The Artful Escape

Francis Vendetti is about to play his First gig. But First, he has to Figure out who he is

Francis Vendetti’s uncle was a folk singer. Not just some beatnik with a beret, mind you – he was a revered artist who attracted success and adulation. A figure discussed with the hushed reverence afforded to the likes of Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell. He was, in short, a legend.

So it probably didn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone in Francis’ life to discover that the 17-year-old wanted to pursue the life of a musician too. What might have struck them as strange, however, is that the young Vendetti didn’t want to strum plaintively at an acoustic guitar or puff and pant into a harmonica. Francis wants to play rock music. And he wants to play it loud. Amps turned up to 11 kind of loud.

The Artful Escape follows Francis on the eve of his very first performance as he struggles to free himself from the terrible weight of his uncle’s legacy. “It’s a game about a teenage musician who embarks on this multidimensional journey to create his stage persona,” explains The Artful Escape’s creator Johnny Galvatron, as if that isn’t a deeply unusual premise for a 2D platformer. “So he’s in the shadow of his uncle, who’s this Bob Dylan-type, a very famous folk singer, and he just wants to write crazy sci-fi odyssey guitar solos. But there’s a lot of things in his hometown of Calypso, Colorado that are stopping him from doing that, so he embarks on this journey to discover his own creative self.”

What follows is a journey of musical self-discovery, complete with frantic guitar solos, holographic amplifiers and jam sessions with the gods themselves. It’s a platformer, and it’s a music game, yes, but this isn’t Ori And The Blind Forest, and it certainly isn’t Guitar Hero.

Anxiety of influence