Editor’s note: Hello! Over the next few days, we’re running an “Escape Game” series, and we’re finally starting to look back at games that release sometime in 2021, but for various reasons we couldn’t fully cover them at the time.
We’ve returned to some real gems, so for more catch-up reviews like this, head over to the Games That Got Away hub, where all of our work in the series will be gathered in one convenient place. enjoy!
I think the trick to understanding what The Artful Escape is trying to do is accepting the fact that this music game doesn’t actually have any particularly memorable music. At least for me. It’s certainly lovely to listen to while you’re playing, important moments cause their epiphany and then fade away peacefully, but once the game shuts down, nothing lingers in my head. I can’t hum a main melody or whatever they call it. I can’t think of a favorite guitar strum.
Here’s the problem, though: it doesn’t matter. The soundtrack here is a grand, delightful bed of noise for your solo on top of everything. The whole game is a runaway solo. That’s the trick, the crux of the whole thing, I suspect. Artful Escape doesn’t want to teach you music, nor does it want you to play music. It wants you to feel what you imagine people would feel like when they were playing music for a large group, and it was all eleven o’clock. Do you think Ziggy or David St Hubbins can hear most of what happens when the crowd screams and the ground shakes? They feel lost somewhere. They freak out when they daydream about moonlight.
Anyway, it’s a lovely game. You play as a young man associated with a local folk music hero and expect to keep playing those songs about coal miners and electric ghosts that howl on one’s bones. But he didn’t want to be Dylan. Maybe what he wants to be is Ziggy—a glam rocker in a catsuit, banging Nebula on a screaming cheeseball riff. From this slow realization is a journey through edgy and gorgeous album covers, from the small town where he lives in the shadows, into space with whales, giant turtles and Blade Runner, and finally back to the show – and to all Man shows his true identity.
The sheer density of The Artful Escape can be overwhelming at first.It’s an Annapurna joint, so there are Hollywood stars doing the dub (Carl Weathers is definitely sensational – he did have a stew), and the town where it all started is a sort of crumbling Bruges Babel, albeit with a coffee shop with a pun on the name and a rickety funicular that takes you from a Street to another street. The game runs on a 2D plane, and it has that loose, cardboard-cut feel you get from Gilliam animations. It’s absolutely full of stuff: jokes, references, toy robots and old record players. At night, the shops in town have a wine-bottle-thickness to the glass. Brass flickered on the fixtures and the dude was flying around worrying about the dude thing. It’s almost too much and almost too smart. The danger is that at any point we could cross the event horizon of some gathered penny fiat and hit the Castado singularity. All-round spaghetti!
That’s never going to happen, because soon enough you’ll start your adventure cruising the lurid images of seventies rock. The game is very simple: it’s a 2D platformer with double jumps and a kind of floating action. You slide down slopes and climb ridges to avoid falling into the abyss. But, while you’re doing all this, you hit the X button and strum your guitar — a whining solo that rushes out of you almost like a silly string. All the notes you could possibly want, but just hold X!
When you play guitar, wonderful things happen. Back in town, your solo brings all the street lights to life—an unforgettable video game moment. It bounces off snow and ice as you travel through the pink mountains. In the brightly coloured woods, flowers bloom and fireflies buzz. Run and jump and double jump, sure, but look at all the other things that happened because of you.
The game shuttles between long and generous platformers, traversing wild locations, and a series of hubs where you can wander back and forth and chat with people and get hip. The visual creativity is almost gratuitous: One minute a level is Heironymus Bosch, the next is more migraine during a team lunch at the Rainforest Cafe. It’s all taken into account: is it me or the elevator in the hub humming that extra chunky electronic hum when you plug your guitar into the amp? The endless quick changes, the glittering business rushing past before you can time it right, are a joy. It’s a game that requires a second playthrough, and what I especially like is the hint of showbiz tricks that’ve always been part of rock and roll – giant beasts teetering about as if they’re running on old machines, neon black light paint Splash on the fiery surface of Jupiter. Cue the druids and their little rock ‘Enger.
What else? Bosses are all very generous: you match their buttons not to match their notes, but to accompany, coordinate, and ultimately overwhelm them. You travel from space to huge ancient temples, jumping lanterns and Japanese fish. It’s not really a great platformer – most of the time it’s absolutely fine, but when things get hectic the air can get sticky and slow, and at worst it feels like you When moving a puppet operator, they are operating the puppet in turn. But that’s okay – the platforming here is a bit like playing a guitar. Press the appropriate button and believe.
At the end of the day, you’re watching a show like you’re watching a show, and for a game that’s so sly and playful, I can live with it. It’s a rush, a conceit, a graffiti of a master artist. It’s a gas. This is a lark.
