It’s not really about the challenge - I failed maybe three jumps in the whole thing - but luxuriating in the sensory muchness of the thing. What holes there are mainly exist to let you hover over with a gravity-defying guitar lick. You run and jump through vistas torn from prog rock album covers, animating them with your music. The Artful Escape is a narrative platformer, a halfway house between Kentucky Route Zero and Limbo, although much lighter on its feet than the former, and with none of the peril of the latter. Sounds more rhythm and blues to me, but proves surprisingly apt, given how much of the game is spent sliding down ramps while wailing on a guitar. So, yes: I’m the Slippery Matthew Castle. Likewise, picking a suitable rockstar descriptor at the outset of the quest: it tickles me that voice actor, Michael Johnston, had to bellow loads of these, selling the “Hello Wembley!” energy of every last one. The game only took me two and a half hours to beat, but you could spend considerably longer perusing the costume creator that pops up halfway through. The persona that emerges through my dialogue options and sartorial choices is more of a Marty McFly: a guitar-shredding virtuoso decked in a Buddy Holly outfit. I don’t quite have the pizazz of a Bowie.
Its creator, the fabulously named Johnny Galvatron, describes it as what would happen if David Bowie had gone on a literal space trip to become Ziggy Stardust, and that seems about right. Impressively, this is one of the more rote happenings in The Artful Escape, a quest that also takes in astral highways, rock-powered butterflies and - steel yourself - a passive aggressive skiffle group. Or at least they do aboard the Cosmic Lung, an intergalactic concert hall overseen by a brainstem in a cloak voiced by Jason Schwartzman.
They call me the Slippery Matthew Castle. One man’s musical mission is an audio visual delight, but there’s not enough room for expression or mastery.
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