The Artful Escape

There hasn't been a guitar-based adventure as excellent as The Artful Escape since Bill met Ted.

Rock opera and space opera meet for some artful escapism.

A lurid and generous trip through the iconography of seventies rock.

An eye-popping musical adventure that will leave you with a serious case of galaxy brain.

The Artful Escape is a short but oh-so-sweet platformer that will have you bopping to its impossibly catch beats and transfixed by its beauty

It won't challenge your platforming skills, and the action boils down to galactic Simon Says, but The Artful Escape is a gorgeous experience that makes you feel utterly cool

You play a young guitarist exploring your prog-rock ambitions to the full in this richly enjoyable psychedelic journey

One man’s musical mission is an audio visual delight, but there’s not enough room for expression or mastery.

The adventure does ultimately end up being a worthwhile one, with interesting characters, an incredible art style, and great music. But if there were more to the gameplay, the game – and its world – could have offered so much more.

The Artful Escape is a thrill. It's true that the most joyous bits of action are underused – in terms of both playtime and what they could give the story – and some scarce but present graphical issues on Switch are a shame. Overall, though, the strengths are major, the niggles minor, and it will strike a chord with any pipe-dreaming rock star.