Don't buy this.

EDIT AFTER 13 HOURS OF ADDITIONAL PLAYTIME: Do actually buy this.

EDIT AFTER 46 HOURS OF ADDITIONAL PLAYTIME: NEVER APPROACH THIS TITLE!

EDIT AFTER 72 HOURS OF ADDITIONAL PLAYTIME: Yeah, this one's pretty good I can recommend.

EDIT AFTER 82 HOURS OF ADDITIONAL PLAYTIME: Not worth the purchase, look elsewhere.

My gaming hours have diminished to the point that I rarely play anything these days. I'm too busy with life in general, but I still try to follow what the game industry has been up to. The big picture isn't pretty if you look at the bigger game studios, who keep producing the most unimaginative titles with minimal effort to try and maximize profit margins. It's really disgusting to see how far they're willing to go to achieve those goals.

Thankfully, we still have indie games that continue carrying the game industry on their tiny but powerful shoulders. A number of titles keep putting the big studios to shame time and time again. These bigger companies could never come up with a game like Pizza Tower, and even if they did, it would be nothing but a microtransaction-filled ♥♥♥♥ show, which is not the type of game this audience buys and plays.

Spoilers: I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ love Pizza Tower.


The story of Pizza Tower is quite simple. Some pizza guy has built a tower next to Peppino's pizzeria, and he threatens to blow up his pizzeria. Peppino gets livid after hearing this, so he makes a mad dash to this tower in order to smack everything to smithereens. The player's duty is to reach the top of the tower, to give a good ol' whooping to this pizza fellow.

The first striking thing about Pizza Tower is of course its art style. Reminiscent of older cartoon shows, Pizza Tower is wacky, cartoony, kind of unnatural, and weird all at the same time. This is what makes Pizza Tower so unique in my opinion; even though its inspirations lie in already existing media, it manages to build its own identity and set itself apart from other existing products.

The animations are highly detailed and plentiful, which is this game's strong point. Each level has new characters and enemies with new sets of animations. The main character, Peppino Spaghetti, has many moves available to him, and all of them are accompanied by luxurious animation. Some moves have variations, so you might not see the same animation every time. I wish this game had integrated support for Steam screenshots, because there were multiple occasions where I wanted to look at the still frames with more time. The game is very fast paced, so the animation frames are easy to miss!

Pizza Tower's imagery evokes many different feelings at the same time, and that's due to its multifaceted style. Peppino's idle pose and normal walking animations are cute, funny and relatable, but as soon as any other move is initiated, he becomes a bloodthirsty monster, seeking nothing but the death of his opponents. And sometimes his friends too! At times, the game is a little scary too, in fact, there is often a scary undertone to many aspects of this game, but I won't spoil those, because that wouldn't be fun. All the different variables clash together perfectly, creating a chaos that's hard to describe with words, so I'm afraid you'll have to see some gameplay or play the game yourself to truly understand what I mean here.


I've seen people compare this game to Wario Land 4. I never played that game specifically, but I think Pizza Tower shares more common ground with Wario Land: Shake It!. Despite its old age, it remains the latest Wario Land game to date. Like Pizza Tower, the gameplay consists of traversing through a level to reach the end, from where you have to run back to the entrance under a time limit to finish the level. There are treasures to find and missions to complete within these stages, which increases their replay value.

But unlike Wario Land, Pizza Tower features different mechanics, moves, and level design. Peppino Spaghetti is much more agile than his fat yellow counterpart, which makes controlling him feel smooth. All of his moves have a purpose, and the levels utilize them often. The game's tutorials explain the important things, but there are so many cool details that the player gets to experiment with and discover by themselves. Mastering the movement system, together with the different mechanics and level layout, are required to achieve the higher ranks in each level.

Level design in this game is excellent, allowing the player to approach levels the way they want to; you can explore at your own pace, or dash to the end as fast as possible. There are breakable and fake walls everywhere, which sometimes lead to secrets. All levels have a gimmick you have to learn to pass the stage, but throughout the levels, there are numerous opportunities to practice. At the end, your performance is graded on a scale from D to S, based on the amount of points you accumulated.

Ultimately, Pizza Tower is about the true chaos you, the player, cause by running all over the place, killing everything on your path. It's been a long time since I last received such a huge adrenaline rush by playing a video game, but Pizza Tower managed to do it. This game really rewards exploration and the understanding of its mechanics, so I want to try to finish this game 100% at some point.

Together with the mayhem that is the gameplay, is some of the best music I've heard in an indie game. It meshes with everything else in Pizza Tower perfectly, elevating the whole experience beyond the clouds. There's lots of it too! The entire soundtrack consists of over 60 tracks and 3 hours of music! Genres vary from rock, retro, to electronic, but there are also more unique tracks that I'll call pizzacore from now on. All of it is extremely high quality, so it can – and should – be listened to outside of the game!


There's no denying that Pizza Tower is one of the greatest games to be released in recent years. Its high quality says more than I could ever type into this review, and it most definitely was the developers' passion project. It must've taken years to bring this to its finished state. These types of games surface rarely, and sometimes the involved risk in making something like this doesn't pan out well, but I'm happy to report that Pizza Tower is doing super good.

If you're interested in a spiritual successor to the Wario Land series, or a fast paced exploration romp through crazy levels, then get this game. It has style unlike any other game I've played, and its mechanics are thoroughly measured to fit the level design, style and music, all coming together to form the amazing insanity that is Pizza Tower. I have last been as engaged with a video game when I played Super Mario Odyssey for the first time in 2019. My thoughts have been exclusively about Pizza Tower for the last few weeks, which is aided by the game's exquisite title, Pizza Tower. Something so simple but effective should be illegal. The game came out at the end of January, but it's already my Game of the Year 2023. I find it incredibly unlikely anything could touch the supreme quality it offers to its players, but I'd love to be proven wrong!

I didn't want to pay the 20$ asking price despite Pizza Tower's immediately appealing outlook, because I've been burnt in the past by games that looked as such, but turned out to be rubbish, so my friend bought it for me. Having played it through, I can safely recommend this game even at its full price, it's that damn good.

After playing Wario Land: Shake It! a long time ago, I never realized how much I needed another game like that, until I saw Pizza Tower. I swear, if humanity forgets Pizza Tower, I will go on a similar rampage as Peppino.


Update: The best game of 2023!