Pizza Tower is a simple game to play. Not easy, but once you’ve figured out your goal, playing it is simple. Just get to the end. Get there fast. Stay fast! You can’t even die! How hard could that be?
However, what many may not see is the monumental amounts of work, thought, and trial-and-error behind making each level feel simple. Creating levels such that they feel good is hard — making them fun and engaging on top of that, even more so. So to gain some better appreciation and understanding for Pizza Tower’s level design, why don’t we talk about the factors, considerations, and cornerstones that underlie a Pizza Tower stage, applying what we’ve learned along the way.
The “Central” Idea
When it comes to stages in Pizza Tower (or, really, any stage-based game), they often contain some sort of central idea, or a collection of central ideas. These can manifest in different ways, and in Pizza Tower in particular, each of its 20 levels all have central gameplay mechanics and intended player experiences.
Central gameplay mechanics are easy enough to understand: they’re your level-specific transformations and gimmicks. The Knight in Pizzascape…
…the Devil’s Pepper in Refrigerator-Refrigerador-Freezerator…
…or the golf ball in GOLF…
…are all gameplay mechanics that are frequently used throughout their respective levels. By having specific, unique, repeated mechanics for one level, its memorability and replayability are further reinforced, and beyond that, it gains identity, setting it apart from other stages. Central gameplay mechanics don’t have to just be the main transformations or entities either, gimmicks could also be used to give the level flavor and spice, such as the grind rails in Pig City or the anti-gravity olive bubbles in Deep-Dish 9.
Take note, however, that while central gameplay mechanics and gimmicks are important to consider when designing a level, they are like the toppings to a pizza. They give flavor and identity, but they are not the meat. The crust of a level lies in its intended player experience, and this is far more complicated, since a level can only achieve its intended player experience from the summation of its parts. All of it must work in unison to evoke certain emotions or feelings from the player.
Sometimes, if luck would have it, the intended experience of a Pizza Tower level can be easy to describe. John Gutter is “straightforward”. Pizzascare is “labyrinthine”. Don’t Make A Sound is “scary”. In many cases, however, the intended experience is too complex and is something the player only feels. Fastfood Saloon and Gnome Forest are both speed-centric levels, with central gameplay mechanics that force the player to go fast (horse racing and time pizza delivery, respectively), and yet, they still feel completely different. Fastfood Saloon offers much stronger bursts of speed, while Gnome Forest hinges a lot more on consistent, but not necessarily breakneck velocities. Despite having similar gameplay mechanics by design, the levels still clearly had vastly different intended experiences. And even in the aforementioned “simpler examples”, their one-word descriptions are still missing a lot of the nuance that makes these levels so good.
If a level is defined by the “summation of its parts,” how could we begin dissecting the levels in Pizza Tower? What are these “parts”? Of course, you could come up with your own set of convenient “parts” for your level design. In fact, I encourage this: let your design philosophies suit what you need. For me, I’ve broken down Pizza Tower’s levels into what I believe to be their four essential cornerstones: (a) Mechanics, (b) Layout, (c) Flow, and (d) Visuals.
Mechanics
Mechanics are the various elements that make up a level, and, more importantly, they are part of what determines how a level plays. Peppino’s transformations, as previously discussed, are one great example of this.
Peppino’s Transformations
Peppino’s transformations (e.g., the Knight, Mort the Chicken, the Ghost, etc.) completely change up the way Peppino plays; in other words, it gives the character a new “gameplay style”, with new controls. This allows the level to introduce various obstacles which otherwise wouldn’t have been possible as the main character, adding much needed variety. Examples include Wasteyard’s Ghost transformation, switching Peppino’s controls to omnidirectional movement, or Fun Farm’s Mort the Chicken, giving Peppino a swinging melee attack that doubles as an extra jump when attacking mid-air hooks.
Notably, in a game about achieving high velocities, most of Peppino’s transformations are slower than his base character. By having a lower speed cap to that of Peppino’s, transformations can be utilized as a form of pacing control — basically, as a way to step on the brakes. Even with transformations that speed up Peppino (like Fastfood Saloon’s sausage horse1), these too are forms of pacing control, just in reverse, in that they are a way to step on the gas.
However, transformations do introduce two problems; namely, “how will the level accommodate for the transformation?” and “how will the transformation be spaced out?” Accommodating for the transformation is a lot harder than it sounds, because this particular issue is typically solved by good layout and flow. We’ll eventually see that the four cornerstones of level design are deeply intertwined, but for now, imagine you’re Peppino, running at Mach 4 speed, dodging everything like a bullet, before suddenly turning into a flying pizza box and crawling to a halt! All the speed you’ve accumulated is suddenly gone in a second! The transition would be far too jarring. The first Ghost transformation in Wasteyard is actually not a good example of a transition, because it immediately kills all of Peppino’s momentum when turning him into a ghost.
Because the ghost is way slower than Peppino, the abrupt speed change feels off. Slowing down Peppino right before the transformation would have eased the two gameplay styles together much more seamlessly. Generally speaking, transformations must be placed in sections that make sense and flow well.
This goes without saying, but transformations also have to be properly utilized. They have to make way for new obstacles, as well as new methods to overcome said obstacles. Going back to the previous examples before, Wasteyard‘s Ghost is paired with new cloud blocks that must be broken via accumulation of speed only possible by picking up white peppers in the undead realm. Likewise, Fun Farm’s Mort the Chicken is paired with mid-air hooks that give it an extra jump used to cross large pits. The levels basically transform themselves to better suit their new gameplay style, because if you’re not going to fully explore the mechanics of a transformation, why bother with it?
As for the question of “how will transformations be spaced out?”, transformations can’t just be placed willy-nilly, either. They must have proper screentime, for their placements regulate an entire level’s playstyle on a macro scale. Compare the levels Pizzascape and Peppibot Factory. In Pizzascape, the level constantly alternates between normal Peppino gameplay and the Knight transformation, creating a sensation of back-and-forth, a push and pull.
On the other hand, Peppibot Factory is segregated into two larger sections, the first two-thirds being normal gameplay, and the entire last third2 dedicated to the Pizza Box transformation.
This spread is similar to that of Gnome Forest’s, except Gnome Forest’s Gustavo transformation takes up far more of the level’s runtime.
When you’re switching up the very playstyle of your character, you should always keep a keen eye on the details of its implementation, especially within a level. How much runtime will the new gameplay style take up? How often will the gameplay styles switch? Does the level give good transitions between the gameplay styles? Does the level make use of the gameplay styles in fun and interesting ways? Answers to these questions will determine how your level plays.
Level Gimmicks and Enemies
Gimmicks are what Pizza Tower calls its level-specific elements, be they Ancient Cheese’s cheese blocks…
…or Oh Shit’s Mr. Pinch.
Gimmicks are different to transformations because they often don’t interfere or modify Peppino’s controls to the same degree, and they also don’t last as long, making them an element that could be repeated much more frequently. Furthermore, gimmicks can have a variety of purposes, such as being simple obstacles, pace controllers, or even necessary elements for level progression (like keys and locked doors). Extending the idea of Pizza Tower’s gimmicks to other platformers, examples would include the falling Chain Chomps in Yoshi’s Island 1-2, serving as both obstacles and pace controllers (generally encouraging the player to either slow down to wait for the boulder or to outrun them altogether)…
…or the green crystals in Celeste, refreshing Madeline’s dash.
You would agree that these aren’t transformations, right? They’re not a switch in gameplay style, but moreso a complement to it — a consequence of it. That’s what gimmicks are meant to do, they’re meant to complement the current gameplay style, expand its possibilities, and give a level more interesting things to encounter. In its purest form, gimmicks simply aim to give the player something to do. Something that they haven’t already been doing.
Enemies are also included in this. They’re very similar to gimmicks, in the sense that they add flavor to a level while also giving it interesting obstacles to overcome or outright avoid. Many of the custom Pizza Tower levels I see under-utilize enemies, mostly using them as punching bags or combo fodder. However, in any good Pizza Tower level, enemies are placed meaningfully, and in some cases, provide an actual challenge. Check out this example:
Here, we have an empty corridor going to the right, right?
But, if we add a Forknight enemy in the middle of the corridor facing east, Peppino would now have to attack the enemy from behind to get rid of it.
OR, we could add a Forknight enemy facing west, meaning that its fork could now actually collide with Peppino if he just blindly walks to the right. In this scenario, Peppino would either have to jump over the Forknight and tackle it from the other side, or to jump on it from above.
Notice how placing one Forknight in such a key location suddenly required actual effort from the player to avoid or dispatch it, providing important moment-to-moment action in what could’ve probably just been an empty corridor. In other words, it added a decision-making factor.
But! Don’t get carried away too quickly! One impulse that level designers could have is to introduce and utilize too many gimmicks at once. Imagine a Pizza Tower level with disappearing cheese, balloon rats, Fastfood Saloon buttons, rocket gloves, teleporters, cows, shotguns, corpse skateboards, you name it. Not only do those elements hold very little thematic consistency, it’s also way too much for the brain! Remember, people can only handle so many things. We have limited cognitive load. Having to process such a wide variety of information all at once can be debilitating. Even as esoteric a game as Pizza Tower is, it still binds itself to at most four or five gimmicks per level, with not more than three used in any one room. Instead, the better way to use gimmicks is to pick a few, and explore them to satisfaction. Maybe even explore the way gimmicks interact with each other. Go wild! But not too wild.
Check out this list of Pizza Tower levels from the wiki. Notice the columns labeled “Debuting Mechanics” and “Debuting Enemies”? Notice how they don’t have that many for any level? If you skip past the doubly counted mechanics (like Cheeseball and Sticky Cheese being counted as separate transformations), you’ll find that no level goes past 5. Mind you, Pizza Tower can and does aim to feel like an insane game. Yet it never aims to be overwhelming.
Of course, now, as level designers, we do have to ask ourselves a question. What gimmicks do we include in a level? Again, the answer lies in the intended player experience. What do you want your player to be doing? To be thinking? To be feeling? If you’re making a custom Pizza Tower level and you want a feeling of “verticality”, you could consider using balloon rats, jetpacks, and alien bubbles, since those take you up. If you want a feeling of “controlled speed”, try conveyor belts and grind rails.
And if you’re making a level for a game of your own? Well, the world is your oyster! Make any gimmick you want. Just make sure that the gimmicks and elements of your level complement its intentions.
Movement Mechanics
When I say one of the cornerstones of Pizza Tower’s level design is “mechanics”, perhaps movement mechanics is one of the last things you think of. While, yes, Pizza Tower’s movement certainly shines for being pristine and precise, it doesn’t seem that important to the levels, right? I mean, all you have to do is make the levels fit Peppino’s moveset, right? How much does that really affect the design of a level?
Turns out, quite a lot! When I say “movement mechanics” in this scenario, I’m generally referring to the way you navigate the level, or, rather, how the level makes you navigate it. As it so happens, Peppino actually has quite the diverse moveset, yet the levels hardly require most of it. Running and grabbing do get you most of the way to completing a level, and more advanced tech like shoulder bashing or piledriving are only used in occasion. Hell, I beat the entire game without even knowing that a “taunt” existed, let alone the fact that it did anything. That’s insane!
But before you jump to the conclusion that Pizza Tower under-utilizes its large ass moveset, not so fast. In reality, Pizza Tower makes it a point to reward the player for having deeper mastery of Peppino’s toolkit. It does this by including little avenues to use his more complicated moves, even if only to save time. A downward shaft in Peppino’s path? You can probably dive drop down it. A cliff on top of a wall? You can probably Mach Launch past it. An enemy in your direct path that’s giving you trouble? You can probably parry it. This is one of the sins I see custom Pizza Tower levels make: the mistake of not utilizing Peppino’s moves enough. Either the level is too constrained to one preset path that there’s no possibility for optimization, or it just doesn’t make use of the character’s movement in interesting ways. And that’s a shame! To be honest, even the main levels sometimes fall prey to this, and while I do understand the goal of making the game a bit more accessible by not requiring shit tons of movement tech, they do have untapped potential.
For example, if we wanted to make our custom Pizza Tower level unique (assuming we were to create one), what if we chose enemy piledriving as a pertinent mechanic throughout it? Enemy piledriving is when Peppino grabs an enemy and presses down while in mid-air. This is not a gimmick, nor is it a transformation. It’s literally a movement mechanic that could technically be used anywhere, but is never actually required and is very rarely utilized. If we then proceed to make use of this feature throughout our own level, it’ll give it a more unique feel, even if a movement mechanic is not as distinctly memorable as a transformation or a gimmick. See how little things can add up?
As for level designers, always try to think of what mechanics, controls, and moves the level will require of the player. Are they fun and engaging? Are they varied? Of course, a sweet spot must be maintained. A level can’t require too many moves (before it becomes hard to learn) nor should it require too little (before it becomes boring). It’s the same kind of situation as deciding what gimmicks to include, only this time, it’s a lot less flexible, and a whole heck of a lot more subtle.
Layout
Layout is perhaps one of the hardest, if not the hardest level design cornerstone to get right. I say that because it’s the most interconnected with the other three. Level layout must accommodate the mechanics; it must control the flow; it must look visually interesting too.
In general, the layout of a level can be viewed into the broad and the narrow, the macrolayout and the microlayout.
Macrolayout
The macrolayout is a level’s structure. It is its broad strokes, its poetic form, its composition. Is the image a 3/4ths shot, or an aerial view? Is the poem three stanzas or two? Is the level cramped, or is it rich in volume?
One way to look at a level’s macrolayout is to look at its entire map. This can say a lot about how the level plays and feels, and what it’ll generally require from the player.
For instance, John Gutter almost entirely consists of straight lines, snaking back and forth in an S-like pattern. Because the level is dominated by long, horizontal sections, it will generally require lots of straight Mach 3-4 running from the player. It only has one vertical section to break up the pacing near the end.
On the other hand, Bloodsauce Dungeon consists of far more vertical sections, and because speed is harder to build up vertically than horizontally, Bloodsauce Dungeon requires a lot more back-and-forth and tighter platforming from the player, especially with its hot lava hazards. It only has one horizontal section to ease the transition before and after Pizza Time.
One detail I’ve noticed from my 40+ hours of playing Pizza Tower is that levels tend to show their hand almost immediately; by that, I mean the first minute of a Pizza Tower level can almost always foreshadow what the rest of the level will feel like. And, mind you, these levels can span anywhere from 4 to 6 minutes in length, or 8 to 10 if you’re a completionist. For a level to be so elegantly defined just in its first minute alone is an important detail, because it means Pizza Tower’s levels are consistent in design. Bloodsauce Dungeon’s first minute has you going down — the rest of the level is going down. Oregano Desert‘s first minute has you running through a large open area before going into a small, platforming-centered room — indeed, the rest of Oregano Desert alternates between large, open areas and small, platforming-centric rooms. Crust Cove has you starting in a small cave before blasting down a straight line to the right — and, once again, the rest of the level is indeed split between caves and long, straight lines.
This probably isn’t something I even need to explain if you have played the game. It’s probably something you know. If I take a section from, say, Peppibot Factory, and slap it in the middle of Oregano Desert, it would never feel right, even if the visuals have been updated to match that of the latter level. The layout wouldn’t feel like it belongs.
Consistency in a level’s layout design lets the player know what to expect. The very fact that a Pizza Tower level can be summarized into its first minute of gameplay is an accomplishment in and of itself, thanks the game’s well-thought-out stages. Of course, this doesn’t mean that a level can’t change or modify its layout in the middle of a level. Pizza Tower does so all the time, like with John Gutter and Bloodsauce Dungeon above having a few vertical or horizontal sections which may seem “out of place”. These are necessary to keep players engaged with some variety, but a drastic change in layout still must be done carefully lest you want players to feel perplexed or, worse, lost. Keep it consistent. At least in the macro scale.
P.S.: Actually, if you want your levels to feel consistent throughout, a good practice is to draw the entire level’s map prior to building any rooms. It provides you a bird’s eye view of the whole stage, and is extremely useful in determining which areas do what. Of course, when actually building the level, the predetermined layout does not have to be followed strictly. In fact, it might even evolve throughout the level’s creation, and that’s totally okay. The first draft is almost never perfect, but always keeping an eye on this bird’s eye view will truly help your levels feel more coherent and less erratically designed.
Microlayout
If macrolayout refers to the bigger picture or the “composition” of a level, then microlayout refers to its finer strokes. Basically, the layout of the individual rooms.
When it comes to designing level rooms, it’s… well… honestly… the Wild Wild West. Designing rooms is about as open-ended as it can get, and there really is no right or wrong answer to it. It takes creativity and a keen eye to design a room. That, and a lot of playtesting.
On its most basic, room design is all about giving the player something fun to do. Rooms are what players navigate through, after all, and that act of navigation should be fun and rewarding, maybe via exploration, puzzle-solving, platforming, combat, and the like. What exactly a room needs is up to the designer and what they want the player to feel, and there’s too much possibilities to look through here. Making a room is easy, making a room fun takes practice, diligence, and constant iteration.
For one thing, rooms should be concise. They shouldn’t include anything unnecessary. Recall the earlier discussion on cognitive load, and how players can only handle so much information. Ideally, don’t add anything in a room’s layout that doesn’t serve a purpose. For example, in the layout below, the room is trying to force the player to do the loop-de-loop on the left side before they could proceed.
However, notice how some of these switch blocks aren’t necessary? They add clutter, and could simply make finding the right path confusing. Instead, we could redesign the room much more simply while still achieving the same effect, like so:
Room layout also determines the difficulty, and this is mostly up to the designer whether or not they want the room to be hard or not. As with everything, it’s imperative to keep it consistent, which means watching out for chokepoints. One of the things many players silently hate, yet rarely talk about, are the chokepoints in a level, which is brought about by bad room design. These are rooms that introduce a sharp and often unexpected spike in difficulty, or, in some cases, just a really annoying section that could kill an otherwise good run. A good example of a shitty chokepoint in a level is in the last section of Pizzascare, where, if you’ve ever tried to S-Rank or P-rank it, you would likely know about The Gap™…
…which is a pit in the third to the last room that requires an oddly precise timing. Falling in said pit will kill any P-Rank run, and may even kill a normal run if time is running out. This is a clear chokepoint, and is the only source of possible failure in what is otherwise a pretty easy level (especially for one in Floor 5). Stuff like this can cause frustration; I know because I was frustrated at it.
One of the easiest ways to look for chokepoints is to always test, but more importantly, to test where the player can fail. Often, when we’re playtesting our rooms, we always go through them perfectly, because we know what to do, so we’re completely blindsided to what happens when things go wrong. While the possibility for failure is important, it’s just as important to not punish the player too much, and to keep recovery options open even after failure. In Pizza Tower especially, recovering from what could’ve been a dead run is often much more exhilarating than one where nothing goes wrong. But if something does go wrong and it’s an instant reset, it sours the experience. Difficulty makes a game fun, but not to the point where it becomes unfair. We want to keep playing a game. We want to keep the flow going.
Speaking of which, another element that room layouts dictate is the flow of gameplay.
Flow
Flow is the very substance upon which Pizza Tower is built. Of the four “cornerstones of level design”, this one is perhaps the most specific to the game. Not everything is going to need flow, let alone consider it.
You might think “flow” has something to do with the gameplay or the layout or how rooms transition into each other, but actually, flow is entirely in the mind. It is the pursuit of that unbroken mental state — that flow state — that makes Pizza Tower what it is. Flow is the reward to mastery.
The question “how do you make a level flow well?” ultimately translates to “how do you make the player flow well?” Their inputs, for one thing, have to feel natural and inclined, and they always should have something to do. If you want to make it quantitative, one thing to look out for is the input rate of a player. How many inputs are they doing in every given moment? Is it too many or too few? Just right? How varied are the moves that they’re doing? Are they only holding right and jumping a few times? Are they pressing every button on their controller? Is that fun?
Here’s the thing, Pizza Tower didn’t have to be fast. Flow has almost nothing to do with speed, but it does have everything to do with execution. Constant, unbreaking execution is something to be earned, and it’s something incredibly satisfying when pulled off. Recall the previous Celeste example: Celeste is not a “fast” game, at least not anywhere near the level Pizza Tower is, yet, think about its big rooms with no checkpoints, the ones which require straight, tenacious platforming for a solid minute or two, the ones like the last room of Farewell, with its near 2 minute runtime, with ever-increasing tension as you slowly reach its end, with a slight fear of failure completely overshadowed by your unyielding focus. That’s flow.
As previously mentioned, flow is the reward to mastery. Flow is not something given but something earned. Look, Pizza Tower is a simple game, but when you’re trying to beat the levels in record time or get that elusive P-Rank, flow is suddenly something that requires skill and effort. Much like, say, a Sonic game, flow is something probably not even considered by a casual player in their casual playthrough, because they play at their own pace. But for people who like to traverse a level in high speed, they’re inclined to focus for its entire duration, inducing flow. If flow is given to the player, they’ll have less need to focus, meaning a “flow state” is less felt. On the other hand, if flow is something too difficult to obtain, players will get simply frustrated. Which makes it incredibly hard to even talk about flow, because it’s an abstract, broad concept that defines games based on mastery, and is something ultimately unneeded by those not. If you’re making a game where levels do have a sense of “flow”, always take note of whether that flow is satisfying or not to achieve.
The best I can do is give an example. Check out this ledge in John Gutter.
For most newcomers, they either run here at full speed and bonk the wall on the right, or they intentionally slow down to fall, or maybe they even climb down the ladder. Thus, this section of the level breaks their flow because, either way, they’re slowing down. The pace that the player has set in their mind is broken.
However, a more skilled player may think to do a Mach turnaround off this ledge instead, maintaining their speed and pace at the cost of falling in the wrong direction, losing a little less flow.
But an even better player may simply fast fall off this ledge (by holding down, grab, and jump on the same frame), saving the most time, maintaining the most flow.
Flow is where layout and mechanics come together. Notice how a very simple ledge in this room can allow for three different movement mechanics to shine for varying player skills. And when you can pull off any of the more advanced techniques, it feels satisfying, does it not? You totally could just go down the ladder and you’d still have more than enough leeway for any rank, even P-Rank. It’s not required. But it feels good to have the flow unbroken. Mind you, all three of these options aren’t the fastest the game can go. It’s really not about the “speed”, moreso is it about keeping up the pace set by the player in their head. When I’m playing Pizza Tower, there’s like a metronome ringing in my ears, and keeping that metronome in sync is all about making the right moves and not being stopped. Keeping that mental metronome in sync, to me, is flow.
Visuals
Okay, if you’ve never played Pizza Tower before, can I ask you a question? Which of these two levels do you think is in the game?
Those who have played Pizza Tower may be quick to realize that the second image is Peppibot Factory, while the first image is a fan-made level called Star Tower by noahnumnuts. Was it hard to figure out the answer for you? Why or why not?
Pizza Tower is a visually striking game. It is esoteric, simple, and, best of all, distinct. Yet, despite that, it is surprisingly easy to read.
One of the best qualities about Pizza Tower is its visual clarity, which is especially important for a game all about going fast and reacting to what’s up ahead. The foreground is much more saturated and contrasted from the background, with clear, black outlines and white shading around the edges of blocks, giving them definition. As previously discussed, other elements of a level can add to the visual clarity too, like having rigidly placed platforms. Pizza Tower also makes use of visual indicators, like these ground decorations being used to mark where to throw bombs…
…or trails of toppings being used to mark secret locations.
In general, toppings, clocks, and even enemies are used all throughout levels to guide the player on where to go. This is something I see almost every custom Pizza Tower level under-utilize (or straight up not even use at all) which is a real shame, because not only do these elements act as guides…
…they also give visual interest. A spade is a spade, and a bland level is a bland level. I think we’ve taken for granted how Pizza Tower looks, because it takes genuine time and polish to make a level as visually compelling as the ones in this game. A lot of fanmade Pizza Tower levels don’t have the decorations, texturing, and layering that the base game levels have, because it’s not easy! It’s hard to have that level of pizzazz3. But, honestly, this is an issue I see many video games make, even outside of Pizza Tower. A game might have an interesting style or gameplay or story, but when it comes to its visuals, sometimes they’re just… bland.
You have to understand: visuals are a part of your level. It’s not so completely divorced from the idea of “level design”, and is in fact a big part of it. Level design is all about making a stage that evokes a certain feeling from the player, providing them with a specific, tailored experience. Whether you like it or not, the way a level looks greatly affects a level’s tailored player experience.
Some levels even have a theme, like Pig City being a city, so the level has a bustling, active feel to it.
Meanwhile, Don’t Make a Sound is a horror-themed level, so it’s dark and cramped in comparison.
Visuals also affect layout. For example, good layout is generally not noisy and offers visual clarity, tending to avoid noise as much as possible. For example, note how the platforms below are scattered and erratically placed.
Of course, if this fits the theme of your level, it’s fine. But in any other case, making the platforms lined up and rigidly designed helps with visual clarity, and is often the better choice.
Remember, while visuals are typically the very last thing you have to worry about when building a level, they are something you do have to worry about eventually. Skipping out on polishing your level’s visuals means skipping out on reinforcing whatever experience your level intends to give. When I asked you to figure out which of the two initial images were the real level, were you able to answer it correctly? If not, then that means Star Tower was able to, at the very least, imitate the visual polish and interest that the base game’s levels have, which I think it certainly does. Take the time to use your creativity, and make your levels look truly special, because when they look special, they start to feel special.
Design Considerations Specific to Pizza Tower
So far, we’ve comprehensively discussed the four cornerstones to building a Pizza Tower level: mechanics, layout, flow, and visuals. But! These cornerstones often happen to be applicable to other games as well, at varying degrees. That said, Pizza Tower is still a game of its own, with a whole host of design decisions and issues unique to itself. These will most likely not be applicable to the games that you and I could be making, but perhaps seeing how Pizza Tower addresses them could still shine some light on its design process.
Pizza Time
The single wildest gameplay mechanic that transforms the way Pizza Tower’s levels are designed is its end-of-level “Pizza Time” mechanic. I’ve only glossed over it previously, but essentially, at the end of every level, the player is forced to run backwards through the stage in order to reach the door from which they started. This mechanic actually originated from Wario Land 4 (as do many things in Pizza Tower), and much like Wario Land 4, the level transforms itself to accommodate the player running back. The difference? There is now a timer.
This mechanic alone should deserve a separate article altogether, as it is one of Pizza Tower’s defining gameplay mechanics, and is an incredible design decision that smartly solves the problems of difficulty, tension, and progression at once. However, for the context of level design, it means one thing: levels should (ideally) be playable backwards. Rooms should be playable backwards. Sections should be playable backwards. Designing levels suddenly becomes a palindrome!
Not every level has you maniacally running through it entirely backwards during Pizza Time; in fact, some levels take you on completely new routes altogether, though this does come with the issue of having to design… you know… more of the level. As much as possible, we would like to use Pizza Time for its intended purpose, which was to traverse the level backwards. However, that will mean designing parts of the level to be playable backwards. How?
See the example below. Here, the player must run down this snaking path, jumping across the electricity along the way. However, since this path consists of solid blocks, the player will have to go back through here again during Pizza Time in reverse.
If that is intended, then great! We’re done. But remember: Pizza Time has a timer, and it is less about making tight moves and more about going fast. We may want the player to skip this section altogether during Pizza Time, and an easy way to do that would be to, say, carve the left side using semisolid platforms, so that all Peppino has to do is to climb the left wall when going backwards.
We could even add collectibles that only appear during Pizza Time to serve as a guide for where the player should go.
Notice how we’ve taken the same section and made it playable in two different ways forwards and backwards? Not every section needs this kind of gameplay duality, but for Pizza Tower’s level designers, it is something they keep at the back of their minds at all times.
Score and Combo
Remember that “P-Rank” I mentioned way earlier? Well, not everyone is aiming for P-Ranks, but some do. I’ve P-Ranked every level in the game myself, but how does P-Ranking work? The rules are slightly weird, but it essentially boils down to (a) get a really high score, and (b) do not break combo throughout the entire level.
Yes, Pizza Tower has a scoring system. Killing enemies and grabbing collectibles give score — same with completing secret rooms. Score determines the rank that the player will get. It is also the main way Pizza Tower encourages exploration, as crevices and crannies may contain collectibles to increase this number.
Perhaps the more interesting part of the equation is the combo system. Whenever the player kills an enemy, their combo count increases, and the combo meter starts depleting. The combo meter is only refreshed by collecting collectibles and killing more enemies. For people aiming to achieve the elusive P-Rank, this means one thing: a fail condition.
Normally, you can’t really “die” in Pizza Tower. But for a P-Ranker, death is equivalent to breaking combo, because breaking that combo means P-Rank is no longer eligible. Levels then have to accommodate for this, by sprinkling in ways to refresh the combo all throughout its duration. Toppings, collectibles, and enemies must then be placed with the idea that they’ll extend combos in mind. Funnily enough, if you check the Steam patches for Pizza Tower throughout the years, one of the more common adjustments McPig makes to the game is adjusting certain levels to add places where combos can refresh. Ideally, levels in Pizza Tower should be designed where keeping a combo alive is challenging, but not entirely unfair.
Conclusion
Pizza Tower is a simple game. But the unfortunate truth is that designing levels for it is not. Designing levels takes time, effort, and constant decision-making. Sadly, this goes for any game, too.
To make the design process easier, we’ve split the process into four cornerstones: mechanics, or the elements that make up a level; layout, or the shape and composition of a level; flow, or the execution that a level requires/encourages from the player; and visuals, or how a level looks. To think of these foundations as completely separate would be foolish, as from what we’ve seen throughout this article, they’re actually rather interconnected and interdependent. Good flow relies on good mechanics relies on good layout relies on good visuals.
But as daunting as level design may be, remember that, at the end of the day, level design is game design. And game design asks one central question: “what do you want the player to experience?” What do you want players to do? To think? To feel? It sounds way easier than it actually is. From a Game Developer interview with Pizza Tower’s lead programmer Sertif, it was revealed that Gnome Forest, one of the first levels they designed, had to undergo lots of iteration, first from having a central hub with taxis, to one with no taxis, to one with no hub whatsoever. This change reflected the game’s overall evolution away from gimmicky gameplay (though much of that still retained) and towards flow-focused gameplay, and with this shift in intended player experience naturally came the shift in level design, too. If you are overwhelmed from just how much you have to think about when it comes to level design, don’t worry: level design comes last, and it’s almost always a consequence of how the rest of the game is designed. Once the rest of the game has been built upon solid foundations, good level design will naturally follow.
Footnotes
- Formally known as the Weenie Mount. ↩︎
- All of the “runtime” calculations here are pre-Pizza Time. ↩︎
- Considering the game being discussed, I can’t stop pronouncing “pizzazz” as “pizza-zz”, like the word “pizza” with two z’s at the end. ↩︎
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