This review contains spoilers
Some of my friends/followers may remember I was looking forward to this after having been disappointed by Sonic Mania. I went into Pizza Tower hoping for a fast, responsive, and reflex testing platformer, and I found it. Whether I’m playing casually or P-ranking, It is a highly polished near perfect platformer with an artistic appeal directly to my exact personality and culture.
Pizza Tower was made with close tuning applied to the fundamentals of how your character controls. Everything about your movement feels both slippery and responsive somehow. Once you take the greasy momentum Peppino carries into account, control becomes fluid, and you can actually use his slipperiness to preserve momentum to increase your precision and speed. Nothing about the movement feels janky in the slightest, and every possible move with every powerup in the game (there are a lot) was carefully designed with fast-paced platforming in mind. Speaking of powerups, there are 20 main levels, and the vast majority of them have a (often exclusive) powerup that gives identity to the level, while also being thematic and often completely zany and left of field, in this way it is actually very similar to the wonder flower sequences, which is very impressive for such a small team to pull off without any flaws, bugs, or jank.
Zany and left of field are an understatement when describing the story and atmosphere of this game. The lead dev and his team have an incredible sense of humour and talent for comedic pacing drawn from a clear love for 90s cartoons and modern internet irony culture. You’ve got ironic jabs at mascot horror and the laziness of jumpscares, and collab with Mort the Chicken (a hyper obscure PS1 B-game) where it’s mere existence is so asinine and unexpected it’s hilarious (a common theme for much of the game). There are also recreations of scenes from millennial toons such as Courage the Cowardly Dog, and heavy use of old-school cartoony tropes/tired jokes that hit because of how the game tries to not be taken seriously, and due to perfect integration and timing.
I’m 99% sure the Pizza Tower devs come from the same subculture of the internet I do, seeing all the references and shitposts ranging from subtle jojo and vinesauce references to obvious callback/use of spiderman 2’s pizza time line/song. And on top of that, the game even appeals to me on an artistic level personally because I also draw with a similar MSPaint, anti-alias artstyle. I feel as though this game was made party as a love letter for my tiny niche of the internet.
Pizza Tower’s music is very hit or miss. Of all the tracks, about half are forgettable and not noteworthy, and the other half are straight up iconic on the level of hollow knight and Undertale tracks for how I believe they will be regarded in video game BGM playlists S-Tier shit. They sampled the fucking microwave!!!!!
Some more thoughts just because, I thought the Gustavo & Brick show + Back to that guy gag was incredibly well done in regards to the setup and totally unexpected payoff. The shower gag was amazingly well timed. I love how you can taunt to the BPM of “Pizza Time!”. Crashing into enemies and feeling the impact through the controller and screen pausing feels so satisfying. The final boss and ending was one of the most satisfying conclusions/payoffs I’ve experienced in a vidya for a solid while, it alone bumped up the score.
I didn’t get my Au$1 per hour value I typically aim for when assessing whether something was worth it, but I believe Pizza Tower is worth a premium. I paid Au$21.71 for around 12 hours.
Pizza Tower was made with close tuning applied to the fundamentals of how your character controls. Everything about your movement feels both slippery and responsive somehow. Once you take the greasy momentum Peppino carries into account, control becomes fluid, and you can actually use his slipperiness to preserve momentum to increase your precision and speed. Nothing about the movement feels janky in the slightest, and every possible move with every powerup in the game (there are a lot) was carefully designed with fast-paced platforming in mind. Speaking of powerups, there are 20 main levels, and the vast majority of them have a (often exclusive) powerup that gives identity to the level, while also being thematic and often completely zany and left of field, in this way it is actually very similar to the wonder flower sequences, which is very impressive for such a small team to pull off without any flaws, bugs, or jank.
Zany and left of field are an understatement when describing the story and atmosphere of this game. The lead dev and his team have an incredible sense of humour and talent for comedic pacing drawn from a clear love for 90s cartoons and modern internet irony culture. You’ve got ironic jabs at mascot horror and the laziness of jumpscares, and collab with Mort the Chicken (a hyper obscure PS1 B-game) where it’s mere existence is so asinine and unexpected it’s hilarious (a common theme for much of the game). There are also recreations of scenes from millennial toons such as Courage the Cowardly Dog, and heavy use of old-school cartoony tropes/tired jokes that hit because of how the game tries to not be taken seriously, and due to perfect integration and timing.
I’m 99% sure the Pizza Tower devs come from the same subculture of the internet I do, seeing all the references and shitposts ranging from subtle jojo and vinesauce references to obvious callback/use of spiderman 2’s pizza time line/song. And on top of that, the game even appeals to me on an artistic level personally because I also draw with a similar MSPaint, anti-alias artstyle. I feel as though this game was made party as a love letter for my tiny niche of the internet.
Pizza Tower’s music is very hit or miss. Of all the tracks, about half are forgettable and not noteworthy, and the other half are straight up iconic on the level of hollow knight and Undertale tracks for how I believe they will be regarded in video game BGM playlists S-Tier shit. They sampled the fucking microwave!!!!!
Some more thoughts just because, I thought the Gustavo & Brick show + Back to that guy gag was incredibly well done in regards to the setup and totally unexpected payoff. The shower gag was amazingly well timed. I love how you can taunt to the BPM of “Pizza Time!”. Crashing into enemies and feeling the impact through the controller and screen pausing feels so satisfying. The final boss and ending was one of the most satisfying conclusions/payoffs I’ve experienced in a vidya for a solid while, it alone bumped up the score.
I didn’t get my Au$1 per hour value I typically aim for when assessing whether something was worth it, but I believe Pizza Tower is worth a premium. I paid Au$21.71 for around 12 hours.