Recently, I’ve been doing my annual rewatch of E3 because I am a self-destructive sociopath, and it is weird to look back at Microsoft’s 2017 show where The Artful Escape came to my attention. Personally, I thought I was tripping on LCD at the time. It was nothing special, just another push right to tell “emotional” stories. It wasn’t until late last year, people I know and who are similarly surrounded by music were making rumblings about it, which led me to put it on my “to-play” list that is as long as Bob Dylan’s seminal folk ballad.

The Artful Escape is a game about a young lad called Francis, nephew of Johnson Vendetti who is himself a mix of Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan. Francis is set to play at a festival in his uncle’s honor. However, he is a disillusioned kid that sees himself as less than because he falls within the shadow of his great uncle, whose shoes everyone keeps pushing on his feet. Yet, he himself is dreaming of something greater, he just doesn’t understand what that is when everyone else is forcing him into this folk-based mold. Constricted by everyone’s hopes for him, he sometimes ventures into his own style when he thinks he is alone.

A bit of sentimental handwaving and emotional resonance later, Francis gets invited on a cosmic adventure to play the support act and discover himself. The game itself is spun in a web of color, sci-fi imagery, and a few flairs of inspiration from Douglas Adams. Beethoven & Dinosaur crafted something truthfully captivating and a little inspiring. With fun dialogue, voice acting that doesn’t grate on you aside from the mixing having a few issues, and a proper sense of adventure, I think I fell in love with The Artful Escape over its remarkably limited playtime. Not that it is perfect by any stretch of the imagination.

While the “gameplay” is fairly restricted in its scope, it does exactly what it needs to with a bit of floaty movement, flecks of character with only three buttons, and Simon Says puzzles for boss fights. That simplicity lets the whole world breathe for what is a fantastic adventure through the cornucopia of color and the explosion of otherworldly vistas. There are mountainous, endless deserts, or colorful forest backdrops for every note to reflect off of with its driven 80s-style feedback and wonderfully thematic riffs.

Running through the fashion capital of the universe in a chase, sliding down the side of a building playing a face-melting riff, jumping at the last second, falling through a window, and sliding your way back out the door, is satisfying. It is all done while looking like an 80s glam rocker that crashed their expensive sports car into their walk-in wardrobe. Is there anything better to do on a journey of self-discovery? The Artful Escape might not be doing anything particularly new, but it tells a story without letting the typical CW teen-drama of Francis’ small-town beginnings stumble over the ottoman we’ve just thrown out the porthole on our psychedelic adventure across the universe.

It does, however, stumble over the idea of gameplay. Yes, you do complete some reasonably Simon Says-esque battles with a Mothra, but you do that a couple of times. A majority of the time you are pressing either left or right and holding down X or B with occasional presses of Y and B. The walking simulator bit works fine to let us take in the backdrops of our Prog-Rock album cover surroundings, but I’m left wanting something more. If I’m truthful, once I’d hit the end, I was slightly hoping there would be a mode unlocked to travel the cosmos playing a boss-rush mode. Alas, my sense of adventure didn’t come.

Equally annoying throughout was the occasional issues with dialogue, like you can hear the cut between lines and takes. Time is short, you have a few big names like Carl Weathers, Mark Strong, and Lena Headey, all of whom probably have other things to do, but you can still hear something wrong. Again, the voice acting itself is wonderfully done, making me actually care once we’re off the cliff-side teen drama. It is whoever spliced the takes together to form the whole line, there is just something off about it.

Overall, The Artful Escape is an artful adventure into the psychedelic cosmos of self-discovery, filled with colorful and interesting backdrops, fun creatures, and snappy dialogue. Let down by a limited scope of gameplay, if you can call most of it that. However, entirely worth getting to the end for the complete and utter spectacle of commanding a stage the size of a quarter of the universe as a laser light show racks up a hefty electric bill. There is a proper sense of adventure and I’d have been recommending it more if there was something of gameplay to be had.

An Xbox One copy of The Artful Escape was provided by Annapurna Interactive for this review.

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The Artful Escape

$19.99

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• A giant space opera adventure.
• Those colorful and adventurous backdrops.
• An interesting story telling itself well.

Cons

• Limited scope of gameplay.
• Some editing issues of the voice acting.