Pizza Tower Review

(This was originally published on Medium on February 14, 2023)

Story from Chris Taylor

Pizza Tower is a fast-paced side-scrolling 2D platformer inspired by the Wario Land series of games. Pizza Tower also appears to have taken heavy inspiration from the old-school Sonic and Mario games based on the various gameplay elements offered. The developers also took a great deal of inspiration from cartoons that aired before the current millennium and centered around the graphic art style Pizza Tower Employs. Let’s see if the gameplay formula creates the fun experience the developers were hoping for.

Art style

Pizza Tower’s art style is based on late 80’s and early 90’s cartoons. Shows such as Rug Rats, Doug, and Dr Katz are clearly the main inspiration behind the developers chosen art style. Character animations in Pizza Tower are extremely smooth and well done, no jittering, hiccups or frame skips are present, even when experiencing the fastest bits of gameplay. Backgrounds are nicely drawn, and details such as stairs and walls are easy for players to detect in most instances.

Story

In Pizza Tower, players take control of an Italian Chef named Peppino Spaghetti, who is surprisingly fast, agile, and powerful despite being middle-aged and overweight. Peppino must climb the dreaded Pizza Tower’s five floors and multiple levels on each, gathering food toppings while simultaneously grabbing, throwing, and punching monsters in his path. Players can leisurely explore the tower or go for the highest score possible in the quickest time possible.

Gameplay

Gameplay in Pizza Tower consists of running, sprinting, jumping, punching, climbing, sliding, rolling, grabbing, and belly-flopping, all in the name of exploring and defeating enemies. As I previously hinted, players have a couple of ways to play Pizza Tower. First, players can explore every nook and cranny, attempting to find the secrets of each level, or if they want to take a more Sonic the Hedgehog approach to things, they can run through each stage at lightning speeds attempting to get the highest combo and score for every level.

Level Design

The level design in Pizza Tower is very reminiscent of the original Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System. While the levels can be fun for the more moderate-paced player and those who love exploring, the fast-paced nature of the scoring system causes pacing issues when trying to go as fast as possible. I found myself having to constantly retry jumps and hangs because certain parts of the level were not considered when speed running was the focus.

Controls

The controls for Pizza Tower were the one thing that regularly got on my nerves when playing. The basic running and jumping controls were fantastic. However, the developers added grabbing enemies, wall jumping and grabbing, and a whole host of other mechanics. Most of the added mechanics, I felt, didn’t have a good ‘muscle memory’ or a comfortable button placement on the controller. It did become exceedingly frustrating when attempting to jump and grab a wall only to bounce off said wall. A future patch with controller customization can solve this issue.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack of Pizza Tower is by far one of the best soundtracks in recent years. The music in Pizza Tower is highly energetic, and each song perfectly fits with the stylized art and corresponding levels. I would say the only game soundtrack that might have Pizza Tower beat is the Angry Video Game Nerd game soundtrack which was a bit more modern though still nostalgic. Although fans of old-school 16-bit music will be in heaven with Pizza Tower.

Conclusion

Overall, Pizza Tower is a fun platformer that harkens back to the days of the Genesis and Super Nintendo consoles. Controls for Pizza Tower could be better but fixed with a future patch and level layouts that will give players a remembrance of times long past. However, the awesome early-era cartoon art style mixed with music that gives all older generations of players their feelings of childhood makes Pizza Tower a fantastic game that should be played regardless of a player’s age.

Final Score — 8.0