The Artful Escape has plenty of proclamations about great art, context and authenticity, although they’re not especially profound. It’s fundamentally a five-hour, mushroom-friendly metaphor about authenticity - but it’s also the culmination of a teenage dream scribbled down in a student maths book decades ago. Much like Francis’s true preference for self-expression, The Artful Escape is unconcerned with mechanics, competitor matrixes or what things are or should be.
Lightman, and The Artful Escape as a visual and aural spectacle, laughs at the idea. “I feel like I’m not trying hard enough,” Francis wallows. That’s part of the message too, as Francis admits regret to Lightman - the soloist partially responsible for his hand-drawn cosmic journey - for passing through the cosmos so easily. The puzzles are never meant to trouble Francis, or you.
But Artful Escape trades mechanical design for holographic stages, monsters that speak through jazz and pure sensory overload. There are slightly more complicated segments throughout where the visual spectacle is withheld behind a Simon Says-style mini-game, either to open certain doors or appease the whims of creatures like the Glamourgonn. How that’s brought about is typically done by holding the X button, a move that often resonates and revitalises the background scenery. Image: Kotaku Australia / Beethoven & Dinosaurįrancis’s talent for shredding is, as every human and non-human being reminds him to varying degrees, his saviour. They hold onto the folk image so tightly that Francis, and his penchant for glam rock, feels trapped. His work is so fundamental not just to the small town Francis lives in, but also Francis’s family. The Artful Escape is fundamentally still that, but the opening hook is more about Francis living in the shadow of his superstar uncle, a once-in-a-generation folk artist. It stars Francis Vendetti, the teenage main character who was once part of the title, at least when the game was doing the rounds at PAX five years ago.īack then, the game was billed as the story of a teenage rocker on their way to their first gig, after making a short interdimensional trip through space and time. That’s the central theme for The Artful Escape, the first game from Australian studio Beethoven & Dinosaur. We all deal with that burden many live with it for the rest of their lives. The spectre of expectation is a common challenge: meeting the expectations of overbearing parents, upholding the demands of investors, matching the unrealistic dreams of fans, or just living up the image your loved ones hold. The answer - in The Artful Escape and life - is not at all.
How do you learn to live with the shadow of something bigger than yourself?
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