Imagine that one abstract painting you’ve seen in a pizza parlor. You know the one, with the odd shapes and the elongated faces. Now, imagine that concept in video game form, except high on adrenaline, with gameplay that’s easy to learn, but with tons of challenges to test you. That game is called Pizza Tower.
Let’s paint our own picture and set the premise for Pizza Tower. Peppino is a chef who runs a pizza parlor deep in debt. He is approached by a pie-like entity (aptly named Pizzaface) who threatens his restaurant with a giant laser. Chasing his foe to the titular pizza tower, Peppino crawls through various stages to reach the top, battling through all sorts of unexpected environments, from a city crawling with pigs to a fantasy forest! It’s weird, it’s wild … it’s Wario-esque.
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In the same way that Mario revolutionized the platforming genre, Wario evolved it with comedic characters, addictive gameplay, and a sleek animation style.While Mario’s universally acepted style has made him Nintendo’s poster child, Wario embraces absurdity and humor, setting him apart from his plumber counterpart. Wario charges headfirst into obstacles and smashes them asunder when his dash gains momentum.
Peppino Spaghetti, the main character of Pizza Tower, has a similar moveset, yet his feels more unbridled. Think of the cartoon Ren and Stimpy, or Spongebob SquarePants, or other ’90s Nicktoons, and you’ll get an idea of this game’s aesthetic. Peppino captures the erratic movement and behaviors of those cartoons — When he runs, his feet become wheels, and once he gains full speed, his body distorts from the rush. He can climb walls and body slam enemies. What sets him apart from Wario is that his body can morph and transform in various ways. He can turn into a ghost and phase through … cheese graters? Sure, why not. He can be encased in a suit of armor that causes him to plow through enemies while sliding down a hill, and he can even utilize a corpse as a skateboard! (I know, it’s weird, but so is this game.) This transformation persists until you come across a priest who can change you to your “normal” form.
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Pizza Tower favors exploration and speed. The hand-drawn animation style looks gorgeous and compliments the accessible gameplay. When Peppino gains speed, you can string together wall-climbing and sliding, never truly stopping. There is a plethora of replay value in the levels, with cleverly-hidden secrets and challenges to test your mettle. Throughout the levels, ther’s never a moment that feels copied and pasted, and it seems like there’s always some new trick or trap to learn. It could be an environmental hazard that is only bypassed by dashing across it, or having your head attached to a chicken that grants a double-jump and can latch onto poultry-shaped hooks in midair.
Adding to Pizza Tower’s replayablity is the scoring system. When Peppino grabs or knocks out an enemy, it fills up a combo meter, which continues to grow as you take out even more baddies. Seeing the bar on the combo meter rise comes with a huge rush of dopamine, as you race across the map to find more enemies to pummel. Platforming doesn’t feel like a slog at all, so long as you remember the correct outputs for sliding, bobbing, weaving, and dashing.
At a certain point, there is a great stone barrier with a face on it. Destroying this barrier activates Pizza Time!, making Peppino dash back to the beginning of each level. There is also an optional gateway, fittingly shaped like a pizza, that you can enter near the exit portal, sending you to the back to the location where you first knocked down that pillar and allowing for a higher score gain.
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On the topic of scoring, there are several ranks you can achieve, up to the coveted P rank. This perfect rating can be met by collecting all the secret rooms, which take the form of eyes, and discovering each level’s treasure. Even when you achieve P rank, there are still challenges, or Chef Tasks, for you to tackle, like avoiding being kicked by cows, or surfing on every corpse in a level. The game is not overall difficult; rather, it prioritizes keeping the player moving forward. The only time you can reach a game over screen is during boss fights. Let Peppino take too muchof a beating and your helpful guide will just guilt trip you with a threatening message saying “if you hurt Peppino too many times, you can go to hell!” Wario games also have this biting criticism of the player, but they’ve got nothing on Pizza Tower.
Each subsection of the pizza tower is unique and covers different themes. Section 2 has a western vibe, while section 4 is inspired by the jump scare-horror of Five Nights at Freddy’s. Each boss’s attack pattern is easily memorized, but it takes a few deaths to retain them. The Vigilante, the cheesy cowboy boss of Section 2, has you equipped with a revolver to fight him, while Section 3’s The Noise, Peppino’s rival, has a moveset similar to the former pizza chef. Ever present in the upper-right corner is a monitor of Peppino’s face, which changes to reflect the action he is taking, bending distortedly as he dashes, or humorously displaying him as a muscular ’80s action hero when he acquires a shotgun.
Pizza Tower deserves its recognition as a spiritual successor to Wario Land, doing justice to that genre of funky platforming, and standing up there with other modern platform masterpieces like Ori and the Will of the Wisps.
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