World's Fastest Pizza Review

The words YouTube and bait are dirty these days, far too many games are being developed in order to get the attention of popular YouTubers; therefore gaining instant popularity. This was my first reaction to World’s Fastest Pizza, the trailer painted a picture of a game that was all about the “lulz” and seemed likely to end up as a product PewdiePie would churn out.

World’s Fastest Pizza is a game about racism in Australia. I’m not coming up with this. The game involves an immigrant pizza delivery boy, travelling through dangerous neighborhoods in order to deliver a pizza. It plays similarly to Hotline Miami, but instead of causing gratuitous violence, in World's Fastest Pizza, you are avoiding it.

The game has this irreverent silliness to it, which reminded me of the brilliant WarioWare titles on the Nintendo DS. The constant energy prevalent throughout the game makes for a refreshing experience. No time is wasted, World’s Fastest Pizza wants to get you right in the action as fast as possible, with very little in the way of exposition.

The game is a roguelike, each playthrough is unique and can vary greatly. The game starts with the protagonist Tortoiseman outside his pizza delivery store, you must enter and pick up the pizza before you can go off on your travels. The game then begins with quick fire scenarios in which Tortoiseman must deliver a pizza as fast as possible. The levels are in random places such as deserts, beaches or even sewers.

A large part of the gameplay revolves around environmental destruction, you can run through windows, fences, houses and just about everything else that isn’t screwed down. As you gain power ups, you’ll even be able to set people on fire as you walk past them. Causing an absolute mess as you run around, scrambling to deliver that tasty pizza.

Power-ups are a big part of progression in World’s Fastest Pizza. Finishing each segments gives you money to spend on new items at the end of each run. When picking up the next stack of pizzas, players can pop next door to the shop in order to power up Tortoiseman. The items vary, with some serving no use at all and other completely changing the game. The two most useful items are easily the speed boost and compass, two items that make gameplay much easier and far less frustrating.

Without the compass, finding the delivery point for pizzas can actually be very annoying; if the drop off point is a visually noisy area, it will often lead to running around in circles. So I found myself often hoping for the compass to show up in the shop, just so the gameplay would improve. This is one of the only issues I actually had with the game, the rest of the experience is very well balanced.

The gameplay can become a little repetitive after a while, but the levels change often enough that it isn’t too monotonous. World’s Fastest Pizza is not a game that you will spend hours upon hours playing, instead, dipping in and out of every now again. It’s something that would work great while on a commute, so hopefully we will see some form of a handheld port at some point.

World’s Fastest Pizza is one of the most original indie games I’ve played in a long time. The game has a sense of humour that tries hard, without ever being tiresome or forced. It’s a simple concept that is executed brilliantly, a small budget game bursting with large amounts of creativity. If you want to try something a little different, you might just want to take a bite out of World’s Fastest Pizza.