didn't get very far but eh, not really for me. came into it expecting it to be more like warioland in its level design but focuses too much on the combos and jittery movement for me to really get into. wanted more explore and less sweat. more funny transformation shit and less climb up every wall and crash into every ceiling like a dumbass. music kinda sucked too, which is pretty inexcusable for something trying to be a wario spiritual successor. except the chase music, that was pretty good. will def come back to sometime in the (hopefully) near future!

Pizza Tower absolutely rules. It's almost too much at times; the visceral speeds that you can reach make the levels impossible to read.

By holding down one button, you break out into a run. Run for long enough, and you begin to charge, defeating any enemies in your way. Charge for long enough, and your speed begins to increase further and further.

Keep the momentum going by diving off a ledge to reach the ground faster. Not fast enough? Cancel the dive into a ground slam that can maintain your speed if you land on a slope. Scale walls by jumping onto them or starting from a slope, or charge up a super jump to convert your speed upwards. Guess what, you can cancel that into a dash too!

Your movement abilities are absurd, with many aspects to learn and master. It's no wonder that the most exciting parts of Pizza Tower are the ends of it's stages. After combing the level for secrets and getting acquainted to it's unique mechanics, you have one goal. Get out as soon as possible.

Your heart rate rises, the music starts kicking in. Enemies start spawning in waves but it doesn't matter, you're too focused on making sure you don't run into a wall or pit to care.

Those levels by the way? Great as well. The best feature unique mechanics that encourage said forward momentum. There are a few gimmicks that cause a little bit of stopping and starting, but if anything the slightly slower pace can be a relief.

The game absolutely knows how absurd the movement is too. Beyond a first playthrough, even beyond collecting all of the secrets, the game challenges you to push your skill even further.

I'm super happy this turned out the way it did. I'm going to be playing it for a good while longer.

I didn't think I would live to see the day that this game finally came out in full. Finally getting to play this on my own and see the fruit from the creators' labor is something magical. "Wario-Likes" have always been a soft spot in my heart, the speedrun oriented exploration and combat with combos is a massive combination of the fighting/beat em' up and collectathon/platformer is something gorgeous. I would love to see a future where a new "Wario-Like" is released every year for the masses to experience.

Can't wait for Anton Blast

Oh man, this game was a BLAST. Simple plot, satisfying controls, wacky art, extreme speed and a humorous attitude to top it off! Pizza Tower may be a little short with 20 levels and 5 bosses but every inch of the world is stuffed full with details, secrets and sweet mechanics. There are TONS of achievements that I'm excited to try so there's still plenty for your average completionist. Wario-likes have proven there's still a lot of potential in this formula, so definitely give Pizza Tower a go!

EDIT: I have obtained all achievements and P-ranks. While the elusive Ps were a 'P'ain in the ass it was extremely satisfying to pull them off. I find myself keep wanting to come back to this game even though there is nothing left to do, and I think that speaks volumes for Pizza Tower's addicting mach speed gameplay!

GOD what a banger. I knew of this due to memes and shit but had no clue it was coming out until like 2 weeks before hand. I got it basically day one and HOT DAMN this game is good. You could say it controls like ass and is ugly but I think the slipperiness and MS Paint style are all apart of the charm. It's also just the right length. 10 minute stages are risky business but there's just enough to where it doesn't feel dragged out. I will say though, I hate that the little guys were mandatory. Not even just mandatory but like 90/95 mandatory. Way, way too much. But everything else, the music, humor, gameplay, etc. is just perfect. A god tier game.

If there's one thing I love about Wario Land 4, it's the meticulous level design. And the genius use of mechanics. And the incredible variety. And the thematically perfect subversion of traditional platformers. And-

Anyway, back to level design. It's a game where pretty much every little detail of the level is perfectly considered, and I think the game being slower paced than many other 2D platformers helps the level design feel truly compact. The slow pace was almost certainly due to the small screen size, but it also meant the designers had to engage the player in more thoughtful ways, where players had to consider their surroundings in ways that you're not really going to do in a game series like Sonic the Hedgehog.

What does this have to do with Pizza Tower? Well, after playing the demo, it felt kinda like a mix between Wario Land and Sonic the Hedgehog, which, as I have established, are on pretty much opposite sides of how you can design platformers. As fun as the demo was, I wasn't sure if the game could actually blend these two polar opposites together in a cohesive way. After playing the game though, I think it did a surprisingly fantastic job at it.

The way the game handles difficulty is one of its best aspects, and a great way that it blends these two series together into something completely new. Just like in Wario Land, Peppino can't die in most cases, and hits are penalized by losing points and, often, a waste of time. This works extremely well in a speed-based platformer for two reasons. One, it keeps makes the pacing feel great for any player, and two, you obviously don't want to go slower in a speed game, especially in the escape sections where actual death is often only a matter of time.

This could trivialize any sense of difficulty aside from a player's intrinsic desire to improve, but the game actually requires you to rescue nearly of the Toppins to fight the bosses, which are analogous to the Teensies from Rayman. So basically, players are gonna have to do pretty well at all the levels anyway.

This could hurt the pacing in another way; If a player only barely scrapes by with Toppin requirements, they may have to replay a lot of levels before the climax. I only had to replay one to reach the requirement though, and I have to say, I don't know if I would've minded replaying more levels, because the one I replayed actually enhanced my experience.

This is because the game is far more difficult when you try to achieve the elusive P Ranks, or just try to improve your ranking in general. On replays, you get the opportunity to do the escape sequences twice in a row, which are consistently some of the most exhilarating moments of any game I've played.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. What about the bosses? These are the other times Peppino can actually die, and can be pretty difficult. However, they're mostly pretty fun, although maybe a bit disconnected from the core game. It likely would've been possible for the game to have really challenging bosses while also keeping its core systems. If, for example, the game had a time limit for bosses and the bosses used transformation attacks that wasted your time. However, the bosses were still fun so I'm not too upset.

Speaking of transformations, the mechanics work a lot better than I would've expected. All of them are introduced well and are mostly simple enough to immediately understand. A few feel a bit disruptive, such as the bombs, but most promote the fast-paced nature of the game, and many have that true to Wario Land style of 'power-up or detriment based on context'. By far the best example of this is the level (Excuse my language) 'Oh Shit!', which may be the best level in the game. And while a few of these transformations are analogous to those of Wario Land, they're all pretty distinct and well done.

I could certainly see someone not liking the visuals, but I though they were excellent, and the 90s cartoon style greatly enhanced the energetic nature of the game. The animation and attention to detail is incredible, but I noticed that at least one stage has no parallax scrolling with the background, and I think this may be universal. It's not a big deal though, and is really only noticeable in stages with more expansive backgrounds.

Audiowise, the sound effects and soundtrack is great. However, I wish the soundtrack leaned more into either stereotypical Italian music or 90s Cartoon music instead of Funk and Rock. It would've added to the thematic unity a bit more.

Everything considered, I love this game. It's truly something special, and one of the few spiritual successors to truly stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the game it succeeded. Dare I say, it's a Masterpiece. 10/10.

...By the way, you unlock a costume if you keep Peppino in the dark for about a minute on the menu screen. Go do that right now. Actually, maybe wait until night to do it.

This game is like beautiful, cheesy pizza. Hard to stop eating and it invokes memories of playing Warioland. Only through the 2nd floor of the game and I think this is an easy 5/5. Incredible soundtrack, art and gameplay. This game has a lot of character and I highly recommend playing a demo or looking at a trailer if you are even a little interested.

Edit: Finished the game and I am going to play more for achievements/for fun. My initial opinion still stands, I also like how each floor of the tower is themed and that each level feels unique.

Warioland on crack. The number of times I was truly sweating not knowing if I'd zoom to the finishline just in time were too many to count. It rides that fine line between just difficult enough to keep you on your toes but I never lost a level completely (aside from WAR) so can't say it's overly hard.
The style alone is impressive to say the least, the level design is ALWAYS fresh utilizing a new game mechanic to constantly mix it up.
Add onto this the eclectic cast of characters and just WTF style humor and it really is a modern classic in the making.
Can't wait to see the speedruns that this game was built for.

Fast-paced movement, funky and exhilarating soundtrack, really cool hand-drawn style, and very silly tone that doesn't take it self seriously and it's great for it. The animations and expressions are so good on not only our hero Peppino but every single moving thing from the bosses, npcs, and even minor enemies that you might see for a second as you zip past them, murdering them and trying to keep your combo alive. Beat it in 5 hours and loved all of it.
My only problem is that it takes a bit of practice to get the movement down and until then you will be crashing into walls and enemies. Once I got used to it though I was completing levels really fast and completing past levels even faster. Looking forward to seeing speedruns of this game.

You can go fast in Pizza Tower. Like really fast! I guess not fast enough because my warped little brain wanted to go even faster. I found myself instinctively holding the left or right button on the d-pad with an iron grip so tight my thumb started to hurt. All in the vain attempt to gain more speed.

I've been following this game on and off since 2019 and I'm so glad it turned out as great as it did. I played Wario Land 4 in preparation for this game and boy, its influences are very apparent. The most obvious one being the rush mechanic. In Wario Land 4, jumping on a frog switch activates a timer and you have to race back to the level's starting point. What this also does is change the level's environment; paths originally closed off by blocks are now open, and vice versa. In Pizza Tower this activates after attacking Pillar John and is known as Pizza Time. Just like in Wario Land 4, it's a race to the beginning, but along the way you can do some backtracking for collectables or secrets that you might have missed on the initial run through, the clock is always ticking though! The whole thing is quite exhilarating; making it back to the beginning with just a few seconds to spare is so gratifying.

To aid you in achieving breakneck speed you have a pretty sizable move set, a lot of these pretty much taken from Wario Land. You have the continuous dash, grab, ground pound, and all that fun stuff, but unlike Wario, you have a super jump which can be performed by holding up while in a continuous dash state at max speed. You can do a sick ass piledriver by pressing down in midair while you're holding onto an enemy. Wario doesn't have that (he has a piledriver in Wario World)! Defeating an enemy starts a combo which is maintained by defeating more enemies and collecting toppings scattered around the levels. Defeating enemies also raises your heat meter which increases the points given out; additionally, this makes enemies more aggressive, so make sure you don't drop your combo! Oh wait, you have this taunt which is totally useless right? Well, this totally useless taunt can turn into a screen wipe after accumulating enough points, indicated by you having an electric aura around you. The taunt can act as a parry for enemy attacks and projectiles as well.

This game is just fun and that's really all I can say about it. It's a video game ass video game and I'm all here for it. Side note for anyone playing, after the animated intro sequence, you see Peppino sitting in a dark room. Let this idle for about 40 seconds for a cool reward!

I love games that are stupid fast, difficult, and with a lot of room for mastery. Pizza tower strikes that niche spot on, and has quickly become an all-time favorite for me.

Let's start with presentation, because hoo boy is it great. The ms-paint style linework with twitchy and over-the-top animation is so satisfying to watch. The stages all have fun themes with a ton of variance, enemies and background details are full of life and detail, and it all brings such a strong and great personality to the game. The cutscenes are fun, boss intros and animations are stupid, and I love it. The music is top notch stuff, with a ton of musical variety and it's pretty much all great. I especially liked the escape themes, War, The final boss theme, the final escape theme, and oregano desert. But there's really not any duds among the group.

The controls are excellent, and can feel a bit twitchy at first but really come together as you get better. Soon enough I was blasting through levels using all my moves in tandem and it makes just replaying a random level a joy. I'm definitely going to speedrun this game after I 100% it.

The level design is packed with weird ideas that are memorable and fun, with a constant stream of gimmicks that get used really well. Finding secrets is quite fun too, and going for P-ranks (where you have to do everything in a level while never dropping your combo) has been one of the most fun things I've done in a video game.

Pizza Tower is a masterpiece. I love every single thing about this game, and I will likely keep coming back to this game every once in a while for a long time. I recommend this to pretty much anyone who enjoys having fun.

Pizza Tower is a game that I’ve been eagerly anticipating for almost five years. As a major fan of Wario Land 4, Pizza Tower looked like the spiritual successor that I’ve been searching for since I originally played the game at a very young age on the Game Boy Advance. After having finished the final product, in all honesty, it doesn’t quite feel like the Wario Land 4 sequel that I’ve been wanting. That’s not at all a bad thing, though.

While it definitely takes inspiration from various gameplay elements as well as the zany nature of Wario Land, Pizza Tower is its own beautiful, hilarious and extremely chaotic platforming experience like nothing I’ve ever really played before. I love pretty much everything about this game; from its tight and focused controls, to it’s fun and varied level design, to its bombastic soundtrack, to its phenomenally designed characters, to the utterly insane and incomprehensible level of detail that went into every single aspect of this game’s art, animations, and overall visual design.

With that being said though, that amount of detail can sometimes be a little TOO great. To the point where everything on the screen can be a bit overwhelming on the eyes. Plus, you can sometimes miss gameplay elements of a level that you’re supposed to interact with, or not even realize that you are interacting with something in a level, simply because the game doesn’t convey it well and it just blends in with the extremely detailed background. This is my main criticism of the game, and in all honesty, it’s a minor one. It just gives me an excuse to go back and replay it some more to catch the things that I missed during my initial playthrough.

This game was well worth the five year wait. Very rarely was I not grinning and giggling to myself like an idiot while I played it. The fast paced, occasional anxiety inducing gameplay sends a huge rush of adrenaline through my system. I love it, I can’t get enough of it, and I can’t wait to play it some more. This is absolutely one of the best indie titles I’ve ever played, as well as one of my new favorite games