Nintendo’s Wario Land sequence 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 enormously let down by the truth that there hasn’t been a brand new entry in over 15 years. To fill the hole, an indie group known as Tour De Pizza got here out early final yr with its personal religious successor known as Pizza Tower, providing a refined and thrilling journey into a really insane food-themed world. Since launch, Pizza Tower has rapidly constructed up a excessive popularity 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 position 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 diversified array of jumps, dashes, and dives lends a variety of technical depth to your means to slip via ranges and easily cruise round obstacles. You received’t essentially must be taught all of the nuances of this motion tech in case your objective is solely to gather the 5 “toppins” hidden in every degree, however as you finally come round to know, 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 motive) which then triggers a panic-inducing countdown and a subsequent rush to return to the extent’s door again at first. Generally this rush takes you again via the route you initially took via the extent, whereas others you’re funnelled down brand-new routes that solely open for the return journey. Both means, we cherished how tense these segments are and the way they will flip a degree on its head. And people of you who’re actually assured in your talents can decide to undergo a portal that’ll put you thru an excellent harder second lap.
To maintain issues from getting stale, Pizza Tower does a powerful job of conserving you guessing by consistently introducing new power-ups and gimmicks that notably change up the way you method gameplay. One memorable stage sees you taking part in mini golf with some cheese ball characters, whereas one other provides you a hen named Mort who grants you a double soar and a brand new melee assault. You’re nonetheless all the time following the central thought of gathering toppins and making your means in the direction of the pillar, however you possibly can anticipate a minimum of one cool new thought out of virtually each degree.
Based mostly 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 enhance your rating, whereas defeated enemies may also 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 progressively begin to see how fastidiously every stage’s format is designed for speedrunning. Enemies that beforehand appeared randomly positioned at the moment are clearly there that will help you preserve your combo going, whereas part of a degree that when felt awkward to navigate is revealed to be completely formed for a selected string of jumps and dives as you zip via it. Some levels will go away you scratching your head as you surprise how you may probably hit the P-rank rating, however diligently practising the robust sections and considering outdoors the field will ultimately reveal the best way to chain collectively that one flawless run. On this means, P-rank makes an attempt really feel virtually akin to a rhythm sport 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 simply 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. In fact, you don’t should chase the best scores in case your abilities simply aren’t as much as the duty, however for many who need the problem, you’ll discover layers upon layers to Pizza Tower’s design that gas a splendidly addictive rush to attempt doing only a little higher.
As for its presentation, Pizza Tower employs a memorable and completely 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 residing meals. Very like how every degree options new gameplay mechanics, you can even sit up for radically completely different stage components and background artwork in every degree that add quite a bit to the chaotic ambiance. That is the form of sport that appears like a center college child’s pocket book doodles delivered to life in one of the best of means; 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 provide with this music is really spectacular, and all of it manages to keep up the anxious and loopy tempo at which the gameplay sometimes strikes.
The one criticism we’ve with Pizza Tower, and we’re reaching right here, is that the boss fights might have used a little bit extra work. Mastering these remains to be satisfying in a lot the identical means as mastering the principle ranges, however there have been many situations the place it felt prefer it leaned a little bit 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 package deal, and it may very well be argued that they really feel ‘off’ solely due to the unbelievable polish elsewhere.
Conclusion
Pizza Tower is the uncommon type of sport that improves on its inspiration in almost each means, constructing upon a lot of Nintendo’s Wario Land concepts with spectacular outcomes. That is an extremely satisfying, artistic, and addictive platformer that’ll preserve you busy for a very long time if you wish to 100% it. We’d extremely suggest this to anybody who cherished the previous Wario Land video games, or to anybody who’s on the lookout for a brand new platformer with a excessive ability ceiling and many technical depth. Pizza Tower has undoubtedly obtained it the place it counts – platformers don’t get a lot better than this.