Honk! Pizza Possum is the primary sport – at the least that we are able to recall – that appears admiringly at Untitled Goose Recreation and decides that, yep, it fancies a little bit of that. Certain, the goose is a possum, however it nonetheless positions the participant as a deranged animal psychopath, trying to create anarchy by way of stealing components of the sport world. Behold, the beginning of the Animal Stealth style.
Pizza Possum will not be precisely the identical, although. The place Untitled Goose Recreation took its inspiration from graphic adventures, utilizing this-item on that-item to make progress by way of its sandboxy world, Pizza Possum has extra arcade ambitions. Its world is chopped up into areas, and people areas have locked gates. The keys to them are – abstractly – gained by consuming sufficient meals within the space. Get stuffed to a ample diploma, and a key will magically seem in possum’s pockets. Now he can trundle to the subsequent space, like a rodent katamari.
The areas are joined collectively to create an enormous Mediterranean-influenced metropolis that has a king at its zenith. If you happen to handle to get to the king and his cake, properly, that’s the Holy Grail. It’s as much as you: you may both munch your method by way of each final stall, seaside and ice cream van in a zigzag vogue, making certain you see every thing, or you may head immediately for the highest.
Complicating this alternative are issues to seek out. Big whirl-looking pastries are tucked into the nooks of town, and so they not solely plump up the possum, however they act as the sport’s predominant collectibles. Large, record-breaking tiramisu and salads are additionally discovered in your ascent, and so they require somewhat little bit of persistence to eat: one thing you may not have, since there are guards watching in your each transfer.
Pizza Possum will not be as simple as consuming every thing the attention touches. The dominion in Pizza Possum has clearly seen your like earlier than, as there are many blue-hatted guards patrolling. Truthfully, each different citizen of this city is a guard, so the king is (rightfully) paranoid. Metallic Gear Stable followers will know the deal right here. There are guards that pivot on the spot, requiring you to attend for them to look away earlier than sneaking behind them. Others are on routes, and the trick is in anticipating them. In the event that they spot you, then you’ve that small ‘alert’ window – Metallic Gear Stable sound results not included, sadly – to discover a bush or different hidden spot to take cowl. Must you fail to seek out one, then the chase is on.
Getting caught isn’t the tip of the world. There’s a checkpoint system for one, as you’ll find little cubbyholes with ‘P’ above them that act as save spots. You simply return to them and begin over again. However there’s additionally an XP system, the place notably lengthy stretches of not-getting-caught are rewarded with new instruments so that you can use. Our favorite was a roadblock, which stopped pursuers of their tracks, however there are espressos, speed-up potions and extra as your progress.
The stealth works a deal with. For a funds indie sport, Pizza Possum is remarkably polished and does all of the belongings you would hope it might do. Guards don’t have any sorts of sixth sense, and you’ll slip by unnoticed precisely once you count on to. If they’re dealing with a method, you may slip previous, millimetres from their again, so long as you might be outdoors of their cone of view. It’s not practical, however it positive as hell is what you need/count on. They’re tenacious in the event that they spot you, however in addition they have a restrict to how far they’re keen to journey. It creates a neat sport wherever you get noticed: should you alert somebody, you may escape so long as you run away and don’t tag extra guards. It’s doable however difficult to attain an exit with out attracting a 3rd or fourth guard.
Hopefully you may inform from the screenshots, however the presentation, too, is beautiful. The Mediterranean setting is sudden – possums aren’t identified from coming from that area – however it’s sunkissed and delightful, though it’s constructed from comparatively easy geometric shapes. It seems like an actual place, with market quarters, an uphill cemetery and docks all precisely the place you count on them to be. If we weren’t a needed possum, we might have favored to discover extra freely.
However the place Pizza Possum falls down somewhat is the sport’s construction. It appears caught between too many stools. We’re undecided if it desires to be a roguelike, sending you on runs by way of town; a rating assault sport; or one thing extra career-oriented. That lack of focus results in a number of conflicts, and it ended up hurting our enjoyment.
For instance, getting caught in Pizza Possum is positively inspired. You get whisked again to a checkpoint with some accrued XP, maybe an unlock. However all of the gates that you simply beforehand unlocked will now be locked once more, their keys presumably returned to the meals that you simply beforehand ate.
Now, we are able to’t assist however really feel that this sucks. We performed Pizza Possum with a little bit of a completionist, exploration-focused method. We needed to see the entire metropolis. We needed to eat every thing it needed to supply. It’s a little bit of a labyrinth, so we used the gates as orientation: if there was a locked gate, we hadn’t been there. So we might gorge ourselves like a marsupial glutton and earn sufficient factors to move on by way of.
However with the gates resetting, we couldn’t orient by the gates any extra. And we couldn’t return to previous areas to take a unique fork within the highway. Or, at the least, we may, however we’d have to finish them and discover their keys over and over.
All of this led us to suppose that we have been taking part in Pizza Possum incorrect. That we have been treating it as a discrete, completable sport, when the emphasis was extra on racing to the highest, or getting higher with every run. However taking part in it that method is equally unsatisfying. You’re gobbling up the identical areas, time and again, with no variation or pleasure in doing so. You possibly can’t blitz to the highest, both: we all know as we’ve tried. The guards are so densely packed within the King’s palace that you simply should have sure energy ups to eat his cake. However these power-ups solely come from extended play. The ‘rush to the highest’ doesn’t work both.
We don’t fairly understand how builders Cozy Laptop needed us to play Pizza Possum, however we by no means fairly landed on it. Ultimately, we repeated areas and floor out sufficient XP to get a power-up that may allow us to face the King and eventually end Pizza Possum. However we wouldn’t advocate that path: whereas we lastly ate every thing there was to eat, we didn’t get pleasure from it as a lot as we may have. We felt like we have been lacking one thing.
There’s a lot that we liked about Pizza Possum. It’s received that cheeky, subversive edge that Untitled Goose Recreation has, and we revelled in inflicting chaos. You possibly can actually style the success as you bypass a number of guards and down the enormous sundae they have been guarding.
However we are able to’t assist however really feel that builders Cosy Laptop come across a profitable system after which didn’t know what to do with it. Is Pizza Possum a roguelike? An arcade rush sport? A marketing campaign? The reply, we suspect, is somewhat little bit of all of them. And that confusion left one thing of a nasty style on this possum’s mouth.
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