Pizza Tower (PC)

Peppino Spaghetti is the proprietor of a pizzeria that is a barely hanging in there, and unfortunately for this easily irritated and angered pizza chef, his woes expand beyond simple money troubles. Something called a Pizza Tower looms over his business in the distance, and one day the owner Pizzaface floats over to brag about its intent to blast Peppino’s Pizza to smithereens. Immediately losing his cool at the news, Peppino sprints over to the Pizza Tower in a frenzy, aiming to dismantle it before his business can be destroyed instead.

The first thing that will strike most players about the side-scrolling platformer Pizza Tower is its distinct art direction. Characters are illustrated with thin outlines but bodies that squash and stretch to absurd and hilarious degrees that often match their extreme emotional states. Peppino himself can find his head growing larger than his body not only to express extreme fear or anger, but just as part of his regular movements as he utilizes his whole body as a weapon. His jaws, his arms, it seems any part of him is able to stretch and grow like rubber and this animation style extends to even simple enemies as well. When Peppino dashes through levels at intense speed, it’s easy to spot the entire bodies of regular enemies scrunch up in horror at the idea of the impending collision, and despite everything being hand illustrated, there is no skimping out on granting personality and detail to even the most minor characters. While there are moments of quiet, especially when you’re navigating the danger-free Pizza Tower lobbies to enter new levels, there is a strong manic energy to the entire affair that comes from the extreme exaggeration on show. Perhaps nothing embodies this more than the television set shown in the top right of the screen which exists purely to show you Peppino’s emotional state. While it can illustrate his current active power-up at times, it does lend itself more to ensuring even if the action is moving too fast, you can see exactly how your neurotic chef is handling the many unusual and extreme situations he finds himself in.

Pizza Tower’s platforming challenges are interesting in that the nature of them essentially changes based on how far into a stage you are. When you first enter, there is actually fairly little pressure on the player. If Peppino gets hurt or falls down a bottomless pit, he’ll be just fine. Levels do have a score tracker based around collectible pizza ingredients you find and this is impacted by the damage you take, but you’re actually fairly free to suffer as much damage as you like while exploring the level. There are collectibles and secrets to find that incentivize scouring every stage, and they’re often tied to challenges that don’t need the threat of death to be a good test of your ability to control Peppino. One major part of play in Pizza Tower is building up momentum, Peppino able to smash through harder substances when going at high speeds and even able to barrel through foes who might otherwise hurt him when he’s moving too slowly. You can often build up a good amount of speed even in a small space if you have a good handle on the controls and abilities like a wall climb and super jump that sends you flying upward like a rocket are tied to accumulating and keeping momentum. Your ability to move around a space with such accommodating abilities gives you a great deal of room to search for extras, and if you simply wish to charge ahead, the level design is heavily catered towards being able to keep your speed so long as you can react in time to take the right jumps and bound off the walls properly. Even when you’re not at full speed though, Peppino has some useful attacks like a charging grab and body slam so he can handle obstacles and opposition in smaller subdued situations, a useful tool if you are trying to figure out the ins and outs of a level before you start embracing speedy play more.

You’re free to take your time going through the level at first, but soon you’ll find a living pillar you need to smash, and the moment it’s broken, a mad dash to escape begins. Often giving you around 3 minutes to go back through the level and find the exit, suddenly your life is in peril as failing to make it out in time causes Pizzaface to appear and chase you down. A loss here requires a full replay of the level and while you did spend some time learning the level on your way in, some paths are closed off or only become available during the escape sequence. Full utilization of Peppino’s navigational abilities becomes key to making your escape and sometimes there are secrets only available during this portion of a stage, adding to that intense pressure while giving this sequence more to do than just barrel towards the exit. An excellent song that embodies the energy of this sequence plays to pump you up, the game in general having a strong soundscape both in terms of backing tracks and its use of sound effects. The quirkiness found in level designs and character movements carries over towards the instrumental choices and audio sampling without getting so experimental it would lose clear melodies to attach yourself to. The unusual mixes do keep adding more to the construction of Pizza Tower’s personality, the sound effects also great at emphasizing the often elaborate effects applied to your exaggerated actions.

Pizza Tower’s strong movement options and accommodating level design certainly make the moment to moment play inherently satisfying, but the game’s selection of 19 normal levels still provide unique ideas and mechanics that blend well with those ideas. From time to time Peppino might be hit by an enemy or find an item that can change his movement options for a while. Peppino can get transformed into a ghost that has greater aerial movement, but the level knows that free flying still needs proper challenge so grabbing peppers becomes important to building up speed and during the escape sequence a fearsome specter chases you so that you need to plan your flight path well so he doesn’t have the chance to catch up. In some levels, Peppino’s friend Gustavo takes over and rides a rat named Brick through the level, still carrying over some of the speed based techniques but also utilizing new options like double jumps and a projectile attack so that new situations can be molded around such capabilities. Almost every level has some unique aspect, be it in brief ability changes for Peppino or the types of danger you come across. Sometimes you need to knock a living pizza ball around like you’re playing a game of golf, other times Mort the Chicken from a lesser known PS1 title is used to swing from hooks, and on occasion its something simpler like Pig City having a focus on taxis taking you to different level segments. Even if the specific level idea isn’t too impactful though, the wide range of enemies means there’s something novel for you to interact with, and there usually will be some special twist to a level theme to make it more diverse like the space level not only having you on board a group of olive-themed aliens’ spaceships, but crashing down on a cheesy planet for a period.

The five toppings, three secret platforming challenges, and the janitor Gerome who holds the keys for a room with a treasure give you something to uncover and collect in each stage that encourages you to understand and exploit whatever unique system or power-up is at play in that area. The toppings in particular are important as they contribute towards the cash you spend to unlock boss levels while the treasures change the game’s ending, but perhaps unsurprisingly the boss levels are just as character rich, absurd, and creative as the rest of the experience. Whether it’s the off-putting self-obsessed Pepperman or the even more unhinged reinterpretation of the old Domino’s mascot the Noid as The Noise, the bosses prove just as expressive, intricately animated, and wild as Peppino. The fights have quite a few phases they move through as well, giving time for new attacks or tricks to enter the picture that further build up the personality of your foe that makes it even more amusing when you’ll spot them lingering around Pizza Tower or having clear handprints on the already odd details of certain stage backgrounds. Peppino does have health during these battles so failure is possible, but between certain phases health will drop in fairly often. The late game areas can get particularly demanding in how tight a level’s time requirement might be or how long and strong a boss is, but it all still feels surmountable because by then you’ve had time to make fast movement second nature and perhaps even implemented special tricks like your taunts being usable as a parry.

THE VERDICT: Pizza Tower is a game that never settles down, be it through ensuring each level has a distinct feel in how its played or navigated or how its manic energy makes its thrilling to barrel your way out of a level during the tense escape sequences. The satisfying movement options already make hunting down toppings and other goodies enjoyable even when there’s no pressure on you, but boss battles, level gimmicks, and unique complications keep pushing the game in new directions that still complement the universal basics quite well. With its eccentric personality, excellent soundtrack, and delightful peculiarities, Pizza Tower keeps heading in compelling new creative directions that can get the adrenaline pumping or pique your curiosity for leisurely exploration without feeling like any part of it is disconnected.

And so, I give Pizza Tower for PC…

A FANTASTIC rating. Incredibly inventive even when many people are compelled to make quick comparisons to Wario Land 4 or the animation style of 90s Nickelodeon cartoons, Pizza Tower is both refined in that its offerings are always well implemented but deliberately unrefined in its sketchy and strange character designs and environmental art. Every level and boss is introduced with a strange title card that warps the presentation even further and yet it all feels like it matches the unhinged energy on show elsewhere, inclusions feeling purposeful rather than directionless absurdity. It isn’t afraid to upend things or fully commit to a particular direction for a stage theme and while it covers many different control changes and special gimmicks across the stages, it also gives them all room to breathe within a space designed for them so it’s not overwhelming. It keeps the core ideas pretty close as well, so even if you’re turned into a pizza box that flaps its lids like wings for a bit, you’re still able to move at high speeds and utilize the environment as a complementary tool in navigation. Peppino’s basic movement controls are great for quickly crossing sprawling levels when it’s time to escape and gives you more options than you might think when boxed in for a boss battle, and the right amount of collectibles exist to give you something to shoot for in a stage with their placement both encouraging some effort to acquire them without the better hidden secrets feeling too arcane to uncover. It’s actually a bit hard to point a finger at anything that feels like it’s poorly done, because even at its hardest it’s still easy to identify how the balance is being handled so its more about expressing player skill than some unfair barrier to progress. It’s fairly accommodating much of the time and exhilarating when that pressure is suddenly applied in a lengthy boss fight or more demanding escape sequence, so instead it’s mostly a rare enemy or small idea that wasn’t perfectly realized that feel like the only point you could easily suggest improvements for.

Pizza Tower feels like it is exactly what it wants to be, even though that is a rather unusual mix of an abundance of ideas. It has all of its fundamental movement tools down pat and yet it can fluidly integrate new concepts into them that add a fresh new mix to how you explore a level. Rather than just flitting about its wide range of ideas, Pizza Tower also spends enough time iterating on each unique twist well enough that it gets put through its paces before you move onto the next novelty. The animation and music add so much personality to it all despite the story being barely present beyond the setup, and it manages to test the player’s abilities well in ways beyond mere survival. Even if you miss something, levels are designed to be raced through and that can work to getting back in and hunting for those extra goodies or going for better level scores by stringing together ingredient collection and enemy elimination more fluidly. Pizza Tower has a strong understanding of how every part of it needs to be realized to be effective or enticing while still injecting its askew personality into those elements to build up its spectacular appeal even further.