Pizza Tower

Pizza Tower is a side-scrolling platform game. Its story begins when Peppino Spaghetti, an Italian pizza chef and the owner of a struggling pizzeria, is approached by Pizzaface, a sentient floating pizza. Pizzaface threatens to destroy Peppino's pizzeria with a nuclear laser atop a nearby tower. Frightened and angered, Peppino sets out to ascend the tower and defeat Pizzaface to save his pizzeria.

The tower serves as the setting and hub world of the single-player game. It has five floors, each containing four levels and a boss. Each level has a distinct theme and unique game mechanics, such as a cemetery with surfable corpses and a Five Nights at Freddy's homage with jump scares.

Pizza Tower was the debut project of the indie developer Tour De Pizza, which developed it for around five years. Development was led by the pseudonymous designer and artist McPig, also known as Pizza Tower Guy, and funded through Patreon. The concept originated from the Peppino character, who McPig created for comics and drawings in which he imagined pizza monsters appearing in his restaurant at night. McPig conceived a role-playing video game (RPG) with survival horror elements similar to Resident Evil in which Peppino traversed his restaurant while battling pizza monsters. It featured a cartoonish but dark style that McPig compared to Courage the Cowardly Dog.

McPig attempted to develop the game using RPG Maker, but the game engine's limitations prevented him from achieving the animation quality he desired. McPig switched to GameMaker since it was accessible and he had seen other developers use it for smaller projects. He began developing Weenie Cop, a platform game featuring a sentient hot dog who battled junk food criminals. Though he described this project as "all over the place in the gameplay department because it wasn't very well conceptualized", it got him accustomed to GameMaker. He also conceived a game in which Peppino attacked using a pizza cutter chainsaw, inspired by Wario's dash from the Wario Land series.

Pizza Tower received "generally favorable reviews" according to the review aggregate website Metacritic, and a "Mighty" approval rating on the aggregator OpenCritic. It became one of the highest rated games of 2023 on Steam within a day of its release; as of August 2024, it is the highest rated 2D platformer on Steam, ahead of games such as Super Meat Boy (2010), Celeste (2018), and Katana Zero (2019). Critics were surprised by Pizza Tower's quality and considered it a worthy substitute for Wario Land, some calling it a rare spiritual successor that is better than its inspiration. Polygon said Pizza Tower "has sharpened, tuned, evolved, and damn near perfected [Wario Land's] odd niche of platforming", and PC Gamer found it difficult to expect a potential Wario Land revival to be as invigorating and inventive. MeriStation said Pizza Tower was "an instant classic" and a breath of fresh air in the side-scrolling indie scene, which they felt was lacking creativity.

Reviewers favorably compared the visuals to 1990s Nicktoons like The Ren & Stimpy Show, Cartoon Network shows, and Microsoft Paint art. IGN said the intentionally cheap-looking art style lent Pizza Tower a striking, idiosyncratic appearance, and Multiplayer.it said the levels were so detailed that players would continue to find new animations for hours. The animation quality was also commended, as was the humor. IGN enjoyed Pizza Tower's use of the cartoon trope in which characters are depicted in a different style for comedic effect, and alongside PC Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun, praised the expressiveness of Peppino. PC Gamer said Peppino's animations made him feel like a fleshed-out character despite never speaking.