I’ve rarely played a game that committed so thoroughly to putting its aesthetic front and center. The Artful Escape isn’t at all violent, as Immer's work is, but it shares his infatuation with gleaming colors and soft edges.
It most reminds me of the work of Charlie Immer, an artist who makes colorful paintings where the shiny roundness of everything helps you overlook how gruesome it all really is. The art here is brilliant, though, and it’s the star of the show. That’s a fine goal! But you can only choose between dialogue options describing something as “like a record playing in a dream-room” or “like clinging to a re-entry ramjet” so many times before it all begins to feel like a performative quirk. Most of this dialogue is spoken once Francis leaves Earth, so it seems that the intent is to highlight the difference of this strange world in the way the characters speak. Francis, and many of the alien creatures he meets on his journey, speak in strange metaphors that aim for artful but end up hitting hackneyed. This story works well, but it mostly succeeds in spite of The Artful Escape’s dialogue. We see Calypso, we see the flyers for Francis’ concert that feature a huge picture of his uncle and a stamp-sized picture of him, and we hear how the other people in town talk to him, how they relate to him not as himself, but as someone who matters only inasmuch as he shares a family tree with someone who matters. This is all exhilarating and part of the reason it works is that The Artful Escape takes its time starting off. Levels often conclude with you Simon Says-ing out a guitar solo by following the lead of an alien creature. All the while, you can strum on Francis’ guitar, shredding out piercing solos that feel right at home in the alien landscapes. This journey takes the younger Vendetti to a variety of planets with just as many environments which he will platform across, bouncing off unidentifiable launching pads and reaching improbable heights. In space, he can be someone else, someone new, and hopefully, someone closer to who he really is. When Francis leaves Earth behind he leaves folk music behind, too. He promises Francis will be back in time to play his concert. Instead, Lightman, an aging musician voiced by Carl Weathers, comes to him, taking Francis to a spaceship called The Lung and sweeping him up in an intergalactic voyage. It turns out Francis didn’t need to find Lightman’s. Doesn’t matter-Violetta is off and Francis heads home to get some sleep before his concert the next day. But Francis has lived in Calypso his whole life and knows there’s no such place. Violetta seems to see something in Francis and tells him to seek out Lightman's-ostensibly a store in Calypso. Then Francis meets Violetta, a punky girl with a bad attitude and an Edna Mode haircut.
You spend a lot of time in this game holding X to strum on your guitar. Francis will grow as a character over The Artful Escape’s six-hour runtime, but this gameplay will remain the same. But his first performance as a musician is scheduled for tomorrow, and Francis will be expected to perform that false identity for everyone he knows. It rings hollow (and it should) because Francis is attempting to be someone he isn’t. But “Press X to sing about miners” is not who Francis is at all. In Calypso, the small town where Francis has lived his whole life, his uncle is a hometown boy who made good. Francis is the nephew of Johnson Vendetti, who is a legend in the world of The Artful Escape.
Francis is sitting on a bench on a cliff and the first prompt we see instructs us “To strum a folk ballad about the toil of a miner’s life, hold X.” It’s immediately pretentious, and that’s intentional. There’s no violence to be found here just easygoing platforming, low-pressure musical riffing, and adventure gaming that goes heavy on the dialogue and omits the puzzles entirely.Īs the game begins, you are Francis Vendetti, a teen in a leather jacket, chunky boots, and eyewear that could be steampunk goggles or the perfect circle glasses that John Lennon made iconic.
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It’s gentler, too, telling a story about learning how to be who you really are, and not who someone else expects you to be. Evoking a variety of influences, from the artist Charlie Immer to the bright aesthetics of Lisa Frank, The Artful Escape captures the sheer cinematic thrill of watching your helicopter explode in a Call of Duty mission or falling off a cliff in a Naughty Dog set-piece, but transplants the action to a voyage that goes far beyond the realm of the real. The Artful Escape is a visual treat-a platforming journey that takes players on a journey from Earth to the galaxies beyond and renders every location with gorgeous care.
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