Nintendo’s Wario Land collection has all the time occupied a novel area of interest within the firm’s intensive catalogue with its bizarre humour and unconventional method to platforming tropes, which is why followers have been tremendously let down by the truth that there hasn’t been a brand new entry in over 15 years. To fill the hole, an indie crew known as Tour De Pizza got here out early final 12 months with its personal religious successor known as Pizza Tower, providing a cultured and thrilling journey into a really insane food-themed world. Since launch, Pizza Tower has rapidly constructed up a excessive status for its creativity and gameplay design, and now that it’s come to Swap, we’re happy to report that it’s certainly a improbable platformer.
Pizza Tower locations you within the function of Peppino Spaghetti, the chef and proprietor of a failing pizzeria who finds himself threatened by an evil sentient pizza named Pizzaface who lives close by within the titular tower. Pizzaface has a laser on prime of the tower which he’s going to make use of to destroy Peppino’s pizzeria, so our daring chef dashes off to climb the tower and destroy the evil pizza and his minions as soon as and for all.
Pizza Tower follows a easy 2D platforming template, as you discover self-contained ranges full of enemies, secrets and techniques, and collectibles. Peppino is sort of a nimble protagonist, and his different array of jumps, dashes, and dives lends plenty of technical depth to your capability to slip by means of ranges and easily cruise round obstacles. You received’t essentially have to be taught all of the nuances of this motion tech in case your aim is just to gather the 5 “toppins” hidden in every degree, however as you finally come round to grasp, there’s much more complexity to be taught and grasp in Pizza Tower if you wish to go for full completion.
Borrowing strongly from Wario Land 4, the ‘finish’ of each stage requires you to knock down a pillar (named John, for some cause) which then triggers a panic-inducing countdown and a subsequent rush to return to the extent’s door again firstly. Generally this rush takes you again by means of the route you initially took by means of the extent, whereas others you’re funnelled down brand-new routes that solely open for the return journey. Both approach, we cherished how tense these segments are and the way they’ll flip a degree on its head. And people of you who’re actually assured in your talents can choose to undergo a portal that’ll put you thru a fair more durable second lap.
To maintain issues from getting stale, Pizza Tower does a powerful job of maintaining you guessing by continually introducing new power-ups and gimmicks that notably change up the way you method gameplay. One memorable stage sees you enjoying mini golf with some cheese ball characters, whereas one other provides you a hen named Mort who grants you a double leap and a brand new melee assault. You’re nonetheless all the time following the central concept of amassing toppins and making your approach in the direction of the pillar, however you may anticipate at the very least one cool new concept out of virtually each degree.
Primarily based purely on the deserves of its degree selection and gameplay gimmicks, Pizza Tower is already fairly nice, however what takes it to the heights of being glorious is the inclusion of the scoring system. Each enemy you defeat or collectible you snag will improve your rating, whereas defeated enemies will even increase your combo meter, and sustaining this meter is important to getting the best scores attainable on a stage. Chasing these excessive scores, significantly to realize the coveted P-Rank, reveals a degree of depth to the gameplay and the sheer brilliance of Pizza Tower’s gameplay design.
As you retry ranges and push for a greater rating, you step by step begin to see how fastidiously every stage’s format is designed for speedrunning. Enemies that beforehand appeared randomly positioned are actually clearly there that can assist you hold your combo going, whereas part of a degree that when felt awkward to navigate is revealed to be completely formed for a particular string of jumps and dives as you zip by means of it. Some levels will depart you scratching your head as you surprise how you might probably hit the P-rank rating, however diligently practising the robust sections and considering outdoors the field will finally reveal the way in which to chain collectively that one flawless run. On this approach, P-rank makes an attempt really feel virtually akin to a rhythm recreation within the sense of the way you come to memorise the stage layouts and discover ways to expertly time inputs. And at last pulling off that good run is a euphoric expertise.
Suffice it to say, it isn’t usually that you just see a platformer that encourages chasing this degree of mastery of its mechanics, and it is endlessly rewarding to see how tightly and thoughtfully designed every stage is. After all, you don’t should chase the best scores in case your expertise simply aren’t as much as the duty, however for individuals who need the problem, you’ll discover layers upon layers to Pizza Tower’s design that gasoline a splendidly addictive rush to attempt doing only a little higher.
As for its presentation, Pizza Tower employs a memorable and totally ridiculous artwork model that appears like a cancelled ’90s Nickelodeon cartoon by the use of MS Paint. There’s a delightfully janky and unrefined model to the animation and spritework right here, as you navigate a gross and goofy world of dwelling meals. Very similar to how every degree options new gameplay mechanics, you too can look ahead to radically completely different stage components and background artwork in every degree that add loads to the chaotic environment. That is the type of recreation that appears like a center faculty child’s pocket book doodles delivered to life in the most effective of approach; we genuinely haven’t seen something like this earlier than.
Completely matching the madcap visuals is a soundtrack that gives an eclectic mixture of chiptune, home, jazz, drum and bass, and rock. The sheer selection on supply with this music is actually spectacular, and all of it manages to keep up the anxious and loopy tempo at which the gameplay sometimes strikes.
The one grievance we have now with Pizza Tower, and we’re reaching right here, is that the boss fights may have used a bit of extra work. Mastering these continues to be satisfying in a lot the identical approach as mastering the principle ranges, however there have been many situations the place it felt prefer it leaned a bit of too far into RNG territory, making issues extra irritating than they should be. Nonetheless, the boss fights are a comparatively small a part of the entire bundle, and it might be argued that they really feel ‘off’ solely due to the unimaginable polish elsewhere.
Conclusion
Pizza Tower is the uncommon form of recreation that improves on its inspiration in almost each approach, constructing upon a lot of Nintendo’s Wario Land concepts with spectacular outcomes. That is an extremely satisfying, artistic, and addictive platformer that’ll hold you busy for a very long time if you wish to 100% it. We’d extremely suggest this to anybody who cherished the outdated Wario Land video games, or to anybody who’s in search of a brand new platformer with a excessive talent ceiling and plenty of technical depth. Pizza Tower has undoubtedly obtained it the place it counts – platformers don’t get a lot better than this.