Want to master the art of pizza? Tap Blaze Games’ Good Pizza, Great Pizza is a good place to start. Players build their empire making pizza pies one customer at a time. The game begins with the opening day of the pizzeria. Starting from the humble cheese pizza and some trash talk from rivals, the idea is to gain profit from pie sales to re-invest into the shop. Money is used for expanding ingredient options, shop upgrades, and décor. Players control everything from taking orders to customer handoff. They’re tasked with assembling the pizza with toppings, baking, and perfect slicing in between. Rinse, repeat, et cetera.
The concept is pretty direct and, on the surface, repetitive. Take orders, make pizza. The players need to handle that repetitive feeling well. Attention is held via a sense of urgency using time. Shop operation hours are on a limited day/night cycle and customers have a happiness meter. Both continually decrease while pizza orders are being taken and made. Customers add additional urgency by slowing the ordering process. They slow it by means of superfluous orders, incomplete information requiring more questions, and large or picky requests. A regular day for real life food service workers. Some of the easier examples are “my sister does not like cheese pizza, I would like a cheese pizza” and saying “za” as an order.
Good Pizza, Great Pizza, balances this urgency with gratification by smartly addressing the repetitive nature of play. Without the two burnout would be swift. Who would want to keep making pizza for smarmy, impatient characters otherwise? Gratification is frequent. Gratification obviously appears as in game achievements and quest completion. Another form is tips. Happy customers build the player’s financial resources. Tips tie into the best gratification. Completing a larger, complicated order invokes feeling accomplishment. The feeling is similar to completing minor puzzles in RPGs or beating personal bests in racing games. In embittered customer service veteran terms it’s knowing you did a job well done.
Since time is a mechanic, the sooner customers receive their pizza, the sooner the next customer can be served. More happy customers per day means more money in the bank. Money flow is actively shown during shop open time. A nice touch is how funds decrease in real time as toppings are added on pies and funds increase when orders are paid for. Big purchases happen at night between store open cycles. These purchases can be decorations, toppings, and upgrades. Upgrades help with time management and pleasing customers. Examples would be expanding store hours and the topping placement guide for balanced pizza. Sauce Buddy helping auto sauce the pizzas is a lifesaver.
There are a few negative expenses. Pizza ovens need occasional repair and locks fixed. There are several story options where the player can gift pizza to the homeless or still make a pie for a short changed person if they choose. Getting a pizza wrong or wasting materials are not huge detriments to well managed play.
Over time, the story features different topping festivals. These days customers will request specific toppings being celebrated more often. Rival Alicante, may come taunt to you beforehand while tipping what toppings are needed. Story works as a nudge for players to expand and offers a few quirky laughs but isn’t much to write home about. The lack of a strong narrative is not an issue, the game doesn’t need it as the flow of play is strong.
The art and dialogues are worth mentioning. Both pay homage to game culture and pop culture in fabulous subtle-ish ways. Most of this shows in décor options, like the posters. The dialogues also differentiate between vegetarian and vegan at points too, another nice touch. The graphics appear simple but the clean lines visually complements game play. No crowded screens or messy UI here. Good Pizza, Great Pizza does look like a mobile game because it is. This is expected as TapBlaze’s titles include several mobile platform games. This isn’t a negative as Good Pizza, Great Pizza, transitions to the Switch well.
Since it has mobile origins the touch screen is supported. However, the experience was lackluster and I ended up using the Joy Cons for better controls. The controllers just feel more consistent. Gameplay is still solid off the dock and is a good companion game on the go. If touch is preferred, go mobile. It is imaginable that each version of Good Pizza, Great Pizza, has tweaks to complement play on their respective platforms.
Good Pizza, Great Pizza, is not something that would be a Switch title of year, but it is pizza themed and all ages fun. The day cycle allows for saving often and fits play into those weird gaps of free time throughout the game. This is great for shifting gears easily or having something to play on and off again between things. It may lead to pizza cravings, if you’re willing to risk it this is well worth adding to any game library. For additional information (and maybe nutrition facts) check out the game’s official website here!
