A Pizza Delivery Review

A Pizza Delivery, Dolores Entertainment, Eric Osuna

Pizza and video games go hand in hand. Friday nights with a large pizza, energy drinks and a full night on Xbox Live in 2006 were some of the finest times in gaming.

Though eating pizza is far more entertaining than delivering them. That’s probably why so few video games have ever attempted making pizza delivery an entertaining prospect, in fact the only such game I’m aware of is 90s arcade title, Radical Bikers (with a soundtrack you absolutely must listen to the to).

Developer Eric Osuna clearly spotted a gap in the market for bringing pizza delivery to the booming narrative adventure space with new title A Pizza Delivery. Bringing together puzzles, storytelling and dreamlike environments, this new interesting solo-developed indie has a lot of heart. Is A Pizza Delivery a margarita, or a meaty feast with stuffed crust? Here’s our spoiler-lite review.

Story – Crust Issues

As a narrative-lite story, A Pizza Delivery is a short indie that tells the story of protagonist, ‘B’ who is making her final delivery of the day for pizza shop owner, Earl.

B begins her adventure by delivering a pizza to an unnamed man behind her door, before setting off to complete the last delivery of the day. Very early in the game, things start to get weird and B ends up in limbo where others are trapped and seeking release from the real world. Some of the characters we meet on the way including Pora offer interesting, thought-provoking conversations, though the chats are a little too short to help you create much of a bond with them.

B herself is a quiet character with very little to say, more of a listener to the others we meet. Thus, we don’t really learn much about her, her manager Earl who calls us semi-frequently, nor much about her life in the 3-4 hour runtime. When I reached the end of the game I was left wondering, what was all this for?

Pora is the most interesting character you’ll meet

There is some replayability including optional ways to play – eg, delivering pizzas to no one, or delivering pizzas to everyone you meet on the journey. Unfortunately, all the achievements for doing this were bugged, so if you’re looking for a completion on your gamercard, I wouldn’t waste your time.

Gameplay and Performance – Pizz-ugh

Blending light puzzles and elements of walking simulators, A Pizza Delivery softly marries multiple genres to create a narrative third-person adventure. The new indie’s simplistic gameplay can be fun to play, but sadly it all completely falls apart as a result of too many technical problems to list.

First, the good. At it’s core, the gameplay is simple and fun enough to play. Boarding protagonist B’s scooter, we set off to meet the game’s NPCs and deliver pizzas across a small number of interesting and diverse biomes. Along the way we’ll meet people and solve some rather straightforward puzzles in an adventure that doesn’t outstay its welcome. There are plenty of collectibles to find that add welcome narrative and backstory to the game.

A rare ride where the game just about keeps it together

Regrettably that’s where the fun ends. Game breaking bugs, progression preventing glitches and items not working as intended made completing A Pizza Delivery a real slog, if not almost impossible.

In a late-game section we travel to a snowy blizzard section, that may unlock PTSD for Dark Souls 2 players who survived the Frigid Outskirts. As part of the game’s collectibles, I’d previously collected a compass which I was told would help me navigate this section. Unfortunately, there was no way at all to use the compass thus rendering the section to be a wilderness stroll until I somehow found my destination around 25 minutes later.

Another bug when dismounting the scooter left B’s walking physics fall apart with limbs dangling in any and all directions, leaving no other option than a hard reset and reload. Though perhaps the easiest way to demonstrate the brazen lack of QA is the button command overlays on Xbox, display PlayStation buttons.

PlayStation button commands on Xbox, this isn’t the only location in the game either

I could list so many more issues. By the end of my playthrough I was beginning to find genuine amusement in the technically catastrophic state that this game was presented to reviewers in.

Visuals – Cheesed Off

When visuals work as intended in A Pizza Delivery, which is rare, the game is very pretty to look at. Gorgeous sunsets, Northern Lights-esque night skies, as well as interesting characters and more are well-crafted.

B’s character model is well-animated for an indie character and her Vespa-like red motorcycle is integral to the game’s identity. Using the Unity engine, there is some excellent lighting during some of the game’s longer atmospheric rides; as well as some impressive assets and cool liminal spaces.

Sadly, it was rare when the game looked as intended. The most woeful texture popping I have experienced in thirty years of gaming. Critical progression related items and assets completely absent. And to top it all off, an array of visual bugs that presented broken play spaces leading me to get stuck resulting in numerous replayed sections.

I will add, when B got stuck in a Soulja Boy-like dance posture it did provide a moment of brief humour amidst the pure frustration of the game’s countless bugs.

Watch me crank dat, Soulja Boy, then Superman dat oh

Audio – The Only Tasty Slice

The redeeming aspect of A Pizza Delivery is its soundtrack and general audio ambience. Mildly depressing, fused with a feeling of being lost and disconnected from the real world, each of the game’s areas has a pleasant and fitting piece of music – or silence – that communicated the mood of the adventure wonderfully.

There are quieter spaces where it’s just you, B and her motorcycle. Riding around the play space can be relaxing, even if you’re not making any progression.

Conclusion – Dough

Abysmal game breaking bugs destroy any opportunity A Pizza Delivery had to be a good indie. Progress preventing issues plagued my playthrough, with visual bugs leaving the game’s pretty environments and textures to pop in and out so badly I often couldn’t see the way forward.

Whilst bugs can be forgiven for a solo-developer who likely has limited QA testing options, A Pizza Delivery needed more time in the oven and simply should not be launching in the state of the build I was provided.

There is a 6/10 indie adventure here one day, but I strongly encourage you to avoid this title until it’s been baked a lot more.