The Artful Escape is a journey of musical self-discovery presented as a 2D side-scrolling platformer with very forgiving mechanics. The player controls the character Francis Vendetti, a folk musician, who struggles with the legacy of his famous uncle Jason Vendetti. While trying to find his own voice, he is whisked away by a being called Lightman to several dimensions in space with psychedelic environments.
A large part of the game consists of exploration, moving through the environment and talking to characters. In the general platform levels Jason can (double) jump and play a cosmic guitar to interact with the environment and light it up. There are no enemies, but only some small obstacles such as gaps that need to be avoided. When dropping down the game restarts right away. There are also no lives or a health system.
At some points of the game a type of "boss fight" needs to be done through a musical jam with large creatures. Five different parts light up and Francis need to repeat them in the correct order Simon Says-style to create sounds, but with room for some experimentation in length and timing.
