Peppino’s expressions of him being so woefully startled by everything happening around him with his in-game sprite are compounded thanks to the addition of a TV in the top right corner. As such, the art style looks like it came right out of Ren and Stimpy by way of Courage The Cowardly Dog fits naturally. The game is fast-paced, frantic, goofy, and a riot to laugh at, be it through visual gags or at how chaotic everything can be.

Despite how it sounds, it’s actually a compliment. You could tell someone that each frame of this game was animated on Microsoft Paint and they would believe you. Right away, the most unique thing about this game is the art style. Not wanting yet another thing to possibly destroy his restaurant, Peppino races out after him toward the tower to destroy it.

More pressing however is that a flying pizza monster named Pizza Face has entered his establishment, saying that he has a laser poised to destroy Peppino Pizza on top of his tower. His restaurant, Peppino’s Pizza, is on its last legs as he is swamped with bills and loans. The game stars the long-lost Mario brother, Italian chef Peppino Spaghetti. It was just released on January 26, 2023, from developer Tour De Pizza, led by McPig, and yet it’s already looking like it’ll be a strong game-of-the-year contender. However, when a spiritual successor surpasses its inspiration, that’s a call for a celebration, and that lucky victor today is Pizza Tower, the spiritual successor of Wario Land. More commonly, these spiritual successors end up falling behind those they are trying to imitate, like Yooka-Laylee not matching the quality of Banjo-Kazooie games, or Mighty Number 9 being inferior to 90% of other games, let alone the Mega Man games. Bug Fables is the spiritual successor to Paper Mario, more specifically the first two games, being one of the more successful and celebrated spiritual successors. These revamped ideas are commonly called spiritual successors, aiming to recapture a sort of game franchise that is either dead or has gone too far from its original roots. The world of indie games is one that is an assortment of ideas, be it unique ideas that never would make it past an elevator pitch, all the way up to tried and true tested gameplay ideas given a new life.

Tower of pizza game