A Pizza Delivery immediately piqued my interest from the moment I saw the key art. A beautiful, chilled narrative-driven game with an emphasis on emotion and exploration? And I get to deliver things? Sign me up. Unfortunately this short, hour-long adventure not only missed most of those marks, but was so filled with bugs that it undermined the emotional experience I was hoping for.
It’s a cold opening, as far as stories go. You’re B, who has lost her memory and is about to deliver the final pizza of her shift. You take control as she’s finished the previous delivery, but beyond a quick phone call from Earl, your boss, you’re given no explanation into what’s happening. That wouldn’t normally be an issue, I appreciate sometimes a story needs to be obtuse to keep you guessing, but I found it jarring how B unquestioningly did some pretty weird stuff for seemingly no reason. Within minutes of starting the game you’re wading waist-deep through sewer water and operating heavy machinery, just to deliver a pizza, with B not questioning any of it. It just didn’t quite feel right to me.
As you explore the abstract series of locales the game whizzes you through, you’ll meet characters who you can offer a slice of pizza to and in turn they’ll tell you more about themselves. It’s a neat idea, and gives a bit of insight into the strange purgatory you’ve found yourself in, but ultimately the characters seem fairly shallow and don’t offer much more beyond a brief look into their pasts and some vaguely philosophical comments about life. I appreciate the idea here, I’m just not convinced it’s as fleshed out as it could have been.
Some of these issues could have been lessened had the act of exploring the world been relaxing. Unfortunately B’s little red moped handles like a jet ski on choppy water, and it’s very easy to lose control of. You’ll pootle about on it, desperately trying to avoid making any tight turns as you go from area to area, meeting people and solving small puzzles. This may involve finding specific items, or looking for passwords or using keys in a certain way. There’s nothing too taxing here, but they can be quite enjoyable to complete, it’s just a shame that getting between them all is such a pain.
Despite the game only being an hour long, it was absolutely riddled with bugs, several of which needed me to restart the game. I should have known it was going to be rough when there’s a visual bug on the splash screen, before the game even loads up, and the controls in the menu don’t actually match the configuration the game uses. Getting on and off your moped can easily bug out, causing anything from minor visual issues like your body flailing for a few seconds, to game breaking issues where I got stuck, mid-flail and tethered to my moped, unable to interact with anything. I’ll caveat all this by saying the developer is actively working to fix these, and as A Pizza Delivery is developed by a single person I’m slightly reluctant to bring up these issues, however I also know I’d be pretty annoyed if I paid £12 only to find myself playing a game where you can sit on a bench and be unable to get back up off it.
It’s not all doom and gloom though, the world itself is quite interesting. The game packs a few different locations in its short run time and some of them are genuinely quite pretty. One standout involved driving down a highway covered in dusky sunlight as a windfarm works away in the background. The music kicks in, making for a really lovely moment, and I wish there’d been more moments like this where you can just soak in the atmosphere. The music is generally pretty good too, with suitably emotive tunes that fit the scene well, my only complaint is that there’s not enough of it. It kicks in at the right times but it’d have been nice to hear it elsewhere too.
A Pizza Delivery is a great concept, and there are little glimmers of a good game that peek through during your time with it. Unfortunately the catalogue of bugs, poor mechanics, and confusing narrative just make for a rather frustrating experience that undermines any emotion the game may have been aiming to evoke.
