The Artful Escape Reviews
The Artful Escape is a story about legacies, finding yourself, change and transition that presents itself in such an ingenious way that all can absolutely enjoy it. Gliding across the cosmos, playing electric guitar in unknown lands, and eventually vanquishing a divine complication with intricate audio design and superb music to accompany – it’s perplexing how captivating this interstellar adventure is. Inviting players on a musical journey through cosmic realms and challenging introspection, The Artful Escape is a masterpiece.
I love the messaging and narrative of The Artful Escape. But as a game, it’s just a few steps above being a vapid walking simulator. Still, you shouldn’t miss out on this gem of a tale featuring space trips and sick riffs.
And it honestly doesn't take the game long to deliver on that hinted at promise.
The Artful Escape is a brash, bold and beautiful musical journey with a simplistic gameplay hook and all the interdimensional jellyfish deities you can shake a quantum-powered space guitar at. It's the next-best way to spend an afternoon indoors to dropping acid.
Ultimately, The Artful Escape is so stellar in terms of both character building and narrative
It's a psychedelic trip through a glam-rock wonderland, an utter visual delight, like nothing out of this world; indeed, something that feels ripped straight from Ziggy Stardusts head.
As a guitar-shredding odyssey throughout a stunning cosmos, The Artful Escape delivers on its name tenfold. It is a short tale and I'm in no hurry to book a return trip to the Cosmic Extraordinary, but it remains an unforgettable journey thanks to superb art direction, an uplifting story, and stirring guitar solos by cliffside.
I know I sound like a broken record here, but I can’t say enough how refreshing The Artful Escape is. In a sea of third-person open-world collect-a-thons, first-person shooters, and free-to-play action games, it’s nice to be able to just rock out and chill to something that doesn’t require lightning reflexes or demand intense attention from you.
Ultimately, The Artful Escape’s title couldn’t be more apt: it’s a masterfully crafted, beautiful experience, and one that completely removes you from the world around you.
As its title implies, The Artful Escape is, indeed, an artful escape from the reality of most games. The vibrant visuals and larger-than-life story with its share of personal elements coalesce with its innate, performance-driven musicality to create an electric experience. However, it comes at the cost of its gameplay, which is boring at worst and merely passable at best. Such an imbalance undersells its message a bit as its mechanics can’t match its narrative ambitions, but those narrative ambitions are tuned well enough to drown out its mechanical flat notes.
Beethoven & Dinosaur's musical odyssey across the universe isn't as adventurous with its gameplay as its venues, but that doesn't stop The Artful Escape from being a fun ride.
I wanted to come away from The Artful Escape feeling inspired and changed, with a story to really mull over. I came into this four-to-five-hour experience with expectations set by early gameplay, and while some of them were met, I don’t know that it does enough to really justify its choice of medium. It has got more than enough in terms of eye candy and audio bliss, but I can’t confidently say that any of the other pieces manage to come together in this space oddity.
The Artful Escape is an incredible odyssey of self discovery, and its few shortcomings don't hold it back from being an excursion patently worth making.
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 Bryce Dallas Howard in it and not much else, and Twelve Minutes, despite being loaded with star-power, wastes its time loop mechanic in service of a ridiculous twist ending that derails the entire game. With The Artful Escape, plus Neon White, Stray, and Solar Ash to come in the near future, it feels like Annapurna is back.
Unmissable for Xbox Game Pass subscribers, and absolutely recommended for everyone else, The Artful Escape of Francis Vendetti tells with irony and intelligence the path of artistic and inner growth of a talented teenage musician. Through the celestial bodies of Stupefacosmo, the protagonist and the player learn together to follow only the rhythm of their electric guitar, among extraordinarily inspired landscapes.
Review in Italian | Read full review
The Artful Escape is by turns psychedelic, moving, exultant, and lovely. The central metaphor of a young performer bringing fantastic new worlds into existence through the art of music is a powerful one, and while the theme of a struggling musician finding his authentic voice while paying homage to the past might not be a new one, it’s certainly new to videogames. The Artful Escape only missteps when it tries too hard to be a game, ironic given the story’s premise of search for authenticity. Aside from that, The Artful Escape is a surprising and joyous exploration of the power of collaboration, the struggle for identity, and the mind-blowing, life-altering sound of the very loud galactic symphony.
It's also worth mentioning there are some substantial performance issues. The frame rate dropped considerably fairly often, pulling us out of its gorgeous world. There were also a few occasions where dialogue on the screen was not voiced, which felt very odd. However, these issues aside, The Artful Escape is absolutely an adventure worth taking. It contains some magical moments, an engaging narrative and the best soundtrack in a game all year. It doesn't always hit the mark, but when it does, it smashes it out of the park.
The Artful Escape is a bold and beautiful trip through the cosmos, featuring a killer soundtrack and a thrilling space adventure.