit any true pathos from the player. As a quote/unquote 'artist' myself, albeit one that deals in writing instead of music, I was disappointed that I didn't feel more of a direct desire to root for Francis. Past the first half-hour or so, Francis never truly feels like an underdog; His success is a foregone conclusion, to the point where most of Francis' accidental alien allies make this quickly apparent to him in dialogue.
I definitely don't want to give the impression that I disliked The Artful Escape though. Even if it was a bit weak as a gameplay experience, its storytelling, imagination and style nonetheless elevated it above your run-of-the-mill indie game for me. I wish it was a little more challenging, but I can't fault the game for nonetheless succeeding as an optimistic, wide-eyed celebration of learning to embrace one's creative instincts.
The soundtrack throughout The Artful Escape will also be pure catnip for glam rock enthusiasts. David Bowie fans will naturally be in hog heaven playing this game (I'm not among them, but I can still respect the late musician's creativity and myriad achievements in life), and if you're also into musicians or bands like Aerosmith, Queen, Alice Cooper and/or Iggy Pop, among others, you'll probably be joyfully headbanging throughout this entire experience. I'm not well-versed in music history by any stretch, but even I can recognize the landmark culture shift during the Gen-X era, when folksy rock classics from The Beatles and The Rolling Stones started to give way to the louder and more colourful glam rock scene, resulting in a new golden age of musical creativity. I would probably equate it to when video games moved from 2D to 3D, with the rise of the Nintendo 64 and original PlayStation during the mid-90's, a culture shift in gaming that even people who don't play video games would no doubt easily recognize and appreciate.
For some, The Artful Escape may be dismissed as style-over-substance, and I could see where that argument could come from. If you're willing to get lost in its 3-5-hour odyssey of spacefaring musical madness however, you'll enjoy an enthralling creative sugar high that will rock even harder for music enthusiasts. Even if you're not a 'music person' though, the style is good enough to keep you thoroughly entertained, despite Francis' adventure to the stars ultimately being a bit wanting for actual suspense.
IF I HAD TO SCORE IT: 7/10
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