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Ninja Pizza Girl is a 2.5D Platform Game made by Disparity Games for Steam, Wii U, Xbox One, Play Station 4, PlayStation Vita, IOSGames, and Android. Inspired by Mirror's Edge and Sonic The Hedgehog, the game is about Gemma, a teenage ninja girl who works for her father's pizzeria, PizzaRiffic. She delivers pizzas for her father, while her brother gives her assistance via two-way radio in her ear. However, in the world of Ninja Pizza Girl, due to massive urban congestion, the only way to ensure that the pizza reaches its intended destination on time is to run, jump, and slide across the fire escapes and roofs of buildings.

Of course, delivering the pizza in a timely manner is only Gemma's chief concern. It's not her only one. While out in the field, Gemma has to deal with every teenager's worst enemy... Other teenagers.

The game was funded via Kickstarter, and was released on Steam on September 30, 2015. Console versions were released in late 2016.


Ninja Pizza Girl contains the following tropes:

  • 30 Minutes, or It's Free!: Every pizza must be delivered while it's still hot and fresh. Take too long and the pizza will be no good, which requires you to restart the mission.
  • Actually Pretty Funny: Tristan thinks this of Chloe's remarks about Gemma's navigational troubles. Gemma, for her part, isn't amused at all... which prompts a Jerkass Realization for her about some of her own "funny" observations about the failings of others.
  • Affectionate Parody: Of the Cyberpunk genre in general and Mirror's Edge in particular. In a futuristic, rain-soaked urban sprawl, a sinister megacorporation sends its ninja operatives to crush the plucky street-level entrepreneurs threatening to disrupt its complete monopoly on... pizza delivery! Oh, and the ninja operatives are, accordingly, teenagers working for minimum wage.
  • All Your Base Are Belong to Us: MegaCo burns down the pizza shop while Gemma is away.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: One of the things you can buy for the in-game currency that you pick up on your runs is new outfits for Gemma.
  • Batman Gambit:
    • Gemma is the victim of one in "The Big Race." Roy has spent the preceeding chapter making her think he's on her side, and then offering her a chance to win the respect of the other ninja by beating him in a race. She does, but it's all a ploy to get her out of contact with her family while the other ninja burn down the family restaurant.
    • She retaliates with an even better one in "On Fire." She heads to the MegaCo offices showing every sign of being on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, causing the CEO to try to evacuate by helicopter just in case. While he's waiting at the helicopter pad, Gemma reaches him and tricks him into starting a Motive Rant which contains the admission that he attacked PizzaRiffic because their product and service was far superior to MegaCo's, thus costing him business. Gemma records that tidbit and has her tech-savvy friends spread the recording all across town, generating a surge of great publicity that will more than make up for the costs of rebuilding the restaurant.
  • Be Yourself: A frequent message in story arcs and level quotes.
  • Break the Cutie: Over the penultimate chapter Gemma starts to visibly crumble under the sustained abuse from the MegaCo ninja, losing the upbeat demeanour that she's had until that point. This eventually culminates in her Darkest Hour in the "Loser Town" level.
  • The Bully: Every single MegaCo ninja acts like this trope, with the possible exception of Roy. And he turns out to be every bit as bad, just more subtle about it.
  • Cannot Spit It Out: Marcus and Giselle suffer so badly from this trope that Marcus can't even work up the nerve to tell Giselle how he feels after he knows that she loves him back. The solution, of course, is to say it with pizza.
  • Catchphrase: Gemma greets most customers with some variant of "PizzaRiffic pizza delivery! It's pizza, and it's terrific!"
  • Cyberpunk with a Chance of Rain: Constantly raining on the title screen and in-game.
  • Daddy's Girl: Gemma and her father are very close; Gemma works for her father's pizza shop and shares his dream of improving the world through pizza, and many of the positive pieces of advice you get before a level begins are written by Gemma's father.
  • Darkest Hour: After MegaCo burns down the pizza shop. The next level is Gemma trying to avoid crossing the Despair Event Horizon.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: The MegaCo CEO's reason for sending hordes of ninja to harrass Gemma at every turn and later burning down the PizzaRiffic restaurant? PizzaRiffic was eroding MegaCo's local profit margins by almost 0.01 percent!
  • Dramatically Missing the Point: Several characters try to impress upon Gemma that the other ninja are jerks whose approval isn't something she should care about or even want, and that meanwhile plenty of nicer people like and respect her. That point flies right over her head every time.
  • Dude, Not Funny!: At one point, Gemma considers that perhaps some good-natured trash talk is just part of ninja interaction, and tries responding to the enemy ninjas' insults in kind. The enemy ninjas immediately raise the stakes by mocking Tristan's disability and threatening to snap Gemma's neck as well, leaving Gemma (and probably the player too) horrified.
  • Engineered Public Confession: Gemma and Tristan arrange one for the head of MegaCo. Though in an unusual twist on this trope, the engineered confession isn't of the head's guilt, but of the superiority of Gemma's father's pizza.
  • Faceless Mooks: All the MegaCo ninjas wear masks and hoodies.
  • Fan Disservice: The lovingly detailed panel of the fat customer who opens the door in his underwear. Judging from Gemma's reaction, she feels pretty darn disserviced as well.
  • Foreshadowing: During the big race with Roy, if you fall down, Roy will stop to taunt you just like the other enemy ninjas in the game. However, staying behind to taunt you is a strange thing to do if Roy is trying to win a race of speed...because he's not trying to win. The race is just to keep you distracted while Roy's friends burn down your family's pizza shop.
  • Friendly Enemy:
    • Gemma to the MegaCo ninja. She doesn't see why they can't treat each other with professional courtesy and respect even though they're competitors. Sadly, they see things differently, making it a one-sided example of the trope.
    • Roy and Gemma are this. Subverted - he's just pretending to be friendly so he can lure her into a trap.
  • Gameplay and Story Integration: In her Darkest Hour, Gemma runs slowly and can barely jump at all. As she regains her strength, she starts to jump higher and run faster.
  • Girls Love Chocolate: Chocolate is one of the items Gemma can buy to restore her Sanity Meter after it's taken a beating.
  • Good Capitalism, Evil Capitalism: Family-owned PizzaRiffic with its high regard for quality and service is the good capitalism, while massive, greedy MegaCo is the evil capitalism.
  • I Know Mortal Kombat: Gemma apparently told her dad that she'd "studied ninjitsu" so that he'd let her make deliveries to the rougher neighbourhoods. When she actually runs into some enemies, she admits to Tristan that what she meant was that she'd googled it. She still turns out to be pretty efficient in a fight.
  • Irony: Marcus is ridiculously well-spoken, but when he tries to confess his feelings for Giselle he ends up tongue-tied. He ends up foregoing "the vulgarity of speech" and instead declaring his love by sending her a specially designed pizza.
  • Jerkass Realization: Getting teased by Chloe makes Gemma realise that her own teasing of Wanda was maybe not as funny as she thought, and she sets out to make amends.
  • Le Parkour: Gemma has to get the pizzas to their destination by running, leaping, and sliding across fire escapes, scaffolds, and roofs.
  • MegaCorp: MegaCo Pizza.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: Delivering pizzas.
  • Nice Girl: Gemma is a very friendly and cheery person who works hard to realise her dad's dream of making the world a better place through great pizza and pleasant customer service.
  • No Sense of Direction: Gemma apparently suffers from this, which is why Tristan spends his time as Mission Control telling her which way to go next.
  • Not the Fall That Kills You…: Gemma can fall downright ridiculous distances without noticeable distress as long as she rolls when hitting the ground.
  • Post Cyber Punk: Living in an overgrown maze of a city dominated by soulless megacorporations has not ruined people's ability to stay cheerful and care for their friends and family. Or to enjoy a really great pizza, for that matter. Indeed, community and friendship ultimately prove to be stronger forces than money and ninja armies.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: Zigzaged with the MegaCo ninja. They are certainly in it mostly for the minimum wage, one of them even explaining that he's not currently attacking Gemma because she's standing outside of the area that he's getting paid to guard. On the other hand, they also seem to relish any opportunity to be unnecessarily horrible to people in the line of duty.
  • Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Subverted with Gemma. She seems quite tomboyish at first glance, what with leaping across rooftops and all, but she also likes tea, chocolate and bubble baths, makes her own clothes, is very caring and nurturing with a soft spot for cute children and Star-Crossed Lovers, favours non-violent solutions and gets giddy when a cute boy pays attention to her. Needless to say, none of that stops her from being heroic and getting stuff done.
  • "Reason You Suck" Speech: Gemma delivers one to Roy before the final level. It's short, brutal, and doubles as a Badass Boast.
    Gemma: Zip it, Roy. I'm not here for you. I'm here for your boss.
    Roy: Hah! You'll never get to him. He's on the top floor and we have over a hundred ninja inside.
    Gemma: A hundred ninja? You broke the dreams of an honest man for minimum wage and a free T-shirt. I am worth a thousand of you.
  • Sanity Meter: Getting knocked down by enemies (or failing a jump) causes them to laugh at her, which drains Gemma's willpower. As it falls, the colors in the game become washed out, and if it falls too low, Gemma falls to her knees, and has to take a few moments to recover. Interestingly, Gemma's willpower persists between levels - if you got badly beaten up on one level, you should probably go back to the shop to recover before you move on.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: At the third customer who answers the door without pants on, Gemma throws the pizza she was meant to deliver off the roof and declares that from now on she's got a strict "No Pants, No Pizza" policy.
  • Serious Business: Pizza! MegaCo takes it seriously enough to respond with extreme force to even the slightest bit of competition for the pizza market. On the benevolent side, Gemma and her family seem to follow a pizza-based philosophy for doing good in the world and following your dreams.
  • Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Marcus likes long words and dramatic turns of phrase.
  • Shout-Out: Gemma can buy copies of Feed Me Munchy, Intergalactic Space Princess, Assault Android Cactus, and Satellite Reign to brighten her mood.
  • Strange Minds Think Alike: Gemma's dad is dubious as to whether Marcus will really make Giselle understand that he's got feelings for her by sending her an extremely hot and spicy pizza. However, Giselle immediately figures out that he's trying to say that his love for her burns as hot as the pizza, and she happily hurries off to tell him she feels the same way.
  • Supreme Chef: Gemma's dad. Tristan considers the hypothetical choice between enjoying his dad's pizza and being able to afford to wear pants to be a tough one. Gemma is astonished when a customer is capable of looking sad even though she's got one of her dad's meatball pizzas right in front of her. Even the Big Bad admits that his company could not have created a better pizza "in a million years." The man's pretty good at baking pizza, is what we're saying.
  • Teens Are Monsters: The enemies of the game are other teenagers who work for MegaCo Pizza. If they encounter Gemma, they will throw things at her, push her down, insult her, and laugh at her.
  • Textile Work Is Feminine: Gemma makes her own clothes out of scavenged materials. This becomes a plot point in one chapter, and in-game you can dress Gemma up in different outfits that you "buy" with recycled items that you pick up on your runs.
  • The Unfought: However much he might deserve it, and despite spending the last level getting to him, you don't actually get to stomp on the head of the MegaCo CEO. Justified in that that was not Gemma's plan to begin with - she just needed him to think it was so that she could draw him out to talk to her and then trick him into admitting, on tape, the superiority of PizzaRiffic's pizza.
  • You Are Better Than You Think You Are: A somewhat odd example in that Gemma manages to deliver one of these to herself. During the "Loser Town" level, as she is brooding over how worthless she is, she imagines a number of the characters she's met over the course of the game - friends as well as enemies - appearing before her and reminding her of how she either helped them or defeated them. Eventually, she starts believing them and bucks up.

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