How you’ll feel about A Pizza Delivery will be determined by how you feel about gameplay mechanics and story-rich game experiences. A Pizza Delivery is not a walking simulator (albeit on a moped), but it barely scratches any of the gameplay mechanics it introduces, to the point that the game feels like a walking simulator with some bells and whistles, rather than an adventure game full of story. If that doesn’t matter to you, and you are a story-first gamer, you’ll likely enjoy A Pizza Delivery more, and perhaps the review score can be bumped up a bit. For me, I wanted more from the genuinely interesting mechanics that were introduced but hardly used.
We play as B, someone who has broken up with their girlfriend and feels a little unmoored in life. Sent on a pizza delivery, you’ll have one pizza to deliver across a trippy, strange land. B doesn’t recognise or understand why they are there, but egged on by the store manager through phone calls, B soldiers on. The game is split between driving through desolate but beautiful landscapes on your moped and then walking through a few locations to talk to lost souls dotted around the game. After chatting with them, you have the option of giving them a slice of your secondary pizza to cheer them up. This opens up a few extra puzzles to solve and a couple of mandatory ones, depending on the character you are talking to.
Your pizza cannot be turned sideways, nor can it get wet. This means whenever it rains, you’ll need to carry the pizza under rooftops and shelters, as a wet meter quickly fills up when the pizza is exposed. This means on a few occasions you’ll need to place a pizza on ledges or conveyor belts to move the pizza around whilst you move to a new location. You won’t be jumping or doing any traditional platforming, but you will have to work out how to get from A to B with a dry pizza. These gameplay mechanics feel fresh and interesting, but they are used three times across the entire game. Add in a couple of visual cue puzzles, a chase sequence, a skimming stones minigame, and a very out-of-place dexterity challenge to press all of the controller buttons, and this is all of the gameplay. I don’t mind games being succinct or economical with their mechanics, but A Pizza Delivery feels sparse and empty. I wanted more pizza traversal as the setup is ripe for plenty of elaborate levels or environment ideas. Instead, we get three quickly solvable thoughts.
Instead, A Pizza Delivery focuses on storytelling, but that is at times quite vague and nebulous, too. The main hook is to help B connect and feel grounded again, and that works well. Objects are collectable memories that paint out the background of either B’s or one of the characters you meet along the way. There’s an over-reliance on “oh, you’ll know your purpose when it comes” to neatly wrap everything up without true resolution, but the main gist of the story is uplifting and wholesome. It’s nice to come away from a deep thoughts story with a sense of direction and positivity, and A Pizza Delivery does just that. You can play the game multiple times to either give or refuse pizza to the souls you meet, but I was generous the first time through, so I felt I got the “true” ending I was looking for. That said, this is a movie-length experience. I completed it in 76 minutes, and I wasn’t rushing. That’s also why I think a few more wet pizza puzzles would have helped.
I’ve found rating A Pizza Delivery quite tricky, as I did enjoy the game, but found it lacking and a bit shallow. If you like thoughtful stories that you can mull over after playing, this should still appeal. Just know going in that the gameplay is very light, and the story is delivered in instantly resolved droplets of character. This is an ambitious solo developer project, and I think this sets up the dev nicely for a fantastic follow-up if they continue with game development.
A review copy of the game was provided by the publisher. A Pizza Story is out now on PC, PS5, and Xbox.
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