The other half of gameplay in Artful Escape is more in line with its musical theming. What’s there feels responsive and fluid, but those looking for any kind of difficulty or excitement in the platforming are not going to find it here. There are absolutely no challenges to be found in Artful Escape’s platforming: every jump in the game is trivial and even if you somehow miss a jump, there are no consequences as it simply respawns you right before the gap. These are very standard mechanics, but there’s never really a reason for the player to master them. Pressing X while in the air will cause Francis to slam his guitar to the ground, which is used to activate various things within the environment such as holographic stages.
Holding Y in most areas will cause Francis to pull out his guitar and start playing, something that dynamically lines up with the area’s default music and can also cause background elements to light up or become active, but this mechanic otherwise does nothing. Pressing B will have Francis jump, and he can gain a small amount of extra air time by pressing Y to shred on his guitar. While The Artful Escape is a master class in visual and audio design, unfortunately the gameplay is rather shallow.
Largely against his will, Francis is thrown into the psychedelic Cosmic Extraordinary, eventually landing on Lightman’s ship, the Cosmic Lung, and being beamed from one end of the universe to the other, developing a new stage persona and discovering what kind of music he actually wants to play. One night, right before his first concert as an upcoming folk artist, Francis is approached by a cosmic rock artist named Lightman who wants to recruit him as the supporting act for his three show tour. The problem is that Francis has no real passion for folk music he is more interested in sick guitar licks for rock operas in space, but he lives in fear of what people will say if he doesn’t conform to what they want. This is because his uncle, Johnson Vendetti, was a legend in the folk music scene, and everybody seems to want Francis to be nothing but Johnson Vendetti 2. Francis is a folk musician, or at least that’s what the entire town wants him to be. In The Artful Escape, the player controls Francis Vendetti, a teenager living in the small town of Calypso, Colorado. How well does it portray this feeling? Honestly I'd say it does it very well.
It's a story about the pressure of people expecting you to fulfill the legacy of a legend who came before. This is the central message behind the narrative of The Artful Escape, a 2D platformer from Australian developer Beethoven & Dinosaur, published by Annapurna Interactive. Sometimes (most of the time) they're wrong, and it's up to you to pave your own way forward to be who you truly are. Sometimes the people around you build a box that they want to put you in, which they say you belong in because it's who you're supposed to be.
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