Pizza Tower

Pizza Tower is a 2D platformer developed and published by the independent studio Tour De Pizza. It was inspired by the Wario Land series.

Plot

The main protagonist is Peppino Spaghetti - a neurotic and obese Italian chef running a pizzeria near the titular Pizza Tower. The business doesn't bring enough income, putting Peppino in debt. While contemplating his options, he's met by a malevolent floating pizza-like creature who appears inside the restaurant and announces its intent to blow it up with a deadly laser at the top of the tower. Peppino, horrified, sets out to thwart the creature's plans. He's not alone on his quest, being aided by the adventurer Gustavo.

Mechanics

Pizza Tower is a platform game emphasizing exploration and combat. The tower traversed by the protagonist consists of five floors, each of these floors consisting of many levels. Every corridor is filled with secrets, hidden passages, unique challenges and different opponents to battle.

The playable character can jump, sneak, run or crawl on the floor. He can also use many special skills to make exploration easier. One of them is bodyslam, which lets him destroy interactive objects such as stone walls or cages trapping various creatures (anthropomorphic pizza toppings). Freeing them is important, as it awards Peppino with dollars. After completing a level, the money earned for each rescued prisoner is added up and placed in a piggy bank on the right side of the screen.

Each level contains enemies Peppino must defeat to earn more points. Destroying an enemy starts a combo. Keeping it up requires us to neutralize even more foes while collecting pizza toppings. After ending a combo we get a number of points depending on its length, as well as a rating: these include Lame (x1), Not Bad but Not Great Either (x10), Brutal! (x30), Twisted (x50), Funny (x70) and more.

Other than wandering enemies we must also face other challenges. One of these is Pizza Time, forcing the player to return to the level's beginning (passing by all the previously seen locations) before time runs out. The player must collect alarm clocks on their way back and beat back enemies trying to slow Peppino down.

The game also features a second playable character, that being Gustavo, first appearing in the Gnome Forest level.

Technical aspects

The visuals of Pizza Tower are inspired by the 1990s cartoons and have been made with use of pixel art. The game was developed with the GameMaker Studio 2 engine. Yet another of its features is its energetic soundtrack.