You play a young guitarist exploring your prog-rock ambitions to the full in this richly enjoyable psychedelic journey
Seventeen-year-old guitar prodigy Francis Vendetti lives with his mother in a small Colorado town that is still in thrall to its most famous export: Francis’s late uncle, a platinum-selling folk singer. Francis feels inevitable pressure to continue the family trade, and, in preparation for his highly anticipated first public performance in town, writes a suite of Dylan-esque tracks about toil and loss. Except the act is an affectation: Francis is, at heart and by temperament, a prog-rock wailer who dreams of playing high-gain, euphoric guitar solos over the swell of a supportive orchestra. When he’s visited by a sympathetic alien being who observes: “You wear folk like a cheap suit”, Francis swaps his skinny Levi’s for an LED-encrusted catsuit and sets off across the Milky Way to shred for an audience of intergalactic concertgoers.
This is true space opera territory – Ziggy-era Bowie meets The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – and far from typical video game subject matter. But then The Artful Escape is not the product of a typical video game-maker, having been conceived and refined by Johnny Galvatron, frontman of Aussie rock band the Galvatrons. You guide Francis, who runs like a stop-motion Super Mario puppet, across Martian landscapes – snowy vistas filled with glowing mushrooms, Narnia street lamps, pinwheeling star systems. As you bound around and explore, you are free to break into a soaring solo or pinched harmonic at any moment with the tap of an X button. Every now and then you duet with another character, following on-screen prompts, but there’s no pressure to time your button presses against some computational conductor; you can play according to rhythm and taste. No matter what you choose, it’s bound to sound good, as the game quantises and harmonises everything.
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Originally posted in the guardian.
