Video Game / Good Pizza, Great Pizza

"That's all for today. Good pizza, great pizza."

— Pizza News Network

Good Pizza, Great Pizza is a business simulation game developed by TapBlaze. It was first released on iOS in 2014, and for Android in 2015. It is also available on Steam and the Nintendo Switch.

After opening up a pizza shop in a pizza-crazy Pizza City, the player is rudely greeted by the eponymous owner of the popular Alicante's Pizza across the street, and both compete against each other for customers and most importantly, money for ingredients and rent.

The game is split up into 5 chapters, with new characters and mechanics introduced along the way.

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Tropes seen in this game:

• An Interior Designer Is You: You can buy furniture for your pizzeria.
• Animation Bump:
  • While nearly every character only has one pose with different expressions, one unique customer named Iris introduced in the October 2022 update orders pizza with fully-animated sign language and responds to you as such.
  • The climax of Chapter 5 has a fully-animated sequence of Julius Cheeser being sealed for good, which is much more dynamic compared to other animated cutscenes.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • A crux point in Chapter 4 is choosing if Angelica's crimes should be publicly exposed. Doing so will give you the WPA award, but deciding to keep them private will have Angelica give you her Record Player as thanks. Whatever reward you didn’t get can be purchased in the shop layer for 30 gems.
  • Iris, the mute customer introduced in the October 2022 update orders pizza in sign language, but if the player doesn't understand this and pushes for a Hint, she will give them a written note.
• Arc Villain: Each chapter features a rival against the player, who coincidentally have their operations across the street.
  • Chapter 1: Alicante, the pizzeria owner across the street and is all around rude.
  • Chapter 2 is the only exception apart from the mysterious Pizza Council and Peppertiti, who although pit the player against several complex trials, reward them for successfully completing them and don't act antagonistic in any way.
  • Chapter 3 has Dr. Keh, the reigning champ of PizzaCon's Pizza Palooza competition.
  • Chapter 4 has Angelica Béchamel, the owner of Big Data Pizza who's planning to monopolize the pizzeria market.
  • Chapter 5 features three opponents, with the player competing for Julius Cheeser's dough against the returning Alicante and Dr. Keh alongside newcomer Cicero Burrata, which ends up disrupted when the dough get stolen by a mysterious figure. Although it’s eventually revealed that Cicero stole the pizza dough, it’s also discovered that she was a Well-Intentioned Extremist who only stole it to save her friend Octavia and combat the true villain of the chapter— the spirit of Julius Cheeser himself, who lives on through a curse in the ancient pizza dough that allows him to possess anyone who eats it (including Octavia) so that he can complete his evil plans of conquering the pizza world by destroying all toppings and rival Ovenists.
• Bankruptcy Barrel: Alicante ends up with this after bears trash his pizzeria.
• Bears Are Bad News: The Homeless Guy in Chapter 1 sends a couple of bears to trash Alicante's Pizza for you.
• Beary Funny: Bears show up a lot in the game, such as a bear-themed pizza box and Chapter 5 shows several bears registed on BakedIn with their own pizzerias.
• Big Good:
  • The Plant Lady is the closest to this overall, who helps you in various ways such as giving you an eggplant plant as well as access to a vegetable garden to grow more ingredients. She also tries to help you even the playing field against Dr. Keh in the pizza duel by offering to steal the illegal flavour enhancers he's been using.
  • In Chapter 4, The WPA Agent is this. He gives you a tip to not give Megabyte a pizza, and investigates Big Data Pizza to gather enough evidence to throw Angelica out of power.
• The Bus Came Back: Alicante returns in Chapter 4 after he left in Chapter 1 to help the player have a fighting chance against BDP, supplying you with garlic seeds to grow yourself and instructions on how to make your very own House Special.
• But Thou Must!: Inverted in Chapter 4 when Angelica offers to bribe you just to leave town. You can accept the offer and play the day as normal, but when the night bill is totaled and Angelica's bribe is included, the game questions your choice since now there's no one left to stand up against Big Data Pizza, forcing you to start the day over and decline the bribe.
• The Chosen One: The Saucesayers in Chapter 2 are hoping you're the one who can create a pizza that can satisfy Pepertitti.
• Companion Food: If you fulfill your orders perfectly, your customers will sometimes claim that they'll marry their pizzas.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • Compared to the lighthearted previous chapters where it's just the player making better pizzas than the competition, Chapter 4 has a powerful MegaCorp stealing recipes from local pizzerias; forcing them to close or just buying them out, monopolising ingredients by taking over farms and jeopardizing the livelihood of an ovenist who's struggling to pay for her son's medication. This all results in the WPA filing a lawsuit against the company which ends up going to Supreme Court.
  • Chapter 5 continues this trend with a Grand Theft pizza dough mystery involving a major pizza making competition, two of your former rivals returning again as suspects in the theft, and uncovering an evil plan by the spirit of the wicked Julius Cheeser, who has been possessing the competition’s host Octavia Bell this entire time, to possess the competition’s winner and use them in a bid to conquer the pizza world by destroying all toppings and Ovenists that would oppose him.
• Developer's Foresight: The female customer wearing a hijab only orders vegetarian pizzas, since most of the meat toppings (ham, sausage, bacon, and pepperoni) come from pigs.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: The Mothers Day event has Alicante miss his mother, due to losing contact with her. The player can offer to help find her by putting a help request on PNN.
• Expy Coexistence: One of the famous faces you can serve is Elon Musk, and one of the supporting cast in Chapter 4 is an eccentric billionaire named Elliot St. Claire who makes a line of pizza-powered self-driving cars and either finances a cryptocurrency or a space rocket.
• Featureless Protagonist: The player is not seen in any capacity or form, with their pizzeria being their "face" instead. A later update would give the player to make their own avatar.
• For Science!: If you defeat Dr. Keh without using the flavour enhancers, he's so shocked that your pizza can taste so good without his enhancers that he closes Ambrosia to find the secret to your perfect flavor.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the 2024 Valentines Event, if you make Miles' order perfectly, he'll wonder if there should be a game made about your pizzeria.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • During encounters with story characters, the happiness indicator on the top changes if they're angry such as the antagonistic characters.
  • At the end of Chapter 4, if you expose Angelica's crimes publicly, she'll coldly order a pizza from you. The next day, she's left a spiteful one-heart review despite if you made it perfectly.
  • In Chapter 5, it's mentioned that Octavia Bell ate part of the Ancient Pizza Dough, which got her partially possessed by Julius Cheeser. If you look closely at the dough when you're performing the ritual in Dr. Keh's kitchen, you can see a bite mark in the crust.
• Given Name Reveal: Helping the Mother Ovenist results in her giving you a box based on a drawing by her son, referred to as "Sasha's Box".
• Greater-Scope Villain: Dr. Keh caused Angelica Béchamel's original pizza shop to close years ago due to his flavour enhancers stealing her customers, causing her to take a more aggressive and immoral stance in business upon her return running Big Data Pizza.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Megabyte realises that Angelica is pretty much using them for evil by getting pizzas from rival pizzerias to steal their recipes. In the end, he goes to work for you after Big Data Pizza's new Gigabyte line rendered them obsolete.
• Heel Realization: In Chapter 4, if you ask the WPA agent to not publicly release the evidence against BDP, Angelica will visit and thank you for not exposing her, having realized the error of her ways through your act of kindness. In return, she gives you a music player that she used in her first pizza shop.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Dr. Keh in Chapter 3, who's more condescending than Alicante and uses illegal flavour enhancers to try and win a highly-publicised pizza duel against you, and drove Angelica Béchamel's original pizza shop out of business.
• Mundane Utility: At the end of Chapter 4, the hyper-advanced robot Megabyte helps you make pizzas due to a new line of robots making their line obsolete. However, they advise you to not ask for their help making very simple pizzas you can easily handle, instead for hard ones like Vegetarian/Vegan pizzas and especially ones that call for everything.
• Permanently Missable Content: It's possible to never obtain the Pizza-Off prize by obviously losing to Dr. Keh in Chapter 3.
• Rags to Riches: The two homeless guys you help end up as this. Homeless Guy becomes a bear trainer, while Rufus ends up being the creator of a pizza delivery app.
• Sequel Hook:
  • At the end of Chapter 4, Alicante expresses interest in reopening his pizzeria, which he does by Chapter 5 with a relatively successful outdoor food stand.
  • While investigating Dr. Keh's restaurant, you may come across a letter from Angelica Bechamel, implying that she's corresponding with Keh for an unknown reason.
• Shout-Out: Several orders and decorations comes with references. These include:
  • A pineapple order saying it's the perfect home for an underwater sponge. Also, an anchovy order has the customer noticing a smelly smell. One order has them asking for pineapple under the sea. The pineapple event in Chapter 1 is also represented by a poster of Spongebob's house.
  • A shrimp order naming the many ways you can cook it and another would say it's the fruit of the sea.
  • An anchovy order will have the customer singing Under the Sea.
  • A vegan order may have the customer state they don't have vegan powers.
  • Failing a pizza order which shows up on OrderUp tomorrow with a 1/5 rating might be made by someone named "orangeninja", who claims to have come from the sewers, but thinks your pizza stinks. The turtles themselves appear on the "Turtle Poster".
• Skewed Priorities: Some customers claim to be chased by animals or vampires, but decide to solve it with pizzas and might even ask for it to be cooked twice.
  Customer: There's a bear in my car! I should probably get an onion pizza.
• Snake Oil Salesman: Dr. Price in Chapter 4 often thinks he himself may be this regarding his advertising and products due to low self-esteem, although both are extremely effective and cheap. In fact, his advertisements help the player weather and survive a series of ingredient price hikes instigated by Angelica in a bid to ruin you, so you counter by drawing customers to only purchase ingredients not affected by the high cost. At the end of Chapter 4, he ends sales of his gadgets after acknowledging that they're just junk, but keeps his advertisement side open due to its popularity.
• Stuff Blowing Up: If you fund Elliot's rocket idea in Chapter 4, it crashes and explodes upon launch. Thankfully, it was an unmanned test and insured, so he pays you back.
• Tournament Arc:
  • Chapter 3 focuses on the annual PizzaCon's Pizza Palooza, which is said to be a great honor for any ovenists.
  • Chapter 5 features the appearance of the ZArena, with the player being chosen to compete for the dough of the legendary Julius Cheeser, which legends says grants the pizza skills of the ruler to whoever eats it. But the competition gets abruptly cancelled midway through due to the dough being stolen, which leads the player to investigate the incident.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Pretty much nearly everyone in the aptly-named Pizza City loves pizza, to the point it's Serious Business.
• Video Game Caring Potential:
  • In Chapter 2, Rufus' first business idea will not succeed and offers to pay you back half of what you invested in. You can however, choose to let him keep it which he will be grateful.
  • In Chapter 4, you can give the Ovenist Mother much more Pizza Funds than she asks for. She does manage to make enough in the end to repay you with interest.
• Wedding Episode: The 2024 Valentines Day event has you hired to provide food for Kevin and Flora's wedding.
• We Will Meet Again:
  • In Chapter 3, If you take Dr. Keh's stolen flavour enhancers off Plant Lady and use them in the pizza duel, then give an angry Dr. Keh a pizza, he'll declare this after knowing you stole and used his product.
  • In Chapter 4, If you ask the WPA to expose BDP publicly, Angelica will visit one last time to declare that it isn’t the last you’ll see of her.
  • In Chapter 5, the furious spirit of Julius Cheeser declares this won't be the last you'll see of him while being sealed back into the Ancient Pizza Dough for good.