Originally unveiled during E3 way back in June of 2017, The Artful Escape from developer Beethoven and Dinosaur and publisher Annapurna Interactive has been listed as an upcoming Apple Arcade title ever since the service’s unveiling, and officially got on our radar when a new trailer was released in November of last year. The Artful Escape is a psychedelic rock opera about a teenage guitar prodigy going on a far out adventure to discover his onstage persona ahead of his first ever live performance. Beethoven and Dinosaur’s own Johnny Galvatron, who also happens to be the lead singer of The Galvatrons and knows a thing or two about being a rock star, gave us an excellent overview of the gameplay in The Artful Escape in a video back in June which you can (and should) watch again below.

From the gorgeous colors and psychedelic visuals to the buttery guitar playing, I absolutely adore everything I’ve seen from The Artful Escape so far. Which makes it a bummer that we won’t be playing it anytime in 2020, as Annapurna Interactive has officially confirmed on Twitter today. People had been assuming it wouldn’t make 2020 as we’ve been inching closer and closer to the end of the year, but this makes it official. It’s not like The Artful Escape had a release date set in stone or anything, and in fact its trailer from E3 2017 stated that it would be “Coming when it’s damn ready." Annapurna’s tweet even goes on to say that The Artful Escape (and a couple of their other titles that’ll miss 2020) has “come together throughout the year and it’s pretty much polishing at this point!" so that makes me feel at least optimistic that we’ll be seeing the game in the earlier part of 2021. Honestly, take as long as you need because I want The Artful Escape to be absolutely perfect whenever it does arrive in my hot little hands.