♪ When Peppino runs and cries,
And you're never out of tries,
That's amore~ ♪
This game is incredible. Straight from the oven of a person who thought "What if I made my own Wario Land 4 and made it just as insane?" If you're familiar at all with Wario Land 4, you'll immediately be able to draw comparisons, from the abstract level design and art style to the insanely well made soundtrack.
You play as Peppino, a pizza shop owner who must now climb the titular Pizza Tower so that Pizza Face, an evil Pizza, doesn't blow Peppino's pizza shop to smithereens. If the word "pizza" doesn't start sounding strange to you now, give it some time, I'm not done using it yet.
The gameplay loop for Pizza Tower is simple; go through stages in each zone, collect enough cash in each zone to unlock the boss door, fight the area boss, repeat. The real sauce of this game is how each stage has you frantically searching for ingredients that net you a total amount of cash on level completion. Peppino's moveset is oozing with flavor, having a sprint, bash, wall climb, ground pound, dive, and even a Metroid shine spark because, yes, every 2D game needs a Metroid shine spark. This doesn't even count some stages that have gimmick abilities like spicy breath, rockets you can fly on, bubbles, and so much more. These stage specific abilities help in giving each stage their own identity among the various zones, with some abilities being as absurd as a flying chicken companion based on an old 3D PS1 platformer, to an entirely contained mini golf course.
Peppino can't die from normal damage in regular stages, instead only losing points that go towards your total score at the end of any given stage. Your incentive to not get hit all comes from how well you want to be scored, the lowest rank being an undercooked D, and the highest being a well baked P. This way the game can draw in both types of motivated players; ones who want to improve on every playthrough and those who just want to play the game as is.
No matter what type of player you are, you'll probably end up blasting through each stage at breakneck speeds. Stages are built with this high speed of play in mind, including ramps to maintain your momentum and enemies being helpless to your fastest sprint speed. The speed you move at is key because, once you make it to the end of every stage, the game has you run all the way back through it to the entrance before the timer ticks down. At this point in the stage, new paths are opened that were originally walled off, incentivizing those who feel so bold to now explore more of the level before Pizza Face wakes up and kills the player for real.
So that's gameplay. And it's great, but the real special sauce to this pizza is the presentation. Pizza Tower is one of the most manic looking episodes of a game I've ever seen. So much time and love was put into every animation present throughout the entire game. Peppino has a wide range of expressions, from his timid idle animation to his deranged full sprint speed. The humor and expressiveness in this game feels like it's inspired from older cartoons like Ren & Stimpy or Rocko's Modern Life, with the anatomy of Peppino, his allies, and enemies all incredibly exaggerated for comedic affect, even down to the audio.
The music captures that Wario Land 4 feeling almost perfectly. There aren't as many slower tracks through out Pizza Tower, but the ones that go hard and fast are incredible. Many of the samples used throughout are the same used through out much of Wario Land 4, and the core theme, "It's Pizza Time", always delivers that rush of adrenaline when sprinting back to the entrance of a stage before time is up. I really can't praise the music enough. All stage themes fit their aesthetic perfectly, always lending to create that extra feeling that every stage was crafted with every key detail in mind.
Pizza Tower truly is a supreme example of the type of game that can be crafted through the inspiration of another. Since it's time, Wario Land 4 hasn't really been topped in how it shook up the 2D platforming genre. And while Pizza Tower takes much of the way Wario Land 4 is structured, it never stops being it's own game that derives a similar yet separate enjoyment all together. I'm so glad the developers could deliver such a flavorful deep dish of a game. This is one mom and pop's that I'll be coming back to several more times, even after finishing my first slice. Highly recommended!
And you're never out of tries,
That's amore~ ♪
This game is incredible. Straight from the oven of a person who thought "What if I made my own Wario Land 4 and made it just as insane?" If you're familiar at all with Wario Land 4, you'll immediately be able to draw comparisons, from the abstract level design and art style to the insanely well made soundtrack.
You play as Peppino, a pizza shop owner who must now climb the titular Pizza Tower so that Pizza Face, an evil Pizza, doesn't blow Peppino's pizza shop to smithereens. If the word "pizza" doesn't start sounding strange to you now, give it some time, I'm not done using it yet.
The gameplay loop for Pizza Tower is simple; go through stages in each zone, collect enough cash in each zone to unlock the boss door, fight the area boss, repeat. The real sauce of this game is how each stage has you frantically searching for ingredients that net you a total amount of cash on level completion. Peppino's moveset is oozing with flavor, having a sprint, bash, wall climb, ground pound, dive, and even a Metroid shine spark because, yes, every 2D game needs a Metroid shine spark. This doesn't even count some stages that have gimmick abilities like spicy breath, rockets you can fly on, bubbles, and so much more. These stage specific abilities help in giving each stage their own identity among the various zones, with some abilities being as absurd as a flying chicken companion based on an old 3D PS1 platformer, to an entirely contained mini golf course.
Peppino can't die from normal damage in regular stages, instead only losing points that go towards your total score at the end of any given stage. Your incentive to not get hit all comes from how well you want to be scored, the lowest rank being an undercooked D, and the highest being a well baked P. This way the game can draw in both types of motivated players; ones who want to improve on every playthrough and those who just want to play the game as is.
No matter what type of player you are, you'll probably end up blasting through each stage at breakneck speeds. Stages are built with this high speed of play in mind, including ramps to maintain your momentum and enemies being helpless to your fastest sprint speed. The speed you move at is key because, once you make it to the end of every stage, the game has you run all the way back through it to the entrance before the timer ticks down. At this point in the stage, new paths are opened that were originally walled off, incentivizing those who feel so bold to now explore more of the level before Pizza Face wakes up and kills the player for real.
So that's gameplay. And it's great, but the real special sauce to this pizza is the presentation. Pizza Tower is one of the most manic looking episodes of a game I've ever seen. So much time and love was put into every animation present throughout the entire game. Peppino has a wide range of expressions, from his timid idle animation to his deranged full sprint speed. The humor and expressiveness in this game feels like it's inspired from older cartoons like Ren & Stimpy or Rocko's Modern Life, with the anatomy of Peppino, his allies, and enemies all incredibly exaggerated for comedic affect, even down to the audio.
The music captures that Wario Land 4 feeling almost perfectly. There aren't as many slower tracks through out Pizza Tower, but the ones that go hard and fast are incredible. Many of the samples used throughout are the same used through out much of Wario Land 4, and the core theme, "It's Pizza Time", always delivers that rush of adrenaline when sprinting back to the entrance of a stage before time is up. I really can't praise the music enough. All stage themes fit their aesthetic perfectly, always lending to create that extra feeling that every stage was crafted with every key detail in mind.
Pizza Tower truly is a supreme example of the type of game that can be crafted through the inspiration of another. Since it's time, Wario Land 4 hasn't really been topped in how it shook up the 2D platforming genre. And while Pizza Tower takes much of the way Wario Land 4 is structured, it never stops being it's own game that derives a similar yet separate enjoyment all together. I'm so glad the developers could deliver such a flavorful deep dish of a game. This is one mom and pop's that I'll be coming back to several more times, even after finishing my first slice. Highly recommended!