Video Game / Pizza Tower

IT'S PIZZA TIME! ^Pictured  Clockwise from the center: Peppino, The Toppins, Gerome, a TV showing Peppino, Pizzaface, a Priest, The Vigilante and a knocked out Cheeseslime.

"Hey, my time is now!
Heart is seething, fists are beating, wow wow wow!
Cheese and Pepper, let's make some Noise!
Serving fresh pizza is my choice!"

— Pizza Mayhem, from the game's offical soundtrack.

Pizza Tower is an indie 2D Platform Game by a small team called Tour de Pizza, led by "McPig" (previously known as "Pizza Tower Guy"), heavily inspired by games like Wario Land. It was finally released on PC through Steam on January 26th, 2023, after 5 years of development and a variety of demos, both public and private.

You play as Peppino Spaghetti, an anxious and ill-tempered Italian chef and owner of a failing pizza restaurant. One day, he is confronted by Pizzaface, a giant sentient pizza and the lord of the titular Pizza Tower, who threatens to destroy Peppino's restaurant with a giant laser. And so, Peppino goes on a quest to destroy the Pizza Tower and save his restaurant, helped by fellow pizza chef Gustavo.

In the game, you traverse through the aforementioned Pizza Tower's floors, collecting pizza ingredients and the animate Toppins along the way. Within the tower's various stages live many cheesy enemies attempting to impede Peppino's progress. After fighting through their defenses, the player takes out the level's Pillar John and must race back to the beginning of the level as it starts to collapse with a timer.

For updates on the game, see its Twitter and Tumblr. The SAGE 2019 demo is available through Itch.io.

Previews: First Demo Trailer, SAGE2019 Trailer, Steam Trailer

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"Y'all ready to get FUNKY?!"

Tropes in the final game: #-L

• 100% Completion: Getting all the collectibles and high ranks replaces Pizza Boy's icon in the menu with Pillar John. If All P-ranks and chef tasks are also completed, the icon turns gold.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: After all the shit Peppino had to go through to save his pizza parlor, some of it literal shit, he loses it when Pizzahead challenges him to a Boss Rush and beats the ever-loving crap out of all of them barehanded, including Pizzahead.
• Ability Required to Proceed: The tower is populated by Stupid Rats that will block the way. Getting past them will involve bringing the level's gimmick transformation to them.
• Acrofatic: True to his inspiration, Peppino has a rotund physique, and is able to run at high speeds, roll infinitely, destroy blocks, and jump high distances.
• Action Horror: The atmosphere of Don't Make A Sound is uniformly oppressive and haunting to convey its status as a Shout-Out to Five Nights at Freddy's, ducking and weaving between the sightlines of unique enemies that can do serious damage and Jump Scare the camera if they catch you; the game allows you to go fast, but it will punish you hard if you screw up. When Pillar John gets taken out, the level leans more heavily on the action side: Peppino has a shotgun and can decimate the animatronics that once hounded him down.
• Advancing Boss of Doom: The last phase of Fake Peppino's boss fight has you running away from them through a tight tunnel until you reach an exit.
• Aliens Steal Cattle: In "Fun Farm"'s background, a cow is seen being abducted by alien. There are also cows serving as obstacles in the UFO segment of "Oregano Desert".
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: The Grand Finale level (which, incidentally, is after the final boss) is this, involving you running down the entire tower, including the various world hubs, with just about every enemy and mechanic coming back at least once.
• Ancient Grome: "Ancient Cheese" is a vaguely Greek-themed ruins level.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Certain levels feature "The Gustavo & Brick Hour", in which Peppino takes a breather and gameplay switches to Gustavo & Brick's moveset. In Gnome Forest, it happens when Peppino encounters a dead end with no way forward; in Pig City, Peppino gets arrested and it's up to Gustavo to continue.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: The player can unlock alternate outfits for Peppino by performing certain miscellaneous feats such as clearing all of World 1 in under an hour or killing a total of 1000 enemies. They are mostly Palette Swaps, but some have an Unmoving Plaid effect added to them.
• Angry Fist-Shake:
  • Peppino shakes his fist when you hit him on the file select screen.
  • Captain Pizza Goblin shakes his fist when you manage to get away from the area he bombards with cannonballs.
• Animate Inanimate Object: Aside from living food, many other objects are also alive such as clouds, trash cans and stampers. Subverted with treasure chests who are revealed to be men with limbs and eyes sticking outside the chest.
• Antepiece: Many elements and gimmicks are introduced in a safe environment such as the Hamkuffs in The Pig City.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Your dash getting interrupted and your combo ruined by an enemy with the ability to damage you has the potential to be very frustrating for speedrunning (which was in fact a big hassle in the newer Wario Land games), so this game gets around that by having enemies drop their guard in fear if you're coming at them at a dash speed of Mach 3 or higher, allowing players to barrel though normally harmful enemies if they keep their speed up. Plus, the few enemies that aren't scared of you speeding at them take a second before they can attack, making them also vulnerable to the dash if you're fast enough.
  • The combo meter will pause its drain during situations where Peppino cannot move, such as lining up a shot with Greaseball during Golf or during the cutscene for opening locked doors, as to prevent unfair loss of a combo when the player is unable to do anything.
  • Similarly, the qualifications for getting a P-Rank are hard, but not merciless. While dropping your combo is an instant fail, taking damage does not disqualify you from a P-Rank. This allows you to easily keep up a P-Rank run even if you mess up here or there. In addition, the screen-clearing Super Taunt counts as a combo hit if it kills an enemy, giving you a free way to extend a P-Rank attempt every few minutes.
  • During Pizza Time, enemies that weren’t explicitly spawned during said escape or Stupid Rats will not respawn if you end up running through a previous room, with puzzles or destroyed blocks also staying solved/busted. This comes in handy if one tends to struggle to flee to the exit, or if one’s going for Lap 2 and running up close to the end of the time limit.
  • When Pizza Time occurs, Gustavo and Mr. Stick will often jump in, pointing to the route leading to the start. Given how large the levels are, this is helpful in preventing players from getting lost on the way back to the beginning of the level.
  • Enemies usually make it obvious if they can damage you, such as having spikes or being an obvious attack. Otherwise, enemies—especially bosses—will flash red if making contact with them will damage you.
  • Rooms with Non-Lethal Bottomless Pits tend to have checkpoints in them, which you respawn at should you fall into said pits, cutting down on extra travel time compared to putting you back at the entrance of the room. This, plus the fact falling in a pit doesn't cut a penalty out of your combo timer helps mitigate maintaining combos in these rooms.
  • Inside the prison room in "The Pig City" is a Pizza Boy Cutout that always respawns when you enter the room for the purpose of refreshing the combo meter, as it is otherwise (outside of the secret room under the toilet) devoid of collectibles to help keep it up.
  • All the destroyable blocks during the escape sequence in Fake Peppino's final phase will remain destroyed even after retrying his boss fight, making all subsequent playthroughs of that section easier.
  • Taunting in front of an enemy will cause it to activate any special move it has, such as Kentucky Kenny throwing a spicy chicken wing, or the Patrollers activating the Toppin Monsters, removing any need to wait.
• Anthropomorphic Food: All over the place, from the rescuable Toppins to the common enemies.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Falling down a pit will have a "Technical Difficulty" cut-in screen before respawning Peppino at the nearest checkpoint. Said screens feature Pizzaface laughing at Peppino laying in the Family Guy death pose on top of a plate of spaghetti and bones (with the spaghetti sauce looking like blood), laying down in a chair with bandages and casts over his body, or looking annoyed about some ice cream that just fell out of his cone.
• The Artifact:
  • The heavy presence of cows in Oregano Desert is a bit of a leftover from earlier in development, when the fire-breathing transformation was undone by drinking milk. In the final game, every transformation is undone by the priest, but the cows were kept and now serve mostly as flavor. That said, you do drink milk to undo the Heater Peppino transformation from the Pepper Pizza in Refrigerator-Refrigerador-Freezerator.
  • Several of the End-Game Results Screen images were supposed to be responses to playing in a certain way: "That's the one, officer!" for hurting Peppino a lot, "Confused?" for killing as few enemies as possible, and "No judgement" for not unlocking any of the other results screens. In the final game all of these are tied to completion percentage, leaving the former two as Orphaned Punchlines.
• Artificial Outdoors Display: Almost all of the game is set inside the title tower, yet many of its areas have painted skies on the walls and prop clouds to resemble outdoor settings. Windows can be seen in the background providing glimpses of the true sky. The Vigilante's arena is one of the more clearly visible examples of this. The final boss is actually set outdoors as it is on the building's roof.
• Art Shift: It's a recurring joke. Between the stage title cards, the TV in the top right, and the boss VS screens, you'll get to see Peppino, Gustavo and company in quite a few goofy artstyles, often trying to make them look a lot more badass than they actually are.
• Aside Glance: The Vigilante gives an annoyed one if the player takes a while to pick up the gun he tosses to Peppino.
• Athletic Arena Level: "Golf". Although it's more of a Greasy Spoon that randomly happens to have mini-golf courses and is inhabited by demons for some reason.
• Atop a Mountain of Corpses: The title card of the final level features Peppino on a pile of defeated enemies.
• Badass Preacher: Pizzascare has an Exorcist (who are Priests with a different outfit) who is depicted fighting off a Pizzard in the Title Card. They're mildly less badass in gameplay, where they give Peppino a really powerful Nigh-Invulnerability powerup instead.
• Bait-and-Switch: At the end of the boss fight with the Noise, he suddenly gets a minigun and is about to attack again, only for Noisette to show up and drag him away from the arena, ending the fight.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: Clearing any stage with a low score as Peppino nets this complaint from him:
  (irritated, gesturing at the results) Good job! That was... D: AWFUL
• Banana Peel: Banana peels cause the player to slip, complete with a whistle sound.
• Battle in the Rain: The Boss Rush and Pizzahead's last phase are fought during a thunderstorm.
• Bedsheet Ghost: Peppino turns into these when he touches a Mushroom Ghost. He can pass through electrified blocks and freely levitate around the air.
• Belly Flop Crushing: Peppino's body slam attack involves him doing a belly-first Ground Pound.
• Big Bad: Pizzaface, in truth Pizzahead, is the one threatening Peppino’s restaurant.
• Big Ball of Violence:
  • In Floor 2, Gustavo and Brick are fighting in a ball that moves back and forth.
  • Peppino and the Noise create one of these fighting each other in the Noise's boss fight, twice. Unlike Gustavo and Brick, however, these fights have the dust cloud mostly absent, with the brawl fully shown to the player.
• Bigger on the Inside:
  • The Pizzamarts in Oregano Desert are the size of a shack from the outside but take a few screens worth of space when going inside. The Flying Saucer takes up about a screen from the outside but is several screens big in the inside.
  • The titular Pizza Tower itself also counts. Despite its appearance of an ordinary looking tower on the outside, it hosts many locales which range from a cemetery to a whole city.
• Big Boo's Haunt:
  • "Wasteyard" combines this with The Wild West, Creepy Cemetery, and Underground Level. Peppino has to deal with Pizza-ghosts, and some segments where he surfs on corpses. An enemy can turn Peppino into a ghost, where he can pass through barriers and collects "Ghost Peppers" to power him up. Also, knocking out Pillar John in this level results in him returning as a Vengeful Ghost who chases you during the Escape Sequence.
  • "Pizzascare", a Darker and Edgier horror-themed variation on the medieval-themed "Pizzascape", also counts as this; ghosts are a common enemy in the level that require blessings from an exorcist to defeat, and the level also has a recurring gimmick in the form of King Ghost, who trails behind Peppino in segments and activates traps along the way.
• Bittersweet Ending: The normal ending, obtained by beating the game without obtaining every tower treasure. Peppino's destroyed the Pizza Tower, and gained enough money and customers to keep his business afloat... but John is dead, Gerome is mourning, and Pizzahead gets away.
• Bizarre Taste in Food: The "secret ingredients" are... esoteric, to put it one way. They're not things one would expect on a pizza, including a can of beans, peanut butter, and a yellow box vaguely labelled as "food".
• Black Bead Eyes: Some characters and enemies have beady eyes, like Swedish Monkeys and Olive Troopers.
• Black Dot Pupils: Most characters who don't have Black Bead Eyes, still don't have irises. There are few exceptions like secret eyes (who have irises) and Pepperman (who has blue pupils). Pencer has one Black Dot Pupil and one eye with a yellow iris.
• Blackout Basement: The level "Don't Make a Sound" is one of these, having the failing lighting obscure most of Peppino's vision. However, you'd best keep an eye on what's in the dark parts...
• Blush Sticker: The Piggy Bank in the main hub world has a circular red blush.
• Body Sled: Peppino can ride zombies like a sled in "Wasteyard".
• Bookends:
  • You start out beating up cardboard cutouts of "Pizza Boy" in the tutorial. They are styled after Pizzahead, the true identity of Pizzaface and the final boss. Right at the end of the final escape sequence, a line of Pizza Boy dummies is all the tower can muster as a last defense before Peppino crosses the entrance gate.
  • The first "real" level of the game is John Gutter, an odd landscape filled with what seem to be defective copies of Pillar John, such as a spherical one, one that's drooping over into a U-shape, or various "dead" ones that act as destructible blocks (and must all be destroyed for one of the game's achievements). The final escape sequence of the game, after defeating the final boss, starts with you destroying the original Pillar John from which all the clones were made, now worn-out, dirty and decrepit. And if you get all the Secret Treasures, you get to revive him after the credits, too!
  • Right after John Gutter, you'll probably jump into Pizzascape, a medieval castle-themed stage. One of the very last stages in the game is Pizzascare, a spooky medieval castle that uses most of the same tileset and a remix of the same music. This is especially notable when no other levels share the same theme twice.
  • The first floor of the Pizza Tower starts out by requiring the player to complete a specific first level, John Gutter, before opening up the next three. The final floor inverts this: only three levels are accessible on the floor with the fourth starting after the final boss.
• Boss Battle: Each world ends with a boss fight which must be cleared before they can proceed to the next set of levels.
• Boss Rush: In the second phase of the final boss, you have to fight the bosses again but with a big twist. After Pizzahead summons all the previous bosses in his final phase, Peppino is so completely done with everything that he flies into a frenzied rage delivering 4 hitpoints of damage to them every time he attacks.
• Bottomless Pits: There are bottomless pits throughout the game, some of them marked with warning signs.
• The Cameo:
  • Pizza Boy, the mascot of Pizza Boy Pizz-Pizza from Don't Make a Sound, appears as a Training Dummy throughout the game. But in truth he has a way bigger role as the final boss.
  • Mort the Chicken, the protagonist of a little-known PlayStation 1 game by the same name, appears as a power-up.
• Carnivore Confusion: Pepperman and the Vigilante agree to Peppino's offer of a slice of free pizza. This is despite both of them being anthropomorphic pizza toppings.
• Cartoon Bomb: Pizza Box Goblins toss such bombs at Peppino. Peppino can pick them up and carry them to throw them at Stupid Rats that block the path; In previous builds of the game, he would start running uncontrollably until the bomb blew up on his face, in a similar fashion to the Flaming Wario transformation from the Wario Land games.
• Catching Some Z's: Sleeping things have the letters "Zzz" next to them.
• Cerebus Rollercoaster: The game starts out fairly goofy in the first few levels, before becoming a bit more grim and gritty in the fourth hub. Then the boss fight against Fake Peppino happens, marking the game's move towards a more horror-inspired atmosphere. Then the final hub becomes mostly horror themed, only for the final boss to swing the mood back around to goofy with the reveal of Pizzaface and Peppino's anger-induced powerup to defeat him.
• Charged Attack: When Peppino is given a revolver, it can be charged for an oversized bullet.
• Checkpoint: Most checkpoints are present in secret areas that make the player respawn there when falling down a bottomless pit.
• Circling Birdies: Stunned enemies have stars hovering over them. The Noise gets an actual bird when stunned.
• Combos: Beat up multiple enemies in a row for bonus points. Combos can also be maintained by picking up items (although this does not increase the combo meter). From the tenth combo on, you can use the taunt action once as a Smart Bomb by holding Up as you perform it. P Ranks require you to kill at least one enemy in the first screen of a given stage and then never drop the following combo until the end.
• Cool Shades: The Pineacool enemy sports a pair of these.
• Counter-Attack: Taunting at the same time as Peppino touches an enemy will cause him to parry them without taking any damage. This can kill enemies who would normally be immune to his grab.
• Covers Always Lie: An In-Universe, Title Card version: the one used in Don't Make A Sound has Peppino happily frolicking with the various animatronics on a blue-skied backdrop. The actual level is a Whole-Plot Reference to Five Nights at Freddy's, in which the animatronics are out for blood and will dish out some of the heaviest score penalties in the game if they get Peppino.
• Cowardly Lion: Peppino looks almost constantly anxious while he traverses the tower, even though he's cleaving through swarms of pizza-themed enemies by charging through them and having Nigh-Invulnerability due to damage going to his score instead.
• Cowardly Mooks: Bandito Chickens run away as soon as Peppino gets too close, dropping harmful bones as they do so.
• Crate Expectations: Some levels have classic wooden crates as destructible objects. For an example, in "Wasteyard".
• Crosshair Aware: In some sections of Crusty Cove, crosshairs mark the locations where the Captain Pizza Goblin shoots his bombs.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • For Wario Land 4 players: Holding the dash button alone will start Peppino's dash—You do not have to actually hold a direction to get the dash going. Although doing so will slowly transition the dash from Mach 3 to Mach 4, but sometimes players will want to stay at Mach 3 for less speed and more control, making it essential to realize exactly how the dash mechanic works.
  • The Super Jump has constantly been compared to the Shinespark from various Metroid titles, but it doesn't work exactly the same—Pizza Tower has you press up, not down, to store the jump. Plus, you'll have to hold up to keep the jump charged, keeping it held while pressing left or right if you want to move while it's stored. Releasing up will perform the jump immediately.
  • For most of the game, the attack button serves as a way to get Peppino to do his Dash Attack, which serves as a nice way to build up momentum and begin running up walls. If he's holding a shotgun though, the attack button instead has him shoot, which halts his momentum and won't allow him to run up walls.
• Defeat Equals Friendship:
  • Gustavo gets chased by Brick in the first hub level, and in the second they're tangled in a Big Ball of Violence. In the third, they're wrapped in bandages and giving each other the thumbs-up, teaming up to become playable in the levels.
  • Pepperman, The Vigilante and The Noise hold a grudge against Peppino after being defeated on their first encounter, but after the final fight, they and Fake Peppino will take Peppino's lead as they escape from the collapsing tower. The credits show them in rather amicable terms and in the end screen, they're all seen hanging out at the restaurant after Peppino offers them free pizza.
• Degraded Boss:
  • In "War", Peppino clones similar to Fake Peppino appear as a common enemy that can be dispatched with a single shotgun blast.
  • Pizzahead initiates a boss rush after his first defeat but Peppino, finally at his limit, freaks out and does four hits of damage for each attack, making the fights much quicker.
• Deranged Animation: While not terribly disturbing, the game's art style heavily uses intentional Off-Model, heavy squash and stretch, and odd proportions. When Peppino runs, he starts by cartwheeling his arms, and the faster he runs the angrier and more deranged his character portrait gets. Some of his throws involve his mouth growing huge and chomping down on the enemy he's holding, launching them at high speed.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Going for Lap 2 during Pizza Time. That means warping from the entrance back to the far end of the level again, thus having to speedily rush back to the entrance once more, during a Timed Mission, and for which you won't be given extra time to complete (except in War, in which it only compensates for that level's gimmick of extending the time limit by finding items). But not only does initiating Lap 2 give you a massive point bonus, it also respawns any enemies and bonus pickups exclusive to Pizza Time, making it absolutely essential for scoring high enough to get S-Rank and P-Rank.
• Directionally Solid Platforms: Some platforms are only solid from above.
• Disembodied Eyebrows: A handful of enemies and stage objects have floating eyebrows. Examples include Box Stampers and Trash Pans.
• A Dog Named "Dog": The cruise ship in Crusty Cove is named the S.S. Ship.
• Double Jump: A spinning uppercut acts as a mid-air boost. Certain powerups like the Knight also grant a double jump.
• Down the Drain: The aptly-named "Oh Shit!" level. It features a lot of shit.
• Dramatic Thunder: The weather turns bad after the second phase of the final boss ends.
• Drone of Dread: "Meatophobia," which plays when standing near a Pillar John or in the secret bacon room in the Pig City, and during the Peppino's Final Judgement screen. It's really just the taunt sound effect slowed down to an unrecognizable degree.
• Dueling Player Characters: Two of the boss fights are against The Vigilante and The Noise, who were playable in earlier builds of the game.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: The "YOU SUCK!" End-Game Results Screen requires you to beat the game with less than 50% completion, while also taking longer than two hours so you don't get a special end-screen for speedrunning the game. Even if you only collect the bare minimum amount of Toppin's needed to open boss gates and skip many of the stages, you can easily end up over 50% just from getting a few A-ranks.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After a hellish day, Peppino ends off his adventure by destroying the Pizza Tower, trashing Pizzahead, potentially reviving True John with the tower's treasures, and making away with enough money and customers to keep his restaurant afloat for now.
• Easter Egg:
  • Wait on the file select menu while it is dark for around 40 seconds and Peppino will lunge at the screen, forcefully closing the game. While the lights are on, you can click on Peppino to beat him up. He'll contort in comical ways, including turning into a pizza, and will clench his fist in anger once you stop.
  • Hold the parry button as Peppino to breakdance and spawn a boombox.
  • There are some hidden rooms around the hub areas, such as Noisette's restaurant, one with a clown car powerup and another with nothing but a car and a trash can with somebody hiding on it. These rooms typically contain content that was present in earlier builds, but got scrapped in the final release.
• Easy Levels, Hard Bosses:
  • In all but a few of the main platforming levels, you can't really lose until you deal with escaping the level, and the enemies usually go down pretty easily to Peppino's abilities. A lot of the difficulty associated with them is mainly about fully completing them and getting the best rank, rather than just completing them in the first place. In the boss levels, however, you have a limited amount of Hit Points before you lose the fight and have to start all over again, and the bosses themselves are fast-paced, have more hit-points than you, and a gradually expanding array of moves.
  • That said, the trope starts leaning towards the opposite if you're going for S or P ranks. While the bosses are no slouch, their attack patterns are clear, learnable, and short, and a decent player can memorize their procedure after a few replays. Levels, on the other hand, have a LOT more that a player has to commit to memory in order to score S—and especially P—ranks. Couple that with having to execute precise platforming perfectly twice in one go on Lap 2 runs and suddenly the No-Damage Run boss fights don't sound so bad.
• Effortless Achievement: The Sage Blue shirt is unlocked by clearing World 1 under one hour. This is very easy to do, and serves the purpose of implying to players that other shirts with requirements that can be failed for good on a given save file exist in the game.
• Elvis Impersonator: The Pineapple Toppin Monster in the "Don't Make a Sound" level. His Jump Scare is just him giving you finger guns with a grin.
• End-Game Results Screen: Following The End screen, Peppino gives a Final Judgement of the player's overall performance and then some final stats are displayed. This ranges from him giving a sarcastic double thumbs up while saying "You Suck!" at very low percentages to shouting "WOW!" when the game is cleared with at least 95% completion. There is also a bonus screen for speedrunning the game in under 2 hours and the best possible one for doing it in under 4 hours with at least 95% completion.
• Episode Title Card:
  • Each level has its own unique title screen.
  • Switching to Gustavo and Brick pops up a title card for the "Gustavo and Brick Hour". Switching back to Peppino has one that portrays him as a silly Waddling Head and very disdainfully reads, "Back to that guy".
• Escape Sequence:
  • Every stage ends with Peppino defeating the Pillar John at the end of the level, causing the tower to collapse. The player must then hurry and backtrack towards a large exit gate seen earlier while avoiding rearranged obstacles. When the timer runs out, Pizzaface awakens and begins chasing the player at high speeds. The player has to maintain at least Mach 2 while being chased, as Pizzaface is very fast when he first spawns and will only get faster over time. If he touches the player, he ejects them from the level and no progress is made.
  • In the Wasteyard level, during the return trip, you're constantly chased by John's invulnerable ghost.
  • War is set on a battlefield about to be nuked. An unique escape timer will begin with just 40 seconds available once Peppino acquires the shotgun. You can add 30 seconds to the timer by destroying computers along the way. In this level, the Secret Eyes are left out in the open but the timer does not stop while in the secret rooms.
  • The Crumbling Tower of Pizza becomes this for the hub areas, which, like the Golden Temple from Wario Land 4, has the Pillar John at the start of the area and it must be smashed to progress.
• Eternal Engine: The "Peppibot Factory" level, which resembles a huge factory populated by Peppino-like robots making pizza.
• Every Pizza Is Pepperoni: Most appearances of pizza and pizza-themed objects, including the Box of Pizzas, Pizzard enemies, the Pizza Boy clothes, and even the word "Pizza" in the title logo, depict a basic pepperoni-and-cheese pattern. Other types of pizza do appear, however.
• Evil Counterpart: The Toppin Monsters in "Don't Make A Sound" are each based (some more loosely than others) on one of the five Toppins you can collect, and are encountered in the same order you normally pick up the respective Toppins (Mushroom, Cheese, Tomato, Sausage, and Pineapple). To further drive the point home, each actual Toppin is collected during the stretch of level that contains their counterpart, with the Pineapple Toppin and Toppin Monster both only appearing during Pizza Time, reflecting how the Pineapple Toppin often can only be collected while escaping.
• Evil Knockoff: Three cases.
  • The Peppino Robots are introduced in Peppibot Factory and look like robotic copies of Peppino who roll around on a single wheeled leg. When they spot the player, they attempt to attack them using moves similar to those of Peppino himself.
  • Peppino Clones appear in WAR. They look identical to the real Peppino, but become deformed and reveal a long tongue when they attack. They also dissolve when they die and ribbit like frogs when they attempt to lick the player.
  • The fourth boss is Fake Peppino, a warped Humanoid Abomination version of Peppino with a similar moveset to the real Peppino's.
• Excuse Plot: A giant pizza threatened to shoot a laser at your restaurant. The story doesn't get any deeper than that, with the gameplay being the full focus of the experience. The final boss battle zig-zags this by featuring a major twist, but it's easy to miss unless you've either followed the development of the game or paid attention to the recurring image of Pizza Boy throughout the game.
• Expy:
  • Peppino is one for Wario. He's an overweight Italian man trying to get money (though for much more sympathetic reasons). Many of his moves are taken from Wario Land, including his dash, ground pound, roll, and super jump.
  • The Noise is reminiscent of a Totally Radical version of Domino's Pizza's Noid, a fellow mischievous, pogo-riding midget in a bodysuit with rabbit ears (as opposed to Noise's pizza-crust shaped hat.)
  • Gustavo is the Mario to Peppino's Wario, being a cheerful and supportive Nice Guy with brown hair and a thick mustache who rides a mount through levels and can defeat enemies by jumping on them. His spinning attack even appears to be drawn from Mario's moveset in Super Smash Bros..
  • Speaking of the super jump, it's one for Samus's Shinespark but animated like Spring Wario's charged up jump.
  • The TNT boxes and stone blocks in the Oregano Desert level function remarkably similarly to Bomb Blocks.
  • The Pickle enemy is directly based on the Ropers from Memoirs of Magic.
• Extendo Boxing Glove: Red boxing gloves are wrapped in gifts. They act as springboards. An extendable boxing glove can also be seen in the title card of "Deep-Dish 9".
• Eye Pop: When characters get startled, their eyes often extend.
• Faceless Eye: The secret eyes in each level are just that... floating eyes.
• Face Plant: Peppino tends to land on his face after falling from great heights.
• Fire-Breathing Diner: The Oregano Desert level introduces enemies called Kentucky Kennies, who try to throw spicy chicken wings into Peppino's mouth. When Peppino swallows one of these chicken wings, he becomes slightly harder to control, but kills enemies on contact and can do an air dash in midair.
  • Near the end of the Refrigerator-Refrigerador-Freezerator level, you get a slice of Pepper Pizza which takes this up to 11. Not only is Peppino's skin cherry red from eating it, but the heat of the pizza is enough to propel him through the air and spin, and you can destroy enemies and ice blocks on contact.
• Fish Eyes: Most of the rats have eyes that look in separate directions.
• Flintstone Theming: Nearly everything is themed around pizza or pizza ingredients.
• Floating in a Bubble: Some levels feature green olive bubbles that Peppino can enter. The bubbles fly upwards and can be popped on command.
• Flying Saucer: Oregano Desert features a large purple flying saucer. In addition, the U.F.Olive enemy flies inside a miniature flying saucer.
• Follow the Money: Small pickups often lead the player to toppins, or progress.
• Foreshadowing:
  • You'll often find cardboard cutouts and advertising tied to a pizza slice-shaped mascot called Pizza Boy, including a poster in one of the backgrounds of the "Don't Make a Sound" stage set in his pizzeria stating it went out of business. In fact, he's prominently displayed in the main menu under your game completion percentage — looking more and more angry as you make progress. He's the mastermind behind the game's events and wants to destroy Peppino's restaurant out of spite.
  • In the same stage as above mentioned, in the background, all four enemy animatronics encountered in the stage can be seen inactive...except there's what appears to be a Pizza Boy animatronic dancing on stage. In progressing through the stage, as the animatronics become hostile, the Pizza Boy is the only one who never shows up to attack you. Then, in the backroom area, you see it is because the Pizza Boy animatronic has been hanging dormant up in chains the entire time. What you saw on stage was the actual Pizza Boy, who in two stage's time will be revealed as having been the true antagonist all along, now rechristened Pizzahead.
  • One of the pizza lady NPCs babbles a Wall of Text that sounds nonsensical and yet plainly states somebody tied to Peppino's past will become involved once he arrives at the top of the tower. In Pig City, there is a billboard of Pizzahead standing on top of the tower.
  • Throughout the various hubs, you can notice the same blocks that switch from solid to transparent and vice versa during Pizza Time present and blocking off parts alongside transparent collectibles. Almost as if you'll be running through the hubs on a time limit after the Final Boss...
  • Gustavo can be seen being chased by a rat in the first hub, and then engaging it in a fistfight in the second. By the third, he and the rat have befriended each other. Sure enough, Gustavo becomes playable from the third hub onwards.
• Forced Tutorial: Tutorial level has to be completed to access other stages, although it can be completed in a speedy manner.
• Four-Fingered Hands: Most characters (like Peppino) with hands have four fingers per hand. However, in certain moments of Art Shift such as the pre-boss Versus Character Splash, characters have five fingers.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • Pizza Tower Guy, the lead developer's Author Avatar, stalks Peppino all throughout the game. In most of those instances he'll teleport away instantly after appearing on-screen.
  • The Pepper Pizza seems like a regular Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce if you don't pay too much attention, but the background of the stage reveals that the sauce the Pepper Pizza uses is spicy pineapple-flavored BBQ sauce.
  • The first room of the final level after knocking out the final Pillar John is the "Staff Only" hub, with the giant statue of Pillar John in the background, which falls immediately as you enter. However, he's smiling and giving the thumbs up instead of looking miserable.
• Funny Background Event:
  • Various humorous events can be seen in the level backgrounds. For an example, crabs taking over in the Pig City, Swedish Monkey riding on a banana in Oh Shit!, a cow being abducted in Fun Farm and so on.
  • The title card for "The Crumbling Tower of Pizza" shows Peppino triumphantly standing atop a pile of beaten up people. On a closer look, most of those characters cannot be harmed during normal gameplay or are outright inoffensive. Even the ghost icon from the combo bar is lying there! In the background, Gerome looks real annoyed to have to clean up this mess.
• Gameplay Grading: At the end of each level, you're given a ranking from D to P, depending on various factors like how many treasures you collected or how many hits you took.
• Gateless Ghetto: The Pig City level has cabs that are necessary for travel between different districts. You cannot get to those on foot.
• Genre Throwback: The game is a The Renaissance Age of Animation-era Zany Cartoon, akin to The Ren & Stimpy Show and Rocko's Modern Life as well as the games inspired by them, like Boogerman and ToeJam & Earl, but made for the The New '20s.
• The Gloves Come Off: When Pizzahead decides to shove a Boss Rush into his final phase, Peppino loses the last shred of patience he has and starts going all-out. Every punch then becomes a flurry of hits that do four times as much damage, reducing the effective Health of each one by three quarters.
• The Goomba:
  • Cheeseslimes, who can't attack and just move around mindlessly. The SAGE demo's description even calls them "useless" and "cannon fodder". They have Elite Mook variants called Tribal Cheeses that don't go down so easily, as well as the Spit Cheeses, who lob spiky balls of cheese at Peppino.
  • Subverted with The Vigilante, a Cheeseslime in a cowboy hat who is strong enough to be a full boss fight. It's suggested in an official comic that he pretends to be as weak and cowardly as any other Cheeseslime to catch his opponents off-guard.
• Golden Ending: A downplayed variant, but earning all the treasures earns you an additional scene after the final level; instead of Gerome silently mourning Pillar John's corpse, Peppino manages to revive him into True John using the treasures. He rejoices before clobbering Pizzahead one final time.
• Goomba Stomp: Some transformations allow the player to defeat enemies by jumping on them. Peppino's normal stomp just temporarily knocks the enemies back and maybe stuns them for a brief period of time. Meanwhile, Gustavo, as a pastiche of Mario, plays the trope straight; jumping on an enemy when playing as Gustavo (with or without riding Brick) will instantly kill them.
• Graffiti Town: The Pig City, a stereotypical crime-ridden metropolis inhabited by literal and metaphorical swine (and shrimp in one Chinatown-inspired district).
• Green Hill Zone: While not an early level, "Fun Farm" fits the bill in regards to aesthestics, being a grassy farm with stupid vegetable enemies.
• Gretzky Has the Ball: Part of the humor in "Golf". The gimmick of the level is hitting Greaseball across courses using a golf club, and burger golfers are present as new enemies, but Peppino can ram Greaseball with his charging attack instead of using a club, the goal of each course is a basketball hoop (the owner couldn't afford golf holes), another new enemy wears a baseball helmet and mitt, and the level's Stupid Rats are shaped like bowling pins and get knocked over by the Ball transformation from the aforementioned baseball enemies. Also, the scoring names are weird and unlike golf terminology — getting par or lower is dubbed a "primo burg", for example.
• Grind Boots: Peppino can grind on rails which are present in certain levels for a speed boost.
• Gross-Out Show: Despite the art style being heavily influenced by cartoons of the 90s in which gross humor was a staple, this trope is mainly averted, with the game preferring to focus on the Deranged Animation quality of these cartoons instead. However, some gross qualities still exist, particularly in stages such as "Oh, Shit!" (which is exactly what it sounds like) and "Deep-Dish 9" with a planet covered in what is implied to be snot.
• Ground Pound: Peppino's main defense against Forknights, as well as the way to break steel blocks from above.
• Guns Do Not Work That Way: When Peppino has a revolver he can fire one bullet at a time or he can hold down fire to load six bullets which fires one mega-bullet.
• Half-Witted Hillbilly: The potato and eggplant enemies, exclusive to Fun Farm, constantly wear dopey expressions and attack with farming implements.
• Halloween Episode: The Pizzascare level, which is a spookier and more dangerous version of Pizzascape.
• Harmless Electrocution: Getting electrocuted does not seem to hurt Peppino much, for an example, when getting hit by lightning after grabbing a sword.
• He Knows About Timed Hits: Pizza Grannies in the tutorial and some in the Hub Level explain in-game controls.
• Heroic Mime: The voiceclips you hear are either the TV in the upper right corner of the screen, or an enemy dying after a sufficient enough combo. Peppino himself is completely mute, except for the beginning of boss fights where he screams in terror at his opponent.
• Hit Points: Averted. Peppino cannot die to enemy attacks and hazards and must get hit on purpose to solve puzzles, though the player will get score penalties for being hurt by things like electrified blocks or enemies armed with forks or sawblades. During boss fights, however, the trope is played straight, as both Peppino and the boss have health bars.
• Hit Stop: Time briefly slows down when ramming enemy at high speed.
• Holy Burns Evil: In Pizzascare level, having a cross powerup makes it possible to defeat Ghostknights.
• Hub Level: The Pizza Tower itself serves as a hub for the game, separated by five floors, each containing four levels and a boss fight.
• Human Hammer-Throw: Peppino spins some enemies around after grabbing them and before throwing them away.
• Hyperactive Sprite: Every character is highly and comically animated. Peppino in particular has various standing animations with walking ones to match depending on circumstances — anxiousness by default, fear during escape scenes, despair when the escape timer runs out, fuming with anger during the first phase of the final boss and then being so irate from the third phase onwards that he starts dancing with bloodshot eyes.
• Idiosyncratic Combo Levels: Combo names change per 5 combo ranging from "Lame" and "Cheesy" to "Not Bad But not great either." and so on, ending in "Unfunny". After that, the combo level names just loop but with the word "very" before it.
• Idle Animation: Peppino has a number of little poses he does when idling, such as dancing, biting his hand or just getting annoyed and making an Aside Glance at the player.
• In a Single Bound: Peppino can jump infinitely high with the help of the super jump.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • Due to the game sticking to a formula of four levels and one boss per floor, it's easy to see that the fifth floor only has three visible levels and conclude that the fourth level comes after the final boss.
  • Defied when it comes to bosses. Fake Peppino's identity as the fourth boss is deliberately devoid of foreshadowing in the entire game prior to fighting him to the point even his Chef Task icon for beating him without taking damage is just a blank icon.
• Item Get!: Peppino briefly poses when he gets a significant item such as a key.
• Jet Pack: One of the powerups is a jetpack that essentially acts like a double jump, but allows further bounces if Peppino lands on an enemy or an ice block. Fake Santas also wear a jetpack.
• Jump Scare:
  • "Don't Make a Sound" is largely a reference to the Five Nights at Freddy's series, with a variety of creatures that hunt Peppino down and on contact trigger a full screen scare that wastes the player's time by restarting the area. Pre-release builds used to have a static Fade In effect to keep those from being startling, but it's gone in the final version. Some of the monsters are actually creepy, but one is just an Elvis impersonator who gives finger guns. Also, they'll randomly celebrate Oktoberfest instead of jumping the player, while still briefly turning Peppino into a doll.
  • Waiting too long to push any buttons at the title screen causes Peppino to suddenly lunge towards the screen screaming and force the game to close.
• Knockback: Upon getting hit, the player is knocked back pretty far. Enemies can also get knocked back when the player stomps on them and bumps into them without having momentum to kill them.
• Lethal Lava Land: Bloodsauce Dungeon could count, due to being filled with scalding tomato sauce.
• Letting the Air out of the Band:
  • "It's Pizza Time!", the song used for when it's Pizza Time, goes into a fast-paced climax when the timer is down the the last minute, that then slows way down right as the timer hits zero. After that, you're left with the sound of a clock ticking as you try to escape Pizzaface.
  • The tune that plays when you get a D-rank replaces the triumphant ending chords with what sounds like farting, out of tune trumpets.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Peppino is normally a goofy Lovable Coward who is nonetheless very good at braving the Pizza Tower's perils. However, when Pizzahead has the audacity to summon all four of the previous bosses to his aid and then laugh in Peppino's face about it, Peppino decides he's done being afraid and goes absolutely berserk, gaining the ability to deal four points of damage in a single hit and wiping the floor with the other bosses before beating the ever-loving crap out of Pizzahead.
  Peppino: YEEOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!
• Level Ate: Every level involves some amount of food themeing in it, but the tutorial level fully embodies this trope. All the terrain is made out of pizza.
• Lightmare Fuel: Basically all of Floor 5 could count, as all of the three main levels are either based upon or at the very least featuring horror tropes to some degree. This is perhaps most prominent in "Don't Make A Sound", a stage that's a massive pastiche of the "killer animatronics" angle of Five Nights at Freddy's, complete with jumpscares... Which Peppino is steamrolling through like everything else, everything still exuding the game's prior sense of humor even as a bloody sausage butcher chases Peppino, culminating in Peppino getting a shotgun and completely turning the tables.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: It turns Peppino into a knight. Lightning will automatically strike him when he draws a pithy little knife from a stone, and the lightning bolt projectiles that Pizzards use also trigger the transformation (Noise's Hardoween Demo and earlier only).
• Loophole Abuse: The Turbo Tunnel achievement requires clearing the first room of Deep-Dish Nine's escape - a long vertical shaft where you use the olive transformation to fly up it - without touching the ceiling. Dodging the ceilings using the olive can be a tad tricky, but actually using the olive is completely optional. Running up the walls and simply jumping off to the other before hitting each pillar - an extremely easy task - does count as clearing the first room without touching the ceiling, even if it's not the intended solution to the room at all.
• The Lost Woods: The Gnome Forest, which is a forest maze populated by gnomes and goblins.

Tropes in the final game: M-Z

• Made of Iron: While he can get hurt, Peppino can't die from being harmed by enemies. Rather, you lose points every time you get hit. The only enemies who can kill the player outright are Pizzaface during Pizza Time, the worlds' bosses and the tower itself if he doesn't escape in time during the final level.
• The Man in the Moon: The Moon, like planets in this game, has a face. Can be seen during the final boss fight.
• Meaningful Background Event: The latter half of "WAR" has not only Peppino getting cloned in the background (thus explaining all those Peppino clones you fight in the lab area), but it also shows the same for the level's Pillar John. This serves to both explain why War doesn't have a Pizza Time event (you need to hit John to start it, but he's outside the player's reach) and how the other levels managed to get Johns of their own to begin with.
• Mercy Invincibility: Upon getting hit, the player has a brief period where the character cannot be hit.
• Metropolis Level: Pig City, which resembles a run-down New York suburb populated by pigs in Peppino's half, and Chinatown in Gustavo's section.
• Mook Maker: Certain pizza boxes located around the levels spawn more enemies. Usually these are enemies needed to complete a simple puzzle. Defeating enemies spawned from these does not increase (but still maintains) combo meter.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The Peppino's Final Judgement screen shows a dark silhouette on a dark background with Glowing Eyes of Doom and only a Drone of Dread playing. It's immediately followed by the End-Game Results Screen, which is comical no matter your rank.
  • The Episode Title Card for "Don't Make A Sound" featuring Peppino happily frolicking with the Toppin Monsters in a sunny field is completely at odds with the level's floor, the other levels found in said floor and the level itself.
• Music Is Eighth Notes: When Peppino is breakdancing, eighth notes emerge from the boombox.
• Nervous Wreck: Peppino comes off as one most of the time. He looks almost perpetually worried, is always sweating, and his idle animations include him breathing profusely and biting his own hand with an anguished expression.
• Nice Guy: Gustavo is much more upbeat than the anxious and rage-fuelled Peppino, and is seen being helpful and supportive in all of his interactions with Peppino. He even manages to befriend Brick, one of the Stupid Rats that normally block Peppino's path, after being chased around and then scuffling with the rodent for a floor. He'll even help Peppino during the final boss, jumping on to the stage so that Peppino can throw him at the Vigilante, who is otherwise unable to be stunned and damaged without the gun that Peppino had in the original fight. The only time Gustavo's cheerful demeanor drops is in an early version of Gnome Forest, where failing to deliver one of his pizzas in time would cause him to give a rage-fueled beatdown to Peppino that drains the latter's score as penalty.
• Nightmare Face: If you take too many hits during a stage, the monitor in the top right will flash one of several horrifying images taunting you with how many times you've been hit.

• Ninja Prop: The final boss will occasionally reach offscreen to throw things at you, including the TV that's part of your HUD during normal levels. The TV will even have Peppino's face on it like it usually does!
• Nitro Boost: Some levels feature dash pads that accelerate the player even from standstill.
• Noob Cave: John Gutter, the first proper level after the tutorial and notably the only regular level to be given its own room in the tower separate from the main floors. It's a short, basic level with no real gimmicks and a simple checkerboard aesthetic. Aside from the myriad of discarded Pillar Johns in the background (which is sorta an important detail in the endgame), there's nothing particularly special here.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: During the final boss, Pizzahead summons all four previous bosses as a Boss Rush after Peppino depletes his health once. But Peppino, being absolutely done with all the insanity thrown at him throughout the game, lets out a scream of pure rage and charges Pepperman. From then on, every time Peppino hits a boss, it results in a mauling so vicious that it knocks off half the boss' health at a time. When the last blow is dealt to Pizzahead, it finishes off with a piledriver from so high up that it leaves Pizzahead buried in the masonry of his tower.
• Nothing Is Scarier: One in-game achievement requires you to find a hidden room made out of bacon in The Pig City with a few bacon pickups that don't appear anywhere else. No music plays in it other than droning noises while a giant pig approaches from the background... but all it does upon getting close enough is give Peppino a thumbs up before disappearing.
• Notice This: Some Secret Eyes are easier to find than others because they're buried under walls marked with eye symbols.
• Not My Driver: In The Pig City, one of the cabs Peppino takes to move between areas will reveal itself to be a police car much to Peppino's terror upon seeing the cop driving it, taking him to prison to begin Gustavo's section of the level. During Pizza Time the drivers are replaced with Pizzaface instead, though he still drives Peppino to his destination.
• Oh, Crap!: Enemies visibly freak out when the player character is about to ram into them at top speed, complete with Wild Takes. Charging at enemies who are normally dangerous to approach head-on will also cause them to panic and drop their guard. Even the otherwise unflappable and utterly irreverent Pizzahead has a moment of fearful shock when Peppino goes completely berserk when he tries to initiate a Boss Rush.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: Early level "Pizzascape" is a medieval stage that features the Knight transformation as its primary gimmick, acquired by grabbing a sword out of a stone in an homage to the original legend of King Arthur and the sword in the stone. The trope is shown in full during the final boss; When Pizzahead attempts to grab a sword from offscreen, his effort to bring it up to the battlefield ends up upheaving an entire chunk of the tower with the sword in the stone still attached.
• Our Gnomes Are Weirder: The Gnome Forest has the namesake gnomes, who reward the player with the level's Toppins if they can deliver them their gnome pizzas on time.
• Our Goblins Are Different: A number of enemies are based on goblins:
  • Pepperoni Goblins are giant grinning pepperonis who will kick the player if they approach them, causing the Ball transformation.
  • Pizza Box Goblins are goblins coming out of pizza boxes who throw Cartoon Bombs at the player which they can pick up. They have an Underground Monkey variant in the Cannon Pizza Goblins, who wear pirate bandanas and fire bombs from cannons which travel in a straight line and can't be picked up.
  • Noise Goblins are introduced in the Gnome Forest level. They're goblins with faces similar to the Noise who attack Peppino by shooting arrows at him.
• Orchestra Hit Techno Battle: Battle theme with The Noise has a techo feel with orchestra hits.
• Palmtree Panic: Crust Cove takes place in tropical setting, albeit with pink sand. It also exhibits elements of Gangplank Galleon due to all the Pizza Goblin pirate enemies that infest it.
• Permanently Missable Content: A handful of outfit colors have unlock criteria that require trying again on a new save file if they're missed. Downplayed because unlocked clothes carry over between save files, meaning that you can still have them unlocked on files that the conditions weren't met in. For this reason, clothes don't contribute to completion percentage.
  • "Sage Blue" is unlocked by clearing all of World 1's levels in under an hour.
  • "Money Green" is unlocked by having the maximum amount of money by World 2, which means collecting all of the Toppins in the first 2 worlds before buying access to The Vigilante's boss gate.
  • "War Camo" is unlocked by clearing War, one of the three last stages in the game, on your first try.
  • "John Suit" is unlocked by finishing the game with all of the secret treasures collected in under 2 hours and 15 minutes.
  • There is one piece of missable content that doesn't carry over between saves: If you kill Snotty in world 4's hub, you won't be able to receive the associated badge on your save file. You can modify your save file to revive him and receive the badge anyway, but if you do, a Granny on the first floor will mention at the end of her normal dialogue that "Snotty will remember what you did!"
• Pineapple Ruins Pizza: Interestingly, it's completely averted. You'd expect a game all about pizza jokes to jump on the occasion, but no, it remains perfectly respectful of Hawaiian pizza. In fact, one of the Toppins is a pineapple, and you'll regularly be collecting pineapple rings or whole pineapples as score pickups.
• Pointless Band-Aid: Some rocks in Oregano Desert have bandages on them, indicating that they're destructible.
• Portal Endpoint Resemblance: Most of the level portals are followed by a few objects and decorations that tend to be relevant to whatever world they transport Peppino to.
• Practical Taunt:
  • Peppino's taunt button lets him use a screen-clearing nuke every time you rack up ten combos, which is a clutch move to keep the combo gauge from running out.
  • Taunting allows you to Bullet Catch projectiles, and Counter-Attack nearby enemies.
  • Taunting also halts your momentum during the animation, allowing you to do things like wait for stage hazards to move out of the way without coming to a complete stop and having to build your speed back up. Especially useful during boss fights, where taunting can keep you in the air as an attack passes by on the ground.
  • Reached the exit during Pizza Time and have some seconds to spare? Taunting a couple of times in front of the door will let you milk a couple extra points before you leave the level.
  • Taunting makes enemies react faster, which is useful if their attacks trigger transformations on Peppino. In "Don't Make a Sound", taunting while a patroller is onscreen instantly activates the haunted animatronics. This saves time on the sections where letting the timer of a security drone run out is required to open gates.
• Promoted to Playable: Inverted. Out of the final build's five bosses, the first three were previously considered as playable characters, as detailed on the What Could Have Been page. Coincidentally, the fourth is a shoddy copy of Peppino.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: The tutorial is done to the tune of "Funiculi Funicula," a classic Italian piece of music with a... surprisingly extensive history when it comes to pizza-based nonsense.
• Punny Name: Some of the level names have a pun in the title, such as…
  • Ancient Cheese
  • Deep-Dish 9
  • Refrigerator Refrigerador Freezerator
  • The Pig City
  • Oh Shit!
• Quick Draw: The boss battle against The Vigilante ends with Peppino and the boss waiting for a quick draw signal.
• Rage-Breaking Point: Peppino engages Pizzaface in combat with a dead serious demeanor for once, doing a Battle Cry and having an angry posture while idling. When Pizzahead brings the previous four bosses back for a rematch, Peppino then goes absolutely feral in response and begins shredding 4 entire hit points off the bosses and Pizzahead every time he lunges at them.
• Rambunctious Italian: Peppino Spaghetti is very expressive with his emotions. That said, the two emotions he displays most often are extreme anxiety and, when he's running at top speed, full-on rage as he barrels through enemies.
• Rank Inflation: Rank P is the highest rank achievable at the end of a level, even though Rank S is already captioned as "Perfect". It requires you to obtain enough points for an S Rank, find every secret, collect every Toppin, find the tower treasure, and do a successful Lap 2... without dropping your combo once.
• Recoil Boost: Firing a shotgun downwards will also act as double jump.
• Recurring Riff: The riff from "Pizza Time" is heard in various other themes such as in John Gutter, or when defeating a boss.
• Remilitarized Zone: The self-explanatory "War" level. Also likely to be the final level the player has to face, post-Final Boss level notwithstanding.
• Retraux: The game's art-style is heavily reminiscent of 90's cartoon shows, and a majority of the Shout Outs are references to retro video games. The gameplay is a throwback to the Wario Land games, most closely resembling Wario Land 2.
• Ridiculously Small Wings: Chicago Pizza platforms in the Pizzascare level have tiny wings, and so do the flying pigs in the background of The Pig City.
• Rocket Ride: Deep-Dish 9 level features a rocket powerup that causes Peppino to ride in front of a rocket. Some screen transitions also have him literally board a rocket to another planet, much to his horror.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: Levels are populated by "Stupid Rats", which are giant rats who act as obstacles that can only be removed with transformations. One of these Stupid Rats, named Brick, is Gustavo's companion and mount. Smaller but still man-sized rodents called Bad Rats also appear through the game, serving as conventional enemies.
• Rolling Attack: Peppino can roll by crouching while running. Brick the Rat can also roll, destroying enemies and obstacles in its path while doing do.
• Rubber-Hose Limbs: Some characters with thinner arms don't have visible elbows. Examples include Pineacool, Kentucky Kenny and Pizza Box Goblin.
• Rump Roast:
  • Bloodsauce Dungeon has several pits of boiling pizza sauce in some segments that cause the player character to get one of these when they fall in, complete with Pain-Powered Leap.
  • This is also Peppino's reaction to being torched by the Peasantos in "Fun Farm".
• Running Gag: Peppino screams every time he encounters a boss. The third time he does this, The Noise mimics and mocks him. The fourth time is against his bizarro clone, who also screams in response. For the final battle, Peppino starts out with a serious Battle Cry, screams in shock one last time when Pizzahead is revealed and then flat out explodes with rage when the villain sics every previous boss at him.
• Sampling: Many songs in the soundtrack use samples from other songs. For an example, "Pizza Time" samples the "Hello there" voice from Wario Land 4, and "Unexpectancy" samples sections from the 1920s pop song "After You Get What You Want, You Don’t Want It".
• Screeching Stop: When Peppino stops or turns around when moving at adequate speed, a screeching sound is heard.
• Screen Shake: The screen shakes when enemies are killed, objects are destroyed or when the player slams against the surface at high speed.
• Scoring Points: The player is ranked for score performance in each stage. This involves finding every secret, making multiple combos, avoiding damage and escaping before the primary timer runs out.
• Sequential Boss: Bosses work this way, with every hit point they lose causing them to either add new attacks to their repertoire or change up their patterns. Once you deplete their health, they'll regain it all for a second phase, which just repeats the usual progress, but with an additional obstacle added to the battle:
  • Pepperman will attack you in different ways, entering vulnerable states in different ways as you deplete his health and summoning enemies to aid him. The second phase has tons of enemies already spawning from the get go, getting in your way.
  • The Vigilante will continue to gain new attacks throughout the fight, and his second phase will have him set the battle to take place during the sunset, rendering everything visible only through silhouette.
  • The Noise acts similarly to the previous two fights, entering a vulnerable state after his attacks that increase as the fight goes on. The second phase will cause a giant Noise balloon to crash onto the battlefield and knock out the cameramen, with enemies jumping out of the holes in the balloon to impede you while The Noise adds new effects to his moveset.
  • Fake Peppino will change his attack patterns every time you hit him, which you can only do by striking him two times in order to stun him and make him vulnerable, all the while surviving the increasing army of Fake Peppinos he summons. After surviving a brief interlude of Fake Peppino attacks, the second phase adds a Fake Fake Peppino to get in your way. The third phase will force Peppino to run away from a giant Fake Peppino, requiring him to dash as fast as he can until he can escape the building.
  • Pizzaface acts as a Mook Maker, summoning enemies in increasing amounts that you must launch at him to defeat him. The second phase forces you against the mastermind, Pizzahead, in a shootout, with the broken down Pizzaface mech returning to drop gears on the battlefield, while the mascot gone mad attacks you with bizzare and wacky moves. Then comes a Boss Rush against truncated versions of the previous four bosses, followed by one final battle against Pizzahead.
• Shifting Sand Land: Oregano Desert. It also has shopping marts and UFOs, so it's definitely not your standard desert level.
• Shockwave Stomp: The Noise can do this in his boss fight by using his Noise Crusher.
• Short-Range Shotgun: Averted. Peppino's shotgun has a decent range but few places to really take advantage of it. It covers the width of the screen with a blast about as wide as Peppino is tall.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: A shotgun can be obtained in certain levels as a power-up for Peppino, being essential to solve certain puzzles by destroying otherwise unreachable blocks.
• Shout-Out: Can be found here.
• Signpost Tutorial:
  • There are a few signposts in a tutorial level that illustrate how basic moves in the game work.
  • In Pizzascape level, there are a few messages saying "Double jump, my liege" and one in the secret that says "Get kicked! - Granny".
• Skewed Priorities: The pigs in Pig City will take a picture if Peppino taunts while they're onscreen. This includes if they're currently in the middle of running in circles in a panic while Pizza Time is going on and the city starts falling apart.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Refrigerator-Refrigerador-Freezerator level. Uniquely, it takes place inside (and partly outside) a literal refrigerator, with food and everything. It also averts the "slippy slidey" part of the trope; friction in the level is the same as any other, even on solid ice platforms.
• Songs in the Key of Panic: If the time runs low during "Pizza Time", its pace gets much faster. An inversion happens if the time gets very low, in which case it slows down instead.
• Sore Loser: After being defeated, Pepperman appears in the second hub drawing graffiti of himself as a hero fighting a demonic Peppino. The Noise likewise shows up in the fourth hub glaring daggers at Peppino if the player moves close to him. The Vigilante shows up in Noisette's cafeteria and the final hub also looking upset to see Peppino, leaving Fake Peppino as the odd one out who doesn't appear again until the escape from the tower.
• Sound Test: Sound Test can be acccessed by unlocking every secret eye in the game.
• Space Zone: Deep-Dish 9. It starts in a space station of some kind, then follows up with Peppino getting blasted off to an alien olive planet and then its cheese moon.
• Space "X": Deep-Dish 9 features Space Pizzamart in the background as opposed to regular Pizzamarts.
• Spectacular Spinning: When Peppino uses his super jump, he spins as he ascends.
• Speed Echoes: Peppino leaves trails when moving fast enough.
• Speedrun Reward:
  • Normally it takes clearing each stage once to unlock their Lap 2 portal, but if you clear the tutorial fast enough they will all be available from the get-go.
  • During Peppino's final judgement, you'll get unique judgements by either completing the game under 2 hours, or under 4 hours with at least 95% completion.
  • One of the chef tasks requires beating John Gutter level under two minutes.
• Sphere Eyes: Eyes of many characters are spherelike with eyes touching one another. Examples include Peppino and The Noise.
• Spinning Piledriver: Peppino can piledrive some of the enemies. He spins around while piledriving them.
• Springs, Springs Everywhere: Boxing gloves wrapped in gifts act as springboards. So do certain bouncy mushrooms found throughout levels and robots in Peppibot Factory.
• Springy Spores: Some mushrooms bounce the player into the air upon contact.
• Stab the Sky: When Peppino grabs a sword, he does the sky stabbing pose while getting hit by lightning.
• Stalked by the Bell: Pizzaface spawns when the timer runs out during Pizza Time, homing in on the player and killing them instantly on contact.
• Start Screen: There's no conventional title screen, as the Pizza Tower logo only shows up in the opening cutscene. After the opening, it cuts to Peppino sitting in his restaurant witn the lights turned off. Pressing anything toggles the lights and enables the file select menu, with Peppino looking nervously at monitors around him. Taking too long to turn on the lights causes him to Jump Scare you and shut the game down.
• Steel Drums and Sunshine: The hub of Floor 3 has a tropical theme. Its variation of the hub world theme ("Wednesdays") uses steel drums.
• Stealth-Based Mission: Zigzagged with Don't Make A Sound. On one hand, it features all the hallmarks of the genre, like a dark atmosphere, guards that sound the alarm when you are spotted, and invincible chasers running after you if your cover is blown. On the other, you are very much encouraged to go as fast as possible rather than attempt to hide (guards only ring the alarm five seconds after spotting you, so you should kill them quickly) and the stage forces you to deliberately trigger a chase multiple times, to get a few doors to open and use one of said chasers to punch through normally indestructible blocks.
• Stealth Pun
  • Items that boost Peppino's ghost form so he can move faster and break ghost blocks take the form of white chili peppers. They're ghost peppers.
  • Peppino can warp to other areas by jumping into cardboard boxes stuffed full of pizza slices that appear everywhere. They're literal pizza boxes.
• Stock Femur Bone: When things explode, sometimes a femur bone also spawns along with food. Some femur bones can also be seen in background.
• Stock Scream: Some stock scream sounds can be heard in Pizzascape level theme. As well, some characters — such as Peppino and the Noise — unleash a couple of their own.
• Stock Sound Effects: Aside from screams, the game has few, such as cash register sound when toppins are counted at the end of the level.
• Stylistic Suck: The sprites, to an extent. Their one-pixel-thick lines and saturated colors resemble something that would be drawn in MS Paint or a similarly limited art program. The actual animation is incredibly fluid, taking advantage of the MS Paint aesthetic for comedy.
• Suck E. Cheese's:
  • The arena for Fake Peppino's boss fight is a dilapidated pizza parlor, which becomes even more ruined after he reaches half health.
  • "Don't Make A Sound" takes place in a decaying kids' pizza restaurant, complete with rotting animatronics. However, those animatronics aren't as friendly as they were in their performing days...
• Temporary Platform: Cheese blocks disappear when walked on. They regenerate after a few seconds.
• Theme Music Power-Up: The final boss music is this, but for Peppino, not Pizzahead himself. "Unexpectancy 3" kicks in when Peppino loses his shit at Pizzahead starting a Boss Rush and gives his first No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to Pepperman.
• Theme Naming: In the Pig City, there are three streets: Pig st, Swine st. and Hog st.
• Throw the Mook at Them: Enemies can be thrown at other enemies to defeat them.
• Timed Mission:
  • Once the Pillar John at the end of every level is defeated, a timer appears, and if it runs out before you reach the end of the level, Pizzaface will spawn and chase you down, killing you instantly on contact.
  • The "WAR" level is the counterpart to Wario Land 4's Golden Passage level, where the level is already on a timer from the very beginning once you pick up the shotgun.
  • Meanwhile, The Crumbling Tower of Pizza lacks Pizzaface due to him being defeated, but instead is a race to get out of the Pizza Tower before it collapses, with the final Pillar John being destroyed at the very beginning.
• Title Drop: Parodied by the game's Steam page, which invites the player to "BECOME the Pizza Tower!" alongside an image of Peppino as a tower-shaped Cephalothorax.
• Toggling Setpiece Puzzle: There are switch blocks that activate and deactivate face blocks. While most of the time they're used to direct player's progress, at the end of Deep-Dish 9, there is a minor puzzle where player has to figure out when to press the switch block.
• Toilet Humour: Crops up in a few places such as the level Oh Shit! (a Down the Drain level filled with, well... shit) and Pizzahead introducing himself sitting on the toilet reading a newspaper while inside Pizzaface.
• Traveling-Pipe Bulge: In The Slums hub and the Oh Shit! level, there are pipes that can be entered. They expand to fit Peppino and spit him out on another end.
• Triumphant Reprise:
  • The end-of-level jingles become increasingly triumphant versions of themselves as you get better and better ranks, with the last note sounding more and more glorious with each step up. The P Rank jingle, on the other hand, is entirely remixed to sound even awesomer.
  • "Bye Bye There!", the theme of the very last stage, The Crumbling Tower Of Pizza, is a remix of "It's Pizza Time!" made to sound more and more uplifting as the level progresses instead of threatening and chaotic.
• Tube Travel: In Oh Shit!, the player has to travel through the sewer pipes. One such pipe is also found in Hub Level.
• A Twinkle in the Sky: The Final Boss disappears with a twinkle during the ending when all secret treasures have been obtained.
• Uncommon Time: "Oregano UFO"'s intro is in 9/8 measure, followed by 18/8 segment, followed by 9/4 segment time signature.
• Undercover Cop Reveal: Pig City is dotted with taxis that will drive Peppino to the various sublevels, with a brief loading screen of Peppino anxiously waiting as the cab driver takes him away. One specific taxi, on the other hand, is just a cardboard cutout: climbing into it drops the facade and reveals the police car behind it, the loading screen gets replaced by Peppino screaming in terror at the Police Pig driving it, and it drops Peppino off in a jail cell with no way back until Pizza Time activates.
• The Unfought: The stage "Don't Make a Sound" involves Peppino avoiding a group of monster animatronics and shooting them down during the escape sequence. There should be a Pizza Boy animatronic among them that is seen already active and performing in the background of the first room, but to add to how mysterious the character is up to that point, it is never encountered. Save for in the backroom area, where the actual Pizza Boy animatronic is seen hanging from a chain, unused. This serves for foreshadowing that it wasn't the animatronic on stage at all — it was the real deal.
• Unmoving Plaid: Some of Peppino's alternate outfits have this effect.
• Variable Mix:
  • Pizzascape and Ancient Cheese have two different variations of their background music depending on what section of the level you're in.
  • The theme "Secret Hoppin'", which plays in the secret rooms, takes on the main motif of the theme of the current level. For example, "A Secret Under The Debris" is part of "Theatrical Shenanigans" but with the instrumentation of "Secret Hoppin'".
  • Hub theme varies depending on what floor you are on and changes from one to another without interruptions when moving between floors.
• Vent Physics: In a few levels like Fastfood Saloon, there are fans that lift the player into the air.
• Versus Character Splash: When entering a boss battle, a "Peppino vs boss" message appears, complete with character sprites that are more proportional and stylized than usual ones.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Reviving John by collecting every Secret Treasure and keeping Snotty alive in the Slum hub will award the player with seals of their approval on the file select screen.
• Video Game Dashing: Peppino can use grab dash to break blocks. He can also shoulder bash dash from a super jump.
• Video Game Sliding: Peppino can slide on his belly with hands pointed forward to move slightly faster than normal running. Certain actions can make him slide on his back instead.
• Walk on Water: A few levels have shallow pools of water. When running at high speed, the player can run on water without being bitten by anything that lurks inside.
• Wall Jump:
  • Peppino can jump off walls when running on them. When covered in cheese, he must stick to walls before jumping off.
  • Brick the rat can just jump off walls.
• "Wanted!" Poster: A "Wanted" poster with Peppino on it appears in the title card of "The Pig City" and the intro cutscene of the Vigilante's boss fight.
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: Whenever you fall down a Bottomless Pit, one of several humorous "Technical Difficulty, Please Stand By" cards will appear on the screen, featuring a comically injured Peppino (or Gustavo and Brick, if they're being played) being mocked by Pizzaface, right before the player is returned to the room's entrance or the last checkpoint touched.
• Wham Line: Before the final hub, all of the level titles are either a goofy pun or some other kind of quirky location name...until the player reaches two of the levels just before the final boss, and reads their names. The first one's title pretty much instantly sets the tone for what will be revealed to be a FNAF sendup.
  DON'T MAKE A SOUND.
  • The other is found only a few feet away from where the final boss gate pops up, and its title is jarringly straightforward, consisting of only one word: WAR.
• What the Hell, Player?: Every ten times you get penalized from taking damage, a "You hurt Peppino X times" message will pop up with bizarre imagery on the hud's TV screen, such as Peppino contorting himself or a Mechanical Abomination version of Gustavo. This goes up to 100 hits and the last three pictures in the finished game are redrawn versions of the original ones from when this mechanic first appeared. Funnily enough, you can actually unlock an outfit by taking damage enough times.
• Wild Take: The game uses these quite liberally, being inspired by 1990's animation like Ren & Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life.
• The Wild West: The levels in the Second Floor (Western District) of the Tower carry this theme, taking Peppino through different Western-themed towns and a level based on a farm.
• Wingding Eyes: Stunned characters and zombies have "x" signs instead of eyes. Peppino gets circles around eyes in his portrait when going fast.
• Wolf Whistle: A blatant one plays in the background whenever you earn a new combo every 10 hits.
• "X" Marks the Spot: In Crusty Cove, there are some locations on the floor marked with X. Body slamming these locations reveals an anthropomorphic chest.
• You Bastard!: There's a single harmless and green cheese slime enemy named Snotty in the Slum hub that you can kill. Once this is done, there will be a grave in his memory when you reload the area. If the player edits their save to revive Snotty, one of the Pizza Ladies will get new text claiming that "Snotty will remember what you did!"

Tropes in pre-release builds

• All or Nothing: On the Rank screens at the end of each level, the Noise will insult (or even threaten) you if you get any rank below S.
• All There in the Manual: The description for the SAGE 2019 demo says that Peppino donned the blue outfit to go to SAGE 2019, but misread where the location was and ended up going to the Snick Amateur Game Expo instead.
• The Artifact: The track LEANING NIGHTMARE, which plays when you have 2 minutes left on the timer in Snick's Challenge, shares a leitmotif with one of Frostix's tracks, Leaning Dream. However, the latter track was composed for an unused Space Zone-type level (later being reused as a pause menu theme), and as such, LEANING NIGHTMARE is the only track in the game with its leitmotif.
• Armless Biped: Subverted with Snick, who appears armless at first glance but reveals them in certain poses, such as when clearing a level. They are presumably just hidden under his spines.
• Broke the Rating Scale: Or rather, the rating metrics don't exist; In the Eggplant build demo, levels with no set ranking parameters have Peppino reveal your ranking as Eggplant, with a reminder that the ranks aren't implemented.
• Cursed with Awesome: In the Noise's Hardoween Demo and earlier builds, the Pizzards will use their power to turn Peppino into a knight, which makes him slow, heavy, and unable to dash. It also makes him impervious to several types of attack and makes his Ground Pound, especially from decent height, more powerful. Downplayed, since the Pizzards aren't actually trying to hurt Peppino; their character profile says they're apprentice magicians just practicing their spells.
• Christmas Episode: The Strongcold level, a more difficult version of pre-release Bloodsauce Dungeon exclusive to the "Peppino's X-Mas Break" demo.
• Dynamic Difficulty: As the player defeats enemies, a 'Heat Meter' increases. At high levels, enemies grant more points when defeated, but enemies move faster and taking damage causes the meter to go down. The meter slowly decreases over time, so the player must keep a fast pace through the level if they want to maximize their points.
• Expy:
  • Courtesy of the SAGE 2019 promos, there's an anthropomorphic purple porcupine with very nice shoes named Snick, who can keep up with Peppino's impressive speed. He appears to exist separately from his inspiration according to the SAGE demo description, as Peppino wanted to go there but ended up at Snick's expo instead.
  • In earlier demos, the Noise could do a floaty jump in a similar manner to Mario using his cape. It was eventually replaced by a jetpack-themed double jump.
  • The Cheese Dragon looks like an overweight, solid yellow Yoshi. He has a very similar face, with small eyes close together, a large, bulbous nose, and a toothless mouth.
• Hailfire Peaks: The Strongcold, the only level of the Christmas 2019 demo, is full of icy terrain and takes place inside a freezer, but also has vats of boiling pizza sauce like Bloodsauce Dungeon.
• Improbable Weapon User: The Noise uses a giant thumbtack to stab enemies.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: Half of a given level in the pre-2019 demos is Peppino climbing a series of floors in the titular tower. The other half kicks in when he makes it to the top, where he needs to get out as fast as he can because The Noise rigged the place to explode.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: One of the power-ups is a pizza shield which hovers in front of Peppino, protecting him from a single hit of damage.
• Marathon Level: Snick's Challenge has you run through the main parts of Pizzascape, The Ancient Cheese and Bloodsauce Dungeon all in one.
• Nightmare Face: The Noise's C-rank portrait is nothing more than a Thousand-Yard Stare at the player with a drooping frown. If you manage to score even lower and get a D-rank, he instead jumps you with a downright terrifying face with red eyes, a wide gaping maw with More Teeth than the Osmond Family, sharp claws, and being so frustrated that his speech bubble is just random symbols.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The Cheese Dragon serves as the boss of World 1 in older Patreon demos. It has a perpetually goofy expression and flies on a pair of incredibly tiny wings. It wastes your time by breathing fire at the player and butt-stomping on the ground to cause heavy objects to fall on their head to stun them.
• Pinball Zone: The Space Pinball level, which combines The Wild West with a Space Zone.
• Public Domain Soundtrack:
  • The first escape theme made for the Noise, Pesto Anchovi, is a cover of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.
  • The original soundtrack of the game's tutorial was a cover of "Funiculi Funicula".
• Score Multiplier: The Heat Meter functions as one of these, going up a level when enough points are scored, and decreasing a level when Peppino gets hit; in return, it makes enemies faster.
• Second-Face Smoke: Pizza Slugs with a blue bowtie have a cigarette in their mouth all the time and can cough up black fumes that can damage you if you run into them.
• Second Place Is for Losers: If you get an A-rank (the second best) with the Noise, you'll get a screen with the Noise saying "Not an S" while looking at the player smugly.
• Secret Character: Snick can be unlocked as a playable character exclusive to the SAGE 2019 demo by completing Snick's Challenge, coming with his own gameplay mechanics.
• Shout-Out: Can be found here
• Sore Loser: The Noise abhors D-ranks, donning a Nightmare Face and straight-up ordering the player to "DIE" (at least, we assume that's what that text says) on the results screen if he earns one. His reactions for the succeeding ranks are calmer, but he's never impressed unless you win an S-rank.
• Tactical Suicide Boss:
  • Pepperman would be invincible if he kept using the dash attack similar to Peppino's and didn't randomly stop to let Peppino knock him off the tower.
  • An unused boss fight with the Noise has him on top of a pogo contraption and wearing a helmet, so he can only be stunned by jumping or ground pounding on him. However, he constantly spawns small minions into the arena, which can be thrown at him to temporarily ground him and his contraption, allowing Peppino to whale on him. He gains a Shockwave Stomp attack in phase two....that leaves him stranded on the ground for quite some time, and spawns flunkies.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Present in certain demos was a co-op feature, in which Peppino works with the Noise to beat levels, and to emphasize that the two are... not on friendly terms, there are various competitive elements in co-op (players are encouraged to fight each other to switch the leader, and the one to score the most points overall and win is the one to announce the Rank at the end of the level while the loser explodes).
• Throw Down the Bomblet:
  • In the pre-2019 demos, if there's an empty window nearby, chances are The Noise is going to throw bombs through it.
  • Pizza Box Goblins throw these around (sometimes getting caught in their own blasts), which Peppino can pick up. These are required to destroy purple bomb blocks.
  • If the Noise presses the attack button during his spinning tackle move, he throws a Noise Bomb, which bounces around for a bit, then explodes upon contact with an enemy or a breakable block.
• Visual Pun: During a ghost transformation, Peppino can pick up pepper. Ghost pepper.
• Whack-a-Monster: The Strongcold level has a boss battle featuring the Noise randomly rising from one out of five gift boxes in the room. As he's walloped, more characters such as Snick and Gustavo start appearing on the other boxes, along other distractions such as a Noise Waddling Head in the center platform and slippery floors.
• Whatevermancy: The Pizzards are said to practice "pizzamancy" in the SAGE 2019 demo.

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Good job, troper! That was... D: AWFUL

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