The Artful Escape director on making the Guns N' Roses of video games
Danielle Partis
News Editor
Thursday 24th March 2022
It's just past 9am in Melbourne when Johnny Galvatron hops into our Zoom call. He's wearing some pretty slick leopard trim shades, as though the very concept of being sentient at such a time offends him. Otherwise, he looks and sounds stoked to be here, and it's that chaotic rockstar energy that has propelled his debut game, The Artful Escape, to critical acclaim in the last year.
Even at a glance, The Artful Escape is brimming with rock and roll vigour, and Galvatron brings handfuls of that from his past life as a musician. He tells us about his time spent on tour with Transformers-inspired rock band, The Galvatrons, and the time he spent on the road.
"I signed to Warner Bros when I was quite young, and went off on tour to live that crazy rock and roll lifestyle," he tells us. "That was fun for a little while, but it wasn't really for me. I hated touring, I hated the whole thing, even now when I see a nine-seat tour van, I throw up."
"This is my first and only game. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I got two grey nose hairs from it"
Though touring live shows wasn't the best fit for Galvatron, he saw a clear path into how to make it work, and took that direction from music and aimed it towards games.
"I've been quite thoughtful with the way I've approached rock and roll," he says. "I saw the angle I could come in at, and saw the kind of people I would need to impress, and saw a similar path to get into video games."
One of the most impressive parts of The Artful Escape's story is that prior to creating it, Galvatron had never made a game before. Its initial pitch began on Kickstarter in March 2016, but the game didn't reach its financial target and the
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