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The Artful Escape is “like if David Bowie went on a space journey and came back as Ziggy Stardust"Lead designer Johnny Galvatron talks cheesy synth riffs, terrible jazz and how recording a whole folk EP ended up delaying the game
Lead designer Johnny Galvatron talks cheesy synth riffs, terrible jazz and how recording a whole folk EP ended up delaying the game
The Artful Escapehas been a long time coming for Beethoven & Dinosaur founder and designer Johnny Galvatron. While his side-scrolling platformer - about a teenage musician going on a fantastical journey to find and create his own stage persona - made its initial debut back in 2017, Galvatron tells me this game has really been 38 years in the making. He’s a professional musician himself, having been the lead singer of electronic rock band The Galvatrons in the mid noughties, but he’s also been raised on a diet of video games since the days of the Sega Master System. He started designing his own games during the Nintendo 64 era, but it wasn’t until 2012 that he finally decided to make a proper go of it.
“Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EPreally made me want to make an indie game for iPad,” he tells me, “[while]Kentucky Route Zeropushed me into the mindset of making something for PC. And, look, things spiralled out of control and here we are.”
THE ARTFUL ESCAPE | Release Date TrailerWatch on YouTube
THE ARTFUL ESCAPE | Release Date Trailer
Indeed, as we found out yesterday duringAnnapurna’s Interactive Showcase, we’ll finally be able to power slide through the final version of Galvatron’s psychedelic romp through the heavens when it comes to PC on September 9th. Galvatron describes the game as, “kinda like if David Bowie went on a space journey and came back as Ziggy Stardust,” and you can see it right from the get go.
Francis starts his journey in the small American town of Calypso, where his uncle Johnston is already a famous and established musician.
While Galvatron’s own band was “based on the soundtrack of the 1984 Transformers film,” he tells me, “David Bowie has always been a hero. My music tastes reach broader than the heritage of The Galvatrons and I think a different set of musicians and influences were right for this story and this project. Plus I had exhausted my supply of cheesy synth riffs.”
As Francis emerges from a cave into a forest bathed in purple light, we find he’s shed his dark, fur collar jacket for a bright blue, almostMega Man-like space suit studded with LEDs and raised muscle pads. Violetta hovers above him as an even brighter hologram, beckoning him to head east and find a creature called “StarGordon” - and if that doesn’t give you an idea of where this game’s heading, then the next few moments certainly will.
Crunching across the snowy undergrowth, the canopy suddenly breaks to reveal a huge piercing moon cresting a vast planet in the distance. Snowcapped mountains pierce the sky around it, and the moonlight glistens on the ice beneath your feet. All the while, the music is swelling in the background, and when Galvatron hits a button on his controller to whip out Francis' guitar to start shredding, it feels like the most natural thing in the world as he runs and jumps across this impossible landscape.
Galvatron says it was “liberating” to create a stage persona for someone else during the making of The Artful Escape. “I can’t pull off the cat suit, ya know? I’d love to but I don’t have the pins for it. A big part of the game is the player crafting that persona themselves so we tried to accommodate for as much weirdness and wonderfulness as possible. It was a great journey coming up with the costumes, backstories and planets.”
There are also the big, boss battle-esque jam sessions. Alas, I didn’t get to see one in action during my preview session, but these call-and-response sequences are all set in their own musical key consisting of five notes, says Galvatron, and they sound properly mad. “One’s like a crazy fish bird monkey monster that flies up through space and you chase it and jam with it,” he says. “They’re really big musical set pieces that, musically, were extremely difficult to design, […] but I’m really excited to see what people think of those. I feel like we’ve arranged the call and response jams in a way that feels very powerful.” Again, it is possible to get these wrong in the moment, but the only repercussion you’ll face is a disgusted bristle from your fellow jammer. “You do need fail states, because you want people to have some challenge with your platforming, but it doesn’t really lean on that stuff,” says Galvatron.
From the sound of things, though, the jam bosses are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the electrifying concoction of sights and sounds Galvatron has in store for us. On the music side, he tells me that each area of the game will have its own distinct musical tone, which will morph and change as the game goes on. “The Heliotromms is that real, like, Bill & Ted vibe, and then in the world you go to next, there’s less distortion, more ethereal, more David Gilmore, kinda Pink Floyd. Then it goes a little crazier in one of the last worlds where it’s like Talking Heads.”
While the game has branching dialogue options that let you change things like your stage persona’s name and what you yell out into the mic, Galvatron says these choices are “more in the Kentucky Route Zero sense,” letting you add tone and flavour to Francis' character rather than affecting the actual story.
“We made way too much music,” he laughs, admitting this is partly the reason why the game’s taken so long to finish (that, and “learning how to make video games,” he adds). “[The music] ranges from everything like big symphonic stuff all the way down to terrible jazz. We [also] recorded a whole folk album [for the history of the game and Francis’ famous uncle], we used every kind of synth that I can think of… It was an example in excess. It was like Def Leppard in the studio in the 80s, just taking ten months to do a guitar solo. Don’t tell Annapurna that!”
No doubt about it, Galvatron’s enthusiasm for the game is infectious, and everything I saw and heard during my preview session has left me crying for an encore ahead of its final release. Of course, if you were to don your big skeptic shades for a moment, it’s entirely possible that The Artful Escape’s intoxicating ambition may end up collapsing in on itself. 30 minutes of hands-off time with the game just isn’t long enough to make a proper call on it, and I suspect the strength of its underlying story of self-discovery, chasing your dreams, and overcoming your own moments of personal stage fright will be key in making this escape a truly great one.
