Probably the most absurd game I played at PAX West was Pizza Bandit, a four-player co-op game that combines elements from Gears of War and Overcooked. It’s easily one of the strangest games I’ve come across. I'm going to dive into this game and do my best to unpack its premise and story. And trust me, it's a wild ride ahead.
I met with the developers, and they explained the premise of the game. I play as a retired bounty hunter who decides to open up a pizzeria. The problem? This bounty hunter has no idea how to run one. During the opening segment, the developer guided me through different parts of the pizzeria, pointing out absurdities like stools being taller than the countertops, highlighting the bounty hunter's cluelessness. To solve this problem, the bounty hunter goes back in time to make pizzas and send them back to the future for profit. Alongside making pizzas, I’m also sending beer, soda, and bullets. But here's the twist: while my comrades and I are making these pizzas, we're attacked by creatures who don’t appreciate us meddling in the past. It’s a bizarre mashup between Overcooked and Gears of War.
Working together is key to succeeding in this game. There’s a pizza station where I have to make the pizzas, along with a cheese station, mushroom station, sausage station, beer station, soda station, and bullet station. Each pod shows me what the customers are asking for, like a sausage and cheese pizza, and I have to prepare it.
Ideally, I’d focus on making the pizzas and gathering ingredients, while my teammates fend off the swarm of enemies. But if we don’t work together, things fall apart fast. There’s also friendly fire, and I ended up taking quite a bit of damage from my teammates. In the end, we didn’t succeed and were sent back to the future, failing in our quest.
Pizza Bandit is definitely a strange game, but I can see how it would be a lot of fun with three other players who are on the same page as me.
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