![]() You’re here as the next great prodigy in line, though you don’t really know this yet. Inside that ship is a live-in fanbase to the almighty Lightman (Carl Weathers) - a human who came before you, played and left the known universe on its knees, begging for more. So in getting to matters quickly, as the game does, the folk stuff gets left back in your home town of Calypso and you find yourself jutting about in space and time shredding your axe between worlds along paths of pure light, alien terra firma and even aboard a spaceship. Just you, a guitar and the cosmos at your feet. There’s no hard fail scenarios no quick time events. it all requires decision making and interaction. ![]() But there is agency - how you present your version of Francis through dialogue, the look you build for your version of them, how you choose to utilise the game’s limited movement options through the environment to look as stylish as you can. I went back to a handful of other side-scrolling adventure outings like Stela, Raji: An Ancient Epic, Unravel and Inside, to name a few, to compare the experience, and it must be said The Artful Escape is more story and journey than it is game. You do control the game’s main character, Francis Vendetti, and you do interact with the world, albeit in limited fashion. Because it will be largely debated just *how much* videogame is actually here. ![]() "It must be said The Artful Escape is more story and journey than it is game.”Īctually, it’s maybe best to start at the noun “game”. And it honestly doesn’t take the game long to deliver on that hinted at promise. A whisper on the wind that pulls you along with an assurance of adventure and escape. It’s as indie and folksy as you’d expect something with Schwartzman’s name attached to it to be, but there’s also an undercurrent of more. Names like Lena Headey, Jason Schwartzman, Mark Strong and Carl Weathers apply serious gravity to a promptly gorgeous affair. And there really isn’t an in between.įrom the outset, The Artful Escape by Aussie studio, Beethoven & Dinosaur, feels like it’s punching above its weight. The two musical worlds represented here couldn’t be further apart small town unintentional post-hipster vibes strumming on the one hand, neon-laden journey through the cosmos finger-tapping on the other. That oddity? When you come back to the game if you’ve turned it off, its title screen reminds you this is a folk tale first, with a pretty darn good folk song greeting you each time you fire it up. This is a moving postcard to the 70s and 80s as far as influence goes - as if David Bowie, Pink Floyd and Genesis found each other on a moving platform designed by Terry Gilliam rapidly coasting through the far reaches of space, powered entirely by solar sails and positive thought, and decided to jam. Like, it’s an endless stream of stunningly delivered guitar riffs and licks, played to a trip-induced backdrop lifted from the Chromium Age of psychedelic, progressive guitar minstrel ism and nebulae-inspired light and laser shows. ![]() There’s an oddity once you’ve played a few hours of The Artful Escape, which is absolutely filled with the sort of wailing you imagine Dave Gilmour just does while he’s washing the dishes.
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