The Artful Escape (2021)

The Artful Escape comes so, so close to being pretty good. It just can't quite dot the I's or cross the T's to push it over the line of "decently solid." Almost-not-quite satisfying mechanics team up with an endearing-if-awkward narrative to provide an enjoyable, solid-enough time waste (it'll take most people 4 - 5 hours; speedrunners could probably knock it out much quicker than that) that can't elevate to being memorable.

Francis is a small-town teenager with a burden: He lives in the shadow of his hyper-famous uncle, a world renown folk musician (who happens to be a dead ringer for Bob Dylan). Well, maybe "burden" is a bit strong. After all, Francis lives in a mansion and is given the privilege of being able to play his own concert—neither things he would have without the family name. But he's not excited. Acoustic strums and lyrics about working in the coal mines just don't spark excitement in him. With the concert just a day away, he gets thrown into a psychedelic outer space where he goes on a journey of stardom and self-discovery.

The Artful Escape is basically mixing two genres here: Platforming and Simon Says-style button matching. Neither is intended to challenge the player—which can be evidenced by the fact that I actually got through the platforming with very little issue—but serve as a nice way to give the player something to actually do while the narrative does its thing. The platforming is used for world exploration (I use the word "exploration" but it's a linear, 2D, side-scrolling path, so you're just literally going where you need to go), although mostly you're just jumping between moderately spaced platforms. A few places got me into a bit of a death loop (the checkpoint system is VERY forgiving so you're not having to grind a lot of a level to reach a failed jump), but my failures were because I suck at platforming, not any indication of difficulty.

The Simon Says bit, then, comes into play with the music performance bits. On an Xbox controller you're using X, Y, B, LB, and RB, following provided sequences. There's no way to fail these performances; if you goof (and, if you're like me and suck at pressing buttons, you will goof semi-regularly) it'll just pause for a second, then restart that particular sequence. While correctly performing a few sequences without goofing does provide some zing of satisfaction—it feels smooth with nice auditory feedback—the lack of stakes means this (and the aforementioned platforming) exist in the game as an interactive way to submerge the player in the experience, not to challenge the player. The difficulty does increase as the game goes on, but I never felt like The Artful Escape was pushing my abilities—and I'm not a person with skillful abilities.

So the failures of the narrative are pretty disappointing. If you're sacrificing gameplay for story, you damn well better nail the story. Look at a game like What Remains of Edith Finch. Very little gameplay (although what is there is ridiculously creative), but the story is compelling and draws you through the house you're exploring. Here the story is just fine. Typical coming-of-age/rise to fame type stuff. I didn't hate it. Heck, I basically liked it. But The Artful Escape didn't become emotionally engaging, nor did the story feel like it was constructed with care. Here's a quick example of what I mean: Francis's uncle is the superstar, right? The giant whose shadow he lives in. There's quick reference made to Francis's father, but it's kinda glossed over. Still, it raises a good question. Who are Francis's parents and where are they? The emotional climax had the opportunity to answer that. I was actually like, "Oh! This is where Francis's dad comes into play!" and I was pretty hyped. But the narrative dodged that and went a different direction. So it's a question that remains in the air. Does the absence of Francis's family mean The Artful Escape falls apart as a story? No. But it's a hole in the fabric of the narrative. And the game accumulates a fair number of these holes where it feels like more information is needed to properly texture the characters/settings/etc. There were also lots of opportunities to really develop the lore of the settings and characters, which mostly fly by untouched.

(I will say that there are some strong visual novel aspects to The Artful Escape. A lot of dialogue, with plenty of options for choosing how Francis responds. It's possible that there are multiple ways for the story to play out based on the dialogue choices you make. I've only played through once—and don't plan on returning—so I can't say for sure. But my gut feeling is that the only thing these dialogue choices impact is how the other character responds in the moment. I didn't get the feeling that I was steering the story with these choices.)

Really, what I'm trying to get at here is that this feels like a good start for a game idea, not the final ending point. There are so many glimmers of a better, more satisfying experience—both gameplay and narrative—that for as solid as The Artful Escape is, it ends up feeling slight.

But hey, it's "free" on Xbox Game Pass. I didn't waste my time. I just wished the game development had been more ambitious.

There's not much I want to say, a short 4 hour experience that I wish I had the time to play in one sitting but had to cut into sections. The music is great and so are the visuals, barely any gameplay but that's not a huge deal

The rhythm style gameplay is simple, I do wish there was more variety to what your character can play, it's mostly sweeping orchestral electric guitar sounds that somewhat match the background music.

Your characters music doesn't really accompany the background music to well in my opinion. Some cons that stood out are the weirdly shoved in platforming sections. Honestly wish they just weren't in there at all since they distract me from enjoying the visuals and also break the flow of the music your character is playing. Especially when it's clunky and you miss a simple jump so it pops you back and takes you out of the mood the game is setting up.

The stories fine, some of the nonsense they say is funny and I haven't checked but the choices they give seem to be more fluff than substance that matter. Voices are great and character animation is simple, wish they had a bit more personality.

The games title says it all, it is an Artful Escape and a good one at that.