Video Game / Sugary Spire

Due to its nature as a fangame, spoilers for Pizza Tower will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

Sugar Rush!

Sugary Spire is an upcoming Role Swap AU Pizza Tower fangame, currently in development by the aptly named Sugary Spire Team currently led by MrUnown, with development notably starting before the base game was even fully released. The game swaps several characters’ roles. For example, Peppino and The Noise, who were Player Character and the third boss respectively, are now Pizzano and Pizzelle, who have the opposite roles. Additionally, the game is candy themed instead of pizza themed, and the enemies have been altered to reflect that. Though unlike most Role Swap AUs, the game has quite a lot of original ideas too, mostly regarding the new transformations and level themes.

The game plays similarly to its saucy counterpart, in that you control Pizzelle through various candy-themed levels, using her grab and dash attacks to kill enemies among other things. Pizzelle, unlike Peppino, also has an attack where she tumbles across the ground, upon pressing the grab button twice. The game's story hasn't been realized yet, but there's lore available on the official website.

The demo is available here on itch.io.

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The spire of tropes:

• Adaptational Badass: The Firebutt transformation from Pizza Tower returns here, but, as shown in one of the livestreams showing off new content, it works differently from its PT counterpart, as in PT, the Firebutt transformation only sent you flying upward, damaging foes you touch while on fire. In Sugary Spire, however, you can cancel out of the transformation by means of a damaging Air Dash, in a similar vein to Pizza Tower's Firemouth transformation.
• Band Land: Dance-off, one of the levels of the third floor, is a giant dance floor with several dancing watermelons in it to serve as enemies.
• Bubblegloop Swamp: Molasses Swamp is the game's resident swamp level. Fittingly, it's made out of molasses and chocolate. It also contains geisers that can fling you upward.
• Cigar Chomper: A rare heroic example with Ice Pop, the Mr. Exposition who tells you tutorials. He's constantly casually smoking a cigar, and only exists to help you.
• Collapsing Lair: Like with Pizza Tower, every single level ends with an escape sequence. This time referred to as a Sugar Rush. In it, you have to make your way back to the start of the level while under a time limit.
• Clockworks Area: The second section of Cottontown is the inside of a giant clock tower filled with gears and more clocks inside of it.
• Dark Reprise: Pizzano's original leitmotif Pizzano's Gnarly Action-Packed Themetune, was a more evil-sounding remix of the World 1 level themes (and the escape theme) from Pizza Tower in the style of "The Noise's Jam Packed Radical Anthem" from the same game, fitting with Pizzano's nature as an evil version of Peppino. It has since been replaced with an original theme, though.
• Dastardly Whiplash: Pizzano, a recurring foe of Pizzelle, who is Peppino with a blue version of the Noise’s clothes. He has the mustache and Zany Schemes, and is shown pulling various tricks on Pizzelle, such as driving a train after her in Sugarshack Mines or shooting bombs at her from the foreground in Dance-off.
• Evil Laugh: In the demo, Coneball, the game's Pizzaface equivalent, laughs every time they attack.
• Expy: Various characters in the game are role-swapped versions of characters from Pizza Tower, but others are instead candy-themed versions of Pizza Tower characters. Characters that follow this pattern are:
  • Coneball is the game's Pizzaface equivalent. They're a giant ice cream cone with 3 holes that act as facial features.
  • The Bartender was a scrapped character who would have been a candy-themed expy of The Vigilante. He would have undergone an Adaptational Job Change, becoming a bartender instead of a Vigilante Man. He has since been scrapped, likely due to being too similar to The Vigilante.
  • Applejim was another scrapped character who would have been the game's Pepperman equivalent. He was an orange candy apple who looked and fought like Pepperman. Like The Bartender, he was scrapped, but makes a cameo appearance in Sugarshack Mines, as a train with his face on it.
  • The Painter is a later expy of Pepperman, who's a cycloptic anthropomorphic paintbrush. He was originally slated to be the first boss, but his current role in the game is unknown.
  • Ice Pop is an anthropomorphic ice cream cone who's constantly smoking a cigar. He's also the game's resident Mr. Exposition who tells you tutorials, like Pizza Granny from Pizza Tower
  • Coneboy, an anthropomorphic cartoony ice cream cone with a large red Gag Nose, serves as an expy of Pizzaboy from Pizza Tower. Both are cardboard cutouts of corporate mascots for food companies. The large red nose is similar to Pizzahead, the person that Pizzaboy is caricaturing in Pizza Tower.
• Funny Animal: The game's Gerome equivalent, Rudy, is a bipedal blue gummy bear wearing sunglasses.
• Fun with Acronyms: The theme that plays in Crunchy Construction while playing as Pizzano is called Pizzano's Obligatory Orchestral Play.
• Gender Flip:
  • Both Peppino and The Noise are male in Pizza Tower, but Pizzelle has been confirmed by the developers to be a trans female.
  • Pizza Granny, the Mrs. Exposition in Pizza Tower, is female, but Sugary Spire's Pizza Granny equivalent, Ice Pop, is male.
• Girls With Mustaches: Pizzelle is female, yet retains The Noise's mustache.
• Good Counterpart: Ice Pop, who, according to the devs is the game's Pizza Granny equivalent, serves as a good counterpart to Coneball. Both are upside-down ice cream cones with faces. But while Coneball chases you down once the Sugar Rush timer hits zero, and, in an earlier state of development, actively attacked you with spikes and harmful rain, Ice Pop is a Mr. Exposition who tells you tutorials, and seemingly exists to help you.
• The Goomba: Gumslimes, which are pink slimes with googly eyes, serve as the weakest enemies in the game, given their status as the game’s Cheeseslime equivalent. They can't damage Pizzelle in any way, shape or form.
• Hornet Hole: Sting Operation, one of the levels currently in development is a giant beehive large enough to fit an entire level inside of it, as confirmed by the developers. It contains bee enemies and regular-sized beehives that you can stick to upon jumping into them.
• Idiosyncratic Combo Levels: Like Pizza Tower, the game has these. In order from lowest to highest, the combo levels are Terrible, Sour, OK, Alright, Smooth, Lookin' Good, Fruity, Brash, Eerie, Intriguing, Mesmerizing, Solid, Striking, Uncanny, Soul Crushing, Spicy, Golden, Pearly White, Silly, Fucked Up, Hot Damn, Awesome, Enough, Stop, WTF, and finally Sugary.
• Last Note Nightmare: The Sugar Rush theme, "Glucose Getaway" starts out as a fast-paced, chaotic drum & bass song, but eventually, at the end, it slows down humongously into a creepy Drone of Dread, which is fitting, given that you're now being chased by Coneball.
• Level Ate: Practically all the levels are made out of candy.
• Meaningful Name: Pizzelle's name is shared with a traditional Italian Waffle cookie, alongside starting with the first 4 letters of “Pizza”. This fits with the game's candy theme, and its nature as a fangame based on a pizza-themed game.
• Minecart Madness: Sugarshack Mines has sections where you control a minecart across several sets of rails. You move automatically while inside them, and can jump with them. The escape sequence at the end even has you use it to outrun the Applejim Express.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In one of her taunts, Pizzelle grabs a remote with a button on it, preparing to press it. This is a reference to earlier builds of Pizza Tower, where The Noise would activate Pizza Time by using the exact same remote.
  • The Painter very closely resembles Pepperman's realistic Art Shift design on his Versus Character Splash screen, which is fitting, as The Painter was originally planned to be Sugary Spire's Pepperman equivalent.
• Non-Human Head: The Painter, one of Pizzelle's allies, has a human body, but a paintbrush with a face for a head.
• Original Generation: Alongside role-swapped versions of characters from Pizza Tower and candy-themed counterparts for most of the enemies and a few major characters, the game adds several new characters:
  • Dimplo and Yello are two original characters that have a currently unknown role in the game. Dimplo is a large gray blob with a dopey expression on his face, while Yello is a tiny yellow blob with Black Bead Eyes and stubby limbs. The two of them have currently appeared in various short comics posted on Twitter / X, and appear as a cameo on a sign in a currently unknown level.
  • M'lass is a brown frog, and a local celebrity of Molasses Swamp, who appears on graffiti in that level as a cameo. He has his own fanpage on the game’s website, which reveals more info about him, such as that he disappeared without a trace after cheating on his wife with the daughter of Dilk Wilkam, a chocolate maker who created the “Wilka” brand of chocolate.
• Perpetual Smiler: Rosette, the game's Gustavo/Noisette equivalent, rarely stops smiling.
• Pie in the Face: One of Pizzelle's enemy throw animations has her slam a pie in the enemy's face.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: The tutorial's theme is a take on the 1902 song “The Entertainer” to mirror Pizza Tower's use of “Funiculi Funicula” for its own tutorial.
• Role Swap AU: The game serves as an AU to Pizza Tower where several characters have swapped roles. The swapped roles are as follows:
  • Peppino and The Noise, who are the Player Character and third boss in Pizza Tower, are now the exact opposite, with their names being changed to Pizzano and Pizzelle. Their clothes have also been swapped, with Pizzelle wearing Peppino's chef outfit, and Pizzano wearing a blue version of The Noise’s The Noid-esque outfit.
  • Pepperman and The Vigilante were originally going to swap personalities, becoming The Sheriff and Gumbob, respectively. However, this has been scrapped, with the game now going for a more original approach when it comes to bosses.
  • Noisette, Gustavo and Mr. Stick's roles have all been shuffled, with Noisette now being Rosette, the second playable character in some levels, akin to Gustavo in Pizza Tower. Gustavo, on the other hand, is now The G, the person who serves as a Cash Gate to lock boss doors, akin to Mr. Stick. Finally, Mr. Stick is now Stinky, a kind-hearted tinkerer who works for Pizzano, in a similar vein to Noisette.
• Sampling: Like Pizza Tower, a lot of the soundtrack contains samples from other media.
  • Glucose Getaway samples bell sounds from Wario Land 4 as well as the breathing and electricity sounds from Earthbound 1994's final boss theme.
  • Pizzano's Obligatory Orchestral Play samples the "Hello, there!" sound effect, also from Wario Land 4, as a nod to how Pizza Tower's escape theme "It's Pizza Time'' originally contained that sample.
• Shout-Out:
  • Upon taking damage, the HUD tv shows Pizzelle looking at the screen, shedding a single tear, a reference to the sad Spongebob meme.
  • One of Pizzano's taunts has him strike a pose that resembles Anton's default pose, which is fitting, given Pizza Tower and Antonblast's shared Wario Land influence.
  • When Pizzelle gets the Swap tranformation (it's currently unknown what it does), it causes her to don Pizzano's outfit. When Pizzano gets the transformation, though, he instead gains Papyrus' outfit from TS!Underswap.
  • In earlier builds, the cardboard cutouts of Coneboy, the game's Pizzaboy equivalent, had a smiling face, Black Bead Eyes and whiskers, which, along with their pink coloration, made them look like Kirby did in his earlier appearances. Newer builds give them a large red nose, causing the reference to be lost.
  • Once the Sugar Rush timer ends, the Coneboy on the counter is shown transforming into Coneball, who then gives a Grinch-esque grin.
  • The game's Pillar John equivalent, Gummy Harry the gummy bear, is named after Haribo, a German candy brand known for their gummy bears.
  • The Chocolate Frogs that serve as the Stupid Rat equivalents are directly based on Freddo Frog, an Australian anthropomorphic frog-shaped chocolate bar.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Mt. Fudgetop is a tall mountain filled with snow and ice. It's also where the Frostburn transformation is introduced.
• Snowy Sleigh Bells: The music in Mt. Fudgetop contains sleigh bells, which fits with the level's Slippy-Slidey Ice World nature.
• Stalked by the Bell: Like with Pizza Tower, whenever the timer reaches zero during a Sugar Rush, Coneball, the game's resident Pizzaface equivalent, starts chasing you. When they touch you, you instantly die.
• Stealth Pun: When Pizzelle gets the Frostburn transformation, she gets frozen over, gains sunglasses and starts dancing when idle. In other words, she becomes cool in both senses.
• Timed Mission: Like with Pizza Tower, each level ends with a timed escape back to the level entrance.
• Top-Heavy Guy: The Painter has a broad, muscular torso, but very short, skinny legs.

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