Looks like I haven’t reviewed any new indie games from this year yet, which is surprising. I’m gonna have to start cracking down on the latest releases and show people I played something else besides Octopath Traveler 2 and Tears of The Kingdom in 2023. I did play Dredge a few weeks ago, but I plan to save it for the next Brief Looks collection which I plan to do soon. Instead, let’s review the big one. The indie release that a lot of people have probably heard of, because it blew up like an atom bomb and now they can’t stop seeing memes about it. Pizza Tower, another 2D platformer with personality and inspired by a classic series that hasn’t gotten a new entry in more than half a decade. The inspiration being the Wario Land, which honestly I have no knowledge on. Never played a Wario Land game, but from what I’m getting is that these games are about bashing your way through levels, reaching the end goal, and then rushing back to the start within a specific amount of time. It’s a unique formula, because for linear platformers you usually reach the end and the level is over. Here you have to have some idea of what you just navigated so that traveling back to the beginning of a stage isn’t so hard, but then the game pulls a twist on you and now you have to navigate the stage differently. You get this rush feeling, because you should be familiar with the stage but you’re panicking as the timer continues ticking down.
Pizza Tower is trying to serve as a spiritual successor to the Wario Land series, but it did enough to form its own identity. It has an artstyle and animation similar to that of old 90s cartoons, and I’m not just talking old school Spongebob Squarepants. I mean Ren and Stimpy, Ed Edd & Eddy, the original Animaniacs, Rocko’s Modern Life, and all the other shows I never grew up on. The game is trying to be a homage to that generation of cartoonishtry, and it’s trying to crack up as many laughs as possible along the way. The game utilizes pixelated sprites, but it’s the style and fluidity of the animation that gives it the unique look. It feels like a Super Nintendo game, but it also feels like those old Saturday morning cartoons. The ones you woke up early for just so you can spend all day watching them. Pouring a bowl of your favorite cereal, gathering your siblings, and chuckling together as Spongebob ripped his pants again. You can tell I didn’t watch the other shows. Those loving moments are long gone, but thankfully there’s Pizza Tower to help remind yourself of those simple days. Anyways, due to how ambitious Pizza Tower was the game spent a hefty amount of time in the oven as with many other independently developed games. It was mainly developed by one person, McPig, and he formed his own studio named Tour de Pizza. He started sharing footage of his project back in 2018, and the same year he also released 2 demos. He would also give out early access builds to those willing to pay for them through his Patreon, and the money he raised would be used to help with development. Things are going smoothly and eventually he’s able to publish the complete version earlier this year. Just in time before Triple A releases like Dead Space Remake came out.
The game blew up for how different it was from other indie games and it quickly became one of the best of 2023, at least to a lot of people. Will say, the fanbase is a little crazy. If it’s anything we’ve learned from Undertale and Omori is that bad people can ruin great things, and also create some really messed up fanart. I haven’t seen Pizza Tower face the hardships of the other two, yet, but why bring it up when it contributes absolutely nothing to the review? I’ve been following the development of Pizza Tower for a long time and I thought it looked like a promising product. It sat on my radar and it wasn’t until recently I bought the game and played through the entirety of it. Is Pizza Tower really that good and does it deserve to be the best indie game of the year? Well I’m not gonna say it’s the best indie game of the year, but I will say the hype is well deserved as this is a really good game. Exciting to play from beginning to end, and I can’t wait to talk about it to you all. Today we’ll talk about why I love Pizza Tower and why it deserves your attention.
Story
We follow Peppino Spaghetti, the chef and owner of a pizzeria lying in the middle of nowhere. Business has not been great lately as the restaurant is deprived of customers, and Peppino sits miserably with a stack of bills on the counter. With a thousand yard stare he gazes off into the distance wondering if anything interesting will happen, while his good friend Gustavo sweeps the kitchen floor. Surprisingly, out of nowhere comes a floating pizza face with a mustache, and he has sinister plans for the pizzeria owner. He has a tower perched atop a nearby cliff and he is planning to blow up the pizzeria using a laser cannon. He zooms and Peppino no longer has the thousand yard stare of a man with nothing to do. His entire business is about to be blown to bits by a pizza face! You can’t tell that to the cops, they’ll think you’re crazy or even worse! So the scared Peppino along with Gustavo dashes off to the nearby tower. There are five floors to the tower with the top floor being where Pizza Face hides away. Each floor houses gates leading to different worlds within the tower, and ruled by one of the many maniacs Pizza Face hired to stop Peppino from ascending up the tower. It’s all up to Peppino to fight his way through the tower, ascend, and prevent Pizza Face from blowing up his business. That’s it. That’s the entire story! Nothing more, nothing less. Pizaza Tower was never really a game about story though. In fact, it didn’t really need one. It’s just a fun, exciting platformer where you blast through stages and ask what unique gimmick the game will throw at you next. A game that prioritizes gameplay.
Gameplay
Pizza Tower is a 2D platformer focused on momentum, flipping between character actions, and storming your way through levels. You enter a floor, select one of the many levels available, and start navigating through them like your a-typical 2D platformer. Along the way you’ll encounter different foes and you’ll have to dispatch them if they prove to be a hazard. You can jump on an enemy’s head, but what you’ll mainly be doing most of the time is grabbing them and launching them into surfaces. Whether that’s throwing them forward, above, body slamming them, and into groups of other enemies if you can line the throw up right. Peppino has a basic walk which is pretty fast to be honest with you, and then he can run. Running will allow him to clear large gaps and run up walls. Jumping off said walls will allow you to wall jump and even cling onto other walls if you maintain movement speed. Running for a set amount of time will charge the run and let Peppino dash. Breaking through blocks that normally can’t be broken using grabs, and killing any enemies that you manage to dash into. There’s so many moves you can use at any time and transitioning between them is very easy. Wall run, jump off, dive towards the ground, then roll through a small gap, jump out of said roll, grab an enemy in the air, body slam them into the ground, and then do something else. Running around at full speed will take a bit of time to get used to, because due to the controls you might slam into a lot of walls. Once you do get it down, Pizza Tower becomes a really fun platformer to play and master. There’s even a point system that builds up overtime as you collect pizza toppings, defeat enemies, or locate one of five Topplings scattered across each level. You are gonna want to find as many Topplings as possible, because you’ll need them to progress through the game. You see there’s this landlord who is willing to help Peppino on his journey so that he can get back to paying the bills for his pizzeria, and he helps by opening up the boss gates to each floor. However, the boss gates have to be purchased using money you racked up from levels and money is only obtained by finding the Topplings. So you always want to be on the lookout for cages that need to be busted, but finding them isn't hard as a considerable amount are lying open in plain sight.
You can also find eyes hidden throughout every level to access bonus challenges and locate the also very well hidden locksmith to open a hidden door to obtain a collectible. There’s secrets everywhere, and you are always rewarded for checking the right places. Once you reach the end of a level you’ll encounter this grumpy pillar, and once the pillar is knocked down you’ll initiate Pizza Time. The level will start falling apart and you have to navigate your way back to the start of the level within a specific amount of time. Enemies will spawn in rapidly, and the way you navigate through a level will change. Sometimes the passageways you took before will be closed up, and new passageways with all new hazards will open instead. It’s a rush to the exit, because what happens when the timer is up is not instantaneous death. Pizza Face will appear and follow you around quickly. You can attempt to avoid him, but doing so is near impossible due to the hazards and walls that surround you. If the sinister Pizza Face touches you once you die. You are forced out of the level and have to start again from the beginning. That’s why you have to get really good at character maneuvers and the layouts of levels. Anyways, once you open up the boss gate you’ll face a fierce foe with unique attack patterns you have to memorize. Each boss has two phases and must be hit eight times each. You have six hit points, and you can gain one hit point back if you hit the boss two times to make them drop a chef hat. Run out and you’ll be defeated. This is when you have to start taking things slowly and be careful with combat. Beat the boss, get the key to the next floor, and progress. Besides that there’s nothing else I can really say. Hopefully you can reach the top of the tower and beat a crazed pizza.
Thoughts
Pizza Tower is an awesome indie platformer that manages to constantly surprise you. Part of the reason why could be its level variety and the idea of backing levels. Instead of being like Mario and having worlds with specific themes, Pizza Tower just throws its hands into the air and asks what bizarre thing they can crame in next. A level where you use taxis to get to different parts of the stage. An ice level where you change the temperature in the room to melt blockades. A level where you occasionally transform into a ghost to move through gratters, or have to switch to Gustavo to solve a problem Peppino can’t handle. Oh yeah, there’s these gimmick levels like the one where you can transform into a knight or the just mentioned ghost, but these mechanics are never used beyond the stages they were featured in. Besides the shotgun, any level with a unique mechanic is used once and gone for good afterwards. It makes each stage distinct from each other and shows the creativity of the developers when it comes to ideas. I’m not really good at Pizza Tower like everybody else as I found myself slamming into a lot of walls, but I will say every hazard and platforming section is carefully put together. The game knows when to take things slowly, and when to kick things into full gear by making you zoom through stages. This is the fastest game I’ve played since Sonic Mania, and when you trigger Pizza Time that’s when the game makes you feel like a speedrunning master by having everything laid out precisely. It’s so good, okay!? Plus the music for Pizza Time slaps as it hypes you up and gets you to focus more.
I already stated this, but the many moves and tricks you can initiate at any time are vast but so vast that it becomes confusing. It’s just enough, and while the running controls take a bit of time to get you used to I will say overall they are smooth as butter. Which is exactly what you want for a game that focuses around speed and pinpoint precision. The boss fights are really fun too as they focus around cool gimmicks and every two hits they swap a new attack pattern you have to adapt to. My favorite aspect about Pizza Tower, as with a majority of people, is probably the art and animation. It’s pixel art, but everything was designed to look like a 1990s cartoon. With the characters having a variety of expressions and that look when it comes to movement. You know, that look where it’s very smooth but there’s not so many frames per second. I’m not that very good when it comes to describing animation, but you get what I mean. The colors of everything, and how they manage to both complement and not complement each other at the same time. The game has a scoring system at the end of every stage, and while I don’t see much use in it as what you actually need is money to progress I do think it’s nice to have. It encourages replaying stages to score more points, find all the Topplings, get better at navigating back to the beginning of a level, and getting a higher score. There’s a low skill requirement but a high skill ceiling, and it makes Pizza Tower a highly replayable platformer. The game is quite short and only took me five hours to beat, but that’s a good run time as any time further than that would have made the game feel bloated. Plus you unlock an extra mode after beating the final boss which I’m assuming is the hard mode of Pizza Tower. I strongly recommend this game, you can easily tell that by now. It’s not a 10/10 though. 10/10 is something I give to games I really love or titles I recommend no matter what your preference in video games is. However, Pizza Tower is great and definitely worth your time. In the end I am going to give Pizza Tower a 9.5/10 for excellence at best.
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