It’s been a while since I’ve been to see live music. Even before the pandemic, I d🔴idn’t go as often as I should have. 🎶The Artful Escape reminds me of a time when I did. I jam with jellyfishes from beyond the moon, light up the city of Beige with colours only dreamed of in a lighthouse keeper’s eye, and become the captain of my own soul, as well as my very own musical spaceship.
In The Artful Escape, you play as Francis Vendetti, a budding musician from Calypso, a town too in love with the memory of itself. The problem is no one really sees yo﷽ur talent for what it is. You’re the nephew of Johnson Vendetti, legendary folk musician and Calypso’s most famous son. Everyone wants you to be just like him, living out your life as a tribute act.
You have no desire to be a tribute act. You play very different music from the folksy, trite songs ౠabout a coal miner’s hands. Life expects you to be Bob Dylan and you want to be Jimi Hendrix. Actually, not Hendrix. It’s that level of psychedelic rock, but much, much stranger. More like those bands from the ‘70s with 13 minute songs about how goats are from Saturn and they eat pancakes for supper. Billy Skwovington & The Skwivington Skwovingtons - bands like that.
In the middle of the night, you are visited by aliens and astronauts who take you on a journey through the stars, transforming you into the Hendrix/Billy Skwovington figure you were born to be. It’s here that the game really begins, as you&rsqജuo;re whi💝sked off to an array of tragically gorgeous worlds that all look like prime shooting locations for The 13th Floor Elevators’ greatest hits album cover.
The marriage between music, colour, and art style is phenomenal - everything moves like well-oiled Disraeli Gears. The adventures you embark upon are gorgeous, and some of gaming’s most visually spectacular yet. It’s not realistic, but that’s to its credit. It never tries to give you realistic rope physics, ray-traced puddles, or horse testicles that actually shrink. Instead the whole thing plays out like one of those cool sci-fi novels you picked up in school but put down after 20 pages because you didn’t know what LSD was yet. Lena Heady’s character is a god with a summer sky for a ꧃face, which should give you a rough idea of what this game is all about.
When reviewers talk about games being ‘an explosion of 🦄colour’, we usually just mean ‘it’s very colourful’ but want to sound clever. The Artful Escape really is an explosion of colour, with mind-bending purples, shimmering starlight blues, and heartbreaking oranges zipping across the screen as you explore these topsy-turvy, whirly-dirly, hurdy-gurdy planets.
I haven’t really talked about the gameplay yet - that’s because there’s not very much to speak of. The Artful Escape is a phenomenal game because of how it makes you feel when Vendetti’s blistering guitar solos ring out across an ancient alien nation founded last Tuesday by a school of tuna. It’s probably the most I’ve enjoyed being absorbed by a game all year, save for maybe 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:New Pokemon Snap, which p꧟rofessional photographers even ♕decided I was the best at.
The parts that actually are a game - as opposed to being a good story told through excellent dialogue and fantastic visuals with superb musical licks - are split between platformer and Simon Says. The difficulty in the platforming changes from ‘Easy’ to ‘Easy, But You Might Need A Second Try At That One Jump’ at points, but it’s not really about the platforming anyway. If you hold 🌄down X, Vendetti’s electric guitar wails as he wanders, and it never sounds like it’s repeating. I often just stood still and listened to the music, and I never do that in video games. When jumping, tapping X again will grant you som💃e extra height with a leaping riff, while Y slams the guitar down and B launches you into a knee-slide. You mostly skid down ramps while shredding the blues. It’s designed around ‘what’s fun to do with a guitar’ first and ‘how do you make a fun game’ second, but that’s not a criticism. It’s hard to lose at, but it’s supposed to be. It’s about the music.
Halsey’s fourth album has just come out, and I’ve been listening tꦐo it pretty much non-stop, aside from when I’ve been jamming with Vendetti in The Artful Escape.🌄 You can’t lose when you listen to an album. You can’t lose when you listen to music full stop, and The Artful Escape understands that. I can’t sing as well as Halsey, but put me in the shower and all I can taste is the blood in my mouth and the bitterness in goodbye. Sayonara Wild Hearts, another Annapurna musical hit, uses music in a very active way. In some sense, The Artful Escape is more passive, and even playing as Vendetti, it feels like it casts you in the crowd. But I miss being lost in a crowd of music and possibilities, and The Artful Escape captures that essence perfectly, flying me to another galaxy to experience it.
The other half of the game is actually playing the music. On stage, you use LB, RB, X, Y, and B to play different notes, following the rhythm of an alien or a tree or the thoughts of a dead poet given material form. Whoever you’re playing for will have five different parts of them that light up, arranged with two on top for the shoulder buttons, then a triangle of three circles below for the face buttons. If left shoulder, right shoulder, triangle point lights up, you pl🌄ay LB, RB, Y, or whatever your controller’s equivalent is. This sounds simple, and it is. It’s only in the last couple of concerts when the buttons are LB-RB-X, Y-B, B-X, LB-RB-B, Y, Y, Y-B or whatever that keeping up with your stage mate becomes difficult, but even then, if you mess up, the alien just repeats the pattern until you get it. The Artful Escape doesn’t challenge you like a game challenges you - it challenges you like a great sci-fi novel, or an avant-garde album. The challenge isn’t in getting to the end, but in expanding your mind and absorbinꦆg it.
Annapurna Interactive has a staggering back catalogue, but 2021 has frankly not been great for the publisher. Last Stop failed to leave any kind of impact, Maquette is a game with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bryce Dallas Howard in it and not much else, and Twelve Minutes, despite being loaded with star-power, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:wastes its time loop mechanic in service of a ridiculous twist ending that der𒆙ails the entir🐠e game. With The Artful Escape, pl♎us Neon White, Stray, and Solar Ash to come in the near future, it feels like Annapurna is back.
Score: 4.5/5. An Xbox Series S code was provided by the publisher.