Developer: Onni Interactive
Publisher: Black Shell Media
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Pizza Express – Review
Some of us have the dream to become a famous chef. There are a lot of other things that you must think about rather than preparing food, such as advertisements and the interior of your establishment. Pizza Express might be the game to prepare you for these jobs, since it is a restaurant simulation game. Be ready to get your hands dirty and help some of your peculiar friends.
Story
The narrative starts on a beautiful day in a park. Gastone, a friendly fox, has invited his best friend Lucky for a lovely picnic. The rather gluttonous snail is quite happy with the invitation as Gastone’s cooking is legendary. It seems that our cook has something on her chest and that’s the reason for this meeting. She wants to start a restaurant so everyone can enjoy her cooking, but her father is against it as he was a famous chef himself and he knows how hard that world can be.
Stubborn as foxes are, she decides to start a pizzeria anyway but she will need staff to pull this off. This is where you come in the picture. Lucky is handling the orders and Gastone does the baking, but this means that there needs to be someone that makes the pizzas. As a friend of Lucky, you are promoted to “pizza dresser”. That isn’t all though, you will need to choose ingredients, create new pizzas and take a look at all the administration. The three of you will need to overcome several obstacles so your pizzeria becomes the best place to eat in town.
Graphics
You will be taken back into the realm where pixelated images thrive. Everything will be in a pixelated style but it is something you’ll get used to quite fast. It might be hard to read the text at times, since the game wants to give you loads of information and everything is crammed together. During the pizza dressing, the graphics are less pixelated so it is easier to recognise every ingredient.
The colours are not that vibrant but they really fit together to emphasize that more old-school approach. Although the shades aren’t that lively, you will certainly become happy.
Sound
Although the graphics are retro, this cannot be completely said about the soundtrack. You will be submerged into music with some 8-bit tones but the overall feel is more modern. Even more, the developers did their best to offer you loads of different tracks. The overall style is a bit more pumped so you’ll get energized to work as hard as you can to dress pizzas. When venturing the menus and administration, the music is placed on the background so you can focus yourself on the management.
Pizza Express has some sound effects as well, mostly during your working hours or when you’re advancing in the story. For example, you will hear the swooping of ingredients or typing sounds when the text that is being projected during conversations.
Gameplay
Pizza Express is a fast-paced visual restaurant simulation that will make your managing skills and inner cook come to life. The choices you make will influence the rest of the game and it will determine if you succeed to become the best restaurant. The F.L.A.B. or Finger Licking Associated Bistros is an organisation that will measure the quality of your pizzeria and you will need to persuade a critic of course.
First of all, you will need to make the best pizzas ever. This means that you need to be quick to serve your customers and make as little as possible mistakes in the process. Making pizzas will imply that you need ingredients and at the start of a service, each component will be restocked. You will need to keep an eye on these amounts though, as restocking during a service takes time and it might be you’ll run out of ingredients. This can lead to major losses and a bad service. You will be able to see an overview when your shift ends, giving you the possibility to see if you made any profit, if anyone left and how your rating is.
You will work each day and the working hours can be adjusted to your liking. If you want, you can be available for almost the whole day or you can work just a few hours. This is something you will need to decide. Next to that, you can change the interior of your restaurant or you can pick some presents or other forms of discounts. Although this might cost you a bit, but it will be for the greater good.
Another way to promote your restaurant is to use advertisements. Lucky will have loads of options to choose from and some might be better options than other ones. The kind of advertisement will influence your customers and, as said before, this will also be a factor if you will succeed in your goal or not.
Next to that, you can also add more tables to your establishment so more people can enjoy your cooking. You will get better points from the F.L.A.B. and your customers when you use fresh ingredients and combine the best flavours to get the ultimate pizza. This takes us to the next part the game has to offer: you can make your own pizzas and you can order the ingredients you want. Let the creative chef run loose and combine everything you can imagine. You will also have to determine how much your new pizza will cost. Ordering ingredients is something fun to do as well, since you have quite a lot to choose from. One thing has to be said though, if you order something, you cannot seem to remove it so be sure when you get something new in your trays. You can alter several things when your choosing ingredients. For example, you can choose the amount of servings you will have at the start of a shift, the quality of the ingredient and the supplier.
Overall, the several aspects of the game might seem a lot to get through, but when you get the hang of it you will certainly enjoy the game. It is a great mixture between the simulation of a pizzeria and the management behind the scenes.
Conclusion
If you like the retro style and you’re fond of simulation games, you might want to take a look at Pizza Express. It will take you to a world where you need to help Gastone make her dream come true, while you help in her restaurant and get to the top. Next to that, you will need to be ready to work your way through the several management aspects the game has to offer as well. The setting of the game is in the pixelated style, with some modern 8-bit music to make it complete. Mamma mia!
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