Lets make some pizzas!
Papa’s Pizzeria Deluxe may be new on steam this month, but its certainly not a brand new game fresh out the oven. This is an example of exactly how you do a modern remake in the best possible way, updating and modernizing what feels outdated while keeping the core experience largely the same. And with a cost of under £5, you’re bound to have a lot of fun with this one.
Produced by Flipline Studio, Papa’s Pizzeria was a flash game back in the day and its simple mechanics ended up becoming surprisingly addictive. The Deluxe edition though is not a straight port, but instead has been reworked from the ground up.
For those unaware, the premise is very simple. After creating your character (or choosing a pre-set model), you’re been left to run Papa’s Pizzeria and the idea is to become an incredible enterprise of pizza-making skills. The game combines time management with fun minigame-esque pizza-making, with the difficulty slowly increasing over time.
The Deluxe version includes 151 customers, 99 ingredients and 12 different holidays, which all unlock slowly over the course of the game. You can even unlock extra goodies for your pizzeria, ranging from tables and gumball machines to posters you can pin up on the wall.
The game holds your hand through the first hour or so, explaining the different mechanics, before leaving you to your own devices and slowly ratcheting up the difficulty.
Each time a customer enters the restaurant (or phones in) you take their order, create the pizza to their specification, adding toppings just the way they like, before cooking in the oven. When their pizzas are cooked to their chosen temperature (split between yellow, orange or red), you’re then tasked with cutting their pizza in a specific way and serving to each customer.
All of this is done with the mouse and the controls are very intuitive throughout. It’s easy to drag and drop ingredients and switch food tickets on the fly, while the management screens all organically piece together, making for smooth transitions between each day.
At the end of each day, you gain tickets depending on how well you’ve done with the different customers. These are split into four categories of satisfaction, including how fast you took the order, how well you’ve built the pizza and whether you’ve made hashjob of the cutting or not.
These tickets can then be handed in for little minigames, which begin simply and then increase in difficulty the more you complete them. The harder difficulties, of course, hold better prizes. These range from clothing to wear and posters to pin up on the wall. Obtaining holiday-adjacent clothing also has the added bonus of allowing you to gain extra tips from customers, which in turn can be used to buy more items.
The feedback system works really well and as the seasons progress and more ingredients are unlocked, conversely more customers are encouraged to enter the pizzeria. So what begins with four of five orders soon escalates to a lot more as you juggle your time between making these pizzas and appeasing everyone. There’s definitely a lot of skill needed to try and juggle everything and it can definitely feel a bit overwhelming at times.
However, this frantic level never quite hits peak insanity levels that something akin to Overcooked does – although it does come close at times!
Each day plays out in largely the same fashion, and this is very much a game designed to be a pick-up and play rather than something you grind through and smash out in an single day and never touch again. There’s tons to unlock here, and just enough variety with the seasons to keep you coming back for more.
It’s definitely not going to win any awards, but it’s a super fun pizza making simulator all the same. Regardless of if you’re aware of the original or not, this is well worth your time.
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Verdict - 7.5/10
7.5/10