I’ve been thinking long and hard about how I could genuinely express what playing The Artful Escape is like, and honestly, there is only one way that feels right is by comparing the experience to taking drugs. So here goes: The Artful Escape is a trip very much like what you’d expect from some high-quality psychedelic mushrooms.
At its core, The Artful Escape is a story focused rhythm game that will take you all across the universe and back again to the sounds of 80s electric guitar riffs, lasers and enough psychedelic visuals to make Snoop Dogg look sober. I would also recommend you think of The Artful Escape as a roughly four-hour-long interactive rock opera, because that’s exactly what it feels like.
Without going into spoilers: You control a teenage boy named Francis who is thrust into stardom he doesn’t feel ready for by the residents of his home town. Without getting to know who Francis is, everyone expects him to continue the folk music legacy left by his world-famous uncle. One night Francis is visited by a floating brain in a jar who gives him a space jumpsuit and a holographic guitar and sends him into what can only be called a fever dream of space. There is no big bad wolf to fear in The Artful Escape. Instead, the main antagonist is one who probably follows most of us through our lives, self-doubt.
Where The Artful Escape shines is in the small things. For example, the game is absolutely overflowing with moments of humour. From the dialogue to the choices you can make and even the names of places you will find yourself frequenting, every opportunity for humour was grabbed with both arms and taken full advantage of. Another aspect where The Artful Escape truly comes into its own is through music. Playing your guitar not only adds to the underlying soundtrack of the game, accentuating it, but it brings the world around you to life. From lighting up lights you walk past to making plants bloom and aliens dance, there is constantly a reason to walk around shredding, and it always feels rewarding when you do.
Where The Artful Escape doesn’t shine is in the actual gameplay. The entirety of which can be summed up as running, jumping, and participating in call-and-response musical challenges. Even though I lovingly think of The Artful Escape as a rhythm game, in reality, you will not be engaging in epic Guitar Hero style duels. Instead, you’re going to find yourself pressing five buttons in the same sequence as your opponent time and time again. While this sounds positively dreadful and mind-numbingly boring written down, in reality, I was so captivated by the dazzling showdown happening on the screen I could barely even focus on memorising the buttons I had to press. So anything more complex would have just taken away from the experience rather than add to it in any meaningful way.
