#literally FUCK PEPPIBOT FACTORY

[vii-spider]

updated tier list now that ive 100%ed all of floor 4!

cant speak for pizzascare since i havent made much progress with it, its annoying BUT its REALLY really fun, and i REALLY love the aesthetic and the music and everything about it so so much that i just genuinely cannot be mad at it

pizza tower level tier list based on how good/bad its been to 100% them so far (get every achievement AND p rank)

[its-ya-girl-phoeni]

Every level in the PT Isekai AU summed up in one sentence

Tutorial: Bonnie learns the basics of being an Italian

John Gutter: Bonnie goes to a literal concrete jungle

Pizzascape: Bonnie massacres an entire castle by herself

Ancient Cheese: Bonnie destroys priceless ancient architecture

Bloodsauce Dungeon: Bonnie gets tortured

Vs. Pepperman: Bonnie fistfights a giant vegetable

Oregano Desert: Bonnie hallucinates in the desert and gets abducted by aliens

Wasteyard: Bonnie fucking dies

Fun Farm: Bonnie gets a pet chicken and kills a bunch of farmers

Fastfood Saloon: Bonnie gets really drunk and enters a horse race

Vs. The Vigilante: Bonnie engages in a pistol duel with a sentient pile of cheese

Crust Cove: Bonnie goes to the beach and gets nuked by pirates

Gnome Forest: Bonnie takes a nap while her bf goes on a whimsical adventure with a giant rat

Deep Dish 9: Bonnie destroys an entire planet

Golf: Bonnie plays a fun game of golf

Vs. The Noise: Bonnie beats the shit out of a celebrity on live TV

The Pig City: Bonnie gets arrested for killing thousands and her bf and a rat break her out of jail

Peppibot Factory: Bonnie punches robots and gets put in a box

Oh Shit: Bonnie is 2 seconds away from puking her guts out at all times

Refrigerator-Refrigerador-Freezerator: Giles almost freezes to death while Bonnie eats spicy food and goes apeshit on everyone

Vs. Fake Peppino: Bonnie fights a fucked-up clone who then befriends her

Pizzascare: Bonnie shits her britches

Don't Make A Sound: Bonnie plays FNAF irl

WAR: Bonnie gets PTSD

Vs. Pizzaface: Local woman too angry to die

The Crumbling Tower Of Pizza: Local woman destroys an entire tower with her bare hands

Secrets Of The World: Bonnie becomes a conspiracy theorist

Tricky Treat: Bonnie has the worst Halloween ever

[siren-nate]

Ranking every Pizza Tower level let's go

19) 4-2 | Peppibot Factory: God, I mean, what do I even say? Nothing about this level's design works. The platforms are awkward and disjointed and broken up in a way that feels like it's not even designed with Peppino in mind whatsoever, the conveyor belts are one of the shittiest, most irritating gimmicks in the entire game, the titular Peppibots are barely even a factor in the one level they show up in - the first one is often killed before you even realize what it is, just dropped in your path with no fanfare whatsoever. The transformation is good, but it's not used to its fullest potential whatsoever in the escape sequence. Barring the music, everything about this level is just awful, not even by the standards of Pizza Tower, but by the standards of platformers in general.

18) 2-1 | Oregano Desert: The more I think about it, the more I realize this is one of my least favorite levels. The level design just feels confused on what it wants to be; there are multiple winding paths with score pickups to grab, but no route to take all of them in a loop that feels efficient or intended. The cows are a funny way to make a level gimmick into a tool or an obstacle depending entirely on context, but they completely kill the pacing. The firemouth is one of my least favorite transformations, with its incredibly floaty and imprecise jump being completely at odds with Peppino's core moveset. And, on top of all of this, the vast majority of the enemies are uncomfortable caricatures of Native American people. Lovely.

17) 2-3 | Fun Farm: Mort the Chicken, despite being a hilariously bizarre cameo, is one of the worst transformations in the game. The movement change when you have him is slow and cumbersome, the hitbox for the Mort Hooks feels flat-out broken with how finnicky it is to hit them, and most of the gameplay with him devolves into just walking to the right while spamming the attack button. Even without him, the core level design is weirdly jagged and full of roadblocks that are difficult to deal with quickly, which isn't a good match for enemies that charge straight at you weapon-first the moment they see you.

16) 3-2 | Gnome Forest: Great music, a great aesthetic with a vibrant color palette, and level design that's simple enough to get you used to Gustavo and Brick's gameplay while still having depth and challenge to dive into for a P-rank. A great level with a single, massive Achilles's Heel: Pickles. These are the worst enemy in the entire game, because nothing in your kit deals with them effectively. You can't always mach run to scare them because Gustavo and Brick don't have a move to get up to speed instantly, you can't always jump on them without them seeing you, you can't parry their shock after they teleport straight to you - the best option is the Brick Ball, but that only works if there's a relatively unbroken stretch of ground between you and them. I hate, hate, hate, HATE Pickles and think they should be literally deleted from the fucking game entirely.

15) 5-1 | Pizzascare: An attempt to recapture the magic of one of the best levels in Pizza Tower, but one that doesn't hit the mark very well at all. The central gimmicks are both irritating in different ways. The Ghost King is a constant hazard that jumps from obstacle to obstacle, but at times you actually need him to get through a section and he might be stuck elsewhere. It's neat, but you often aren't given enough time to react to him jumping to a new hazard in your way, and shockingly for a level all about busting ghosts, you never get to strike back at him. Speaking of which, the ghosts turn a power-up as tantalizing as temporary invincibility into a chore. It just doesn't last long enough to actually feel like a power-up; every time I get to a Pizza Pope, I don't feel like I'm all-powerful, I feel like I'm finally getting my head above water to breathe for five seconds.

14) 1-1 | John Gutter: A good introductory level to the game at large! It seems simple, and the secrets definitely are, but the actual level design can have some surprising depth that encourages you to explore just how quick and efficient you can be with simple but vital moves, like the mach turnaround and the super jump. The music is surprisingly reserved and mysterious, and the theme of the level doesn't make much sense until you learn just how important John and Gerome are, but it definitely gets across one thing: this game is weird, and it's proud of it.

13) 1-3 | Ancient Cheese: A solid level, but I have to admit, it's one that kind of lacks a core gimmick. The bombs and crumbling cheese platforms it introduces are ones that stick around for the entire game, meaning that in retrospect, Ancient Cheese has nothing to wholly call its own. Still a good level, with great music, but they could have done more with the theme of ancient ruins.

12) 4-4 | Refrigerator-Refrigerador-Freezerator: I don't really know why I don't like this level more. The music is good, the aesthetic is fun, and the transformation is maybe the most unique in the game as it basically acts like Peppino's Super Mode. I think what it comes down to is basically a lot of small annoyances that pile up and give me a negative vibe for the level as a whole. The overabundance of bottomless pits discourages you from going fast in a game all about going fast. The snowman enemies are the second worst in the game, as there's no good way to deal with them other than "get behind them" which isn't an option in every situation - especially at the end where the game throws armadas of them at you all at once. Even the Satan's Choice Pizza transformation has an annoyance in the way it bounces you up whenever you break an ice block, even when the game design really wants you to go downward. If I could only dive or bodyslam out of the spin attack, it would make things feel so much more fluid.

11) 1-4 | Bloodsauce Dungeon: The first truly difficult level in my mind, both on a first playthrough and when going for P-ranks. It's an extremely vertical level, unlike most other levels in the game, which means that the initial playthrough and the escape sequence can feel like completely different levels - whether that's a good or a bad thing is basically entirely up to personal taste. Sadly, just like Ancient Cheese, it somewhat lacks in feeling unique once you've beaten the game, and the music has that one part at the end that just completely doesn't fit in and makes me wonder why it's there to begin with.

10) 2-2 | Wasteyard: A really solid level. The corpse-surf transformation is black comedy as hell and feels great, even if it's not really essential to accomplishing anything in the areas where you find it - it just breaks up what could otherwise get monotonous in a fun way. The ghost transformation is also simple but very well-designed, tying into the core theme of speed but expanding it into a new dimension while removing the mach run from the equation. Ghost John also adds a whole new layer of challenge to the escape sequence, but on P-rank attempts his incredibly aggressive rubber-banding can be really frustrating; you can recover from most other mistakes, but if you get caught by John far enough into a screen, you're already screwed and may as well restart.

9) 1-2 | Pizzascape: With the introductory level out of the way, Pizza Tower puts its best foot forward by immediately giving you one of the best levels in the game. The level design switches between decently complex, and long straightaways that give you a feel for just how insanely fast Peppino can get. The knight transformation is one of the most satisfying, and serves to reinforce how important slopes are to the gameplay in case you were disregarding them.

8) 4-1 | The Pig City: The good Brick and Gustavo level. The rails and rat balloons make for great level gimmicks that both playable characters interact with in different ways, allowing them to feel almost like different elements entirely. Both songs are absolute bops, and the general presentation of a grimy city is top notch. It does lose some points for weird gaps in the level design that are at odds with maintaining speed, though - enemies in pits that you have to stop to kill to boost your combo are an annoyance.

7) 3-3 | Deep-Dish 9: I have almost nothing to say other than "God DAMN, what a good level". The music is the funkiest yet, the visual style is fantastic and quite literally triple what most levels get, the transformations are simple enough to master but tricky enough to make using them an enjoyable challenge... I guess the overuse of teleportals as an obstacle can get annoying, as running into one at the wrong moment can basically doom your combo, but they're far less of a death sentence than getting caught by Ghost John is.

6) 2-4 | Fast-Food Saloon: A fantastic level that gets better the more skilled you are at the game. Collecting all the card decks and knocking over as many bottles as you can is incredibly satisfying, and Lil' Doggy is fun to mess around with. The races with Horsey are often maligned, but they're really not that difficult once you're even slightly experienced with Peppino's moveset, and his indignant face when he loses is one of the funniest sight gags in the game. What's far less forgiving is the buttons, which are the one part of this level I don't like. I can tell how unbelievably strict their time limits are from how even after 150 hours in the game, I always feel like I'm just barely getting through by the skin of my teeth. On top of that, the Chef Task for only pressing each button once is maybe the worst in the entire game. Still not enough to bring down what a great level this is, but worth criticizing.

5) 5-2 | Don't Make A Sound: A stealth level thrown into a game as frantic and high-paced as Pizza Tower... and it WORKS! It being a stealth level doesn't mean you have to slow down; if anything, you should be going as fast as possible to kill the alarm enemies before they have a chance to actually go off. Speaking of which, running from the Toppin Bots is exhilarating, with most of them behaving in different ways that make you rethink how to get away from or around them on the fly. Do I even need to bring up the shotgun and the catharsis of running back through the level gunning down the formerly-invincible monsters that terrified you the whole way through?

4) 4-3 | Oh, Shit!: I've thought a lot about why I like this level so much when everyone else seems to hate it. People hate the Cheese Peppino transformation, but I find it incredibly satisfying to wall jump as quick as I can, and at no point in the level do you have to use it for more than like eight seconds at a time. People hate the Ninja Pizza enemies, but I find them to be a good test of your parry ability that the game should be throwing at you this late into it to be sure you've figured it out. People hate how long the level is, I just find it to be more Pizza Tower to enjoy without a real chokepoint for P-ranks that they always die on. This is just an immensely satisfying level based around Peppino's core moveset without any gimmicks that force you to engage with them for very long, which might be where I differ - I find that really fun, to take the no-frills design of Floor 1 levels and amp up the challenge to the same point as the rest of Floor 4's levels.

3) 3-4 | Golf: How is it possible that they take an intentionally frustrating April Fool's joke demo, and make it into one of the best levels in the game? It feels like it should be illegal in some way. Golf has one of the highest skill ceilings in all of Pizza Tower, with it constantly encouraging you to use Peppino's normal moveset to launch the ball for miles rather than do the seemingly intended stop-and-go gameplay of grabbing and putting him. The fact that your combo meter resets every time you so much as touch him makes this one of the easiest levels to keep your combo on, but the Golf Demons and later plethora of outlet hazards mean it's not effortless to P-rank, either. The difficulty is impeccably well-balanced.

2) 3-1 | Crust Cove: Best song in the game, and one of my favorite levels besides that. Hunting down treasure guys is a lot of fun, and the core level design involves a lot of jumping while maintaining your mach dash, which is one of the most satisfying challenges based around the basic core mechanics. The barrel transformation CAN be a little brain-dead, but it's still immensely fun and the sections never overstay their welcome too long. I do have to subtract points because there's one section just before the Pillar John that's practically a killbox for P-rank attempts. It's just long enough without any pickups that maintaining your combo is a serious challenge, and there are constant environmental dangers from the cannonballs that mean you're likely to take damage and completely screw yourself. It honestly reminds me a lot of that one section in Gnome Forest everyone hated, but unlike that, this one never got a fix in an update.

1) 5-3 | WAR: The best level in the game, and they save it for last like a bunch of absolute chads. Right after the level that teaches you the shotgun makes you the God of the Pizza Tower, WAR shows you the problem with overusing it: it slows you down in the air and outright kills your speed on the ground. Despite being THE shotgun level, it challenges you to only use it when you really need it and make your way through the most dangerous (but fair!) enemies in the game with only your standard moveset. I don't think I even need to expound on how much Thousand March gets your blood pumping.

0) The Crumbling Tower of Pizza: This one's an honorable mention. I'd find it really difficult and frankly unfair to rank this level among all of the more standard ones, as it's so wildly different. Nothing to collect and no side paths to explore, just an escape sequence through the entire tower using nearly every gimmick and transformation found along the way. It's the perfect ending and I absolutely adore it, but ranking it would be like comparing apples to oranges.

And now, as a bonus, ranking all of the bosses:

5) The Noise: I'm sure he'd take great pride in being considered the worst boss fight in the game. The Noise's lack of proper pattern means you spend the entire fight just getting absolutely fucked by RNG, as a lot of his attacks are dangerous from the very moment they come out and require you to be a particular distance away from him in order to deal with them effectively, which is just a bullshit combination. The Noisies are also incredibly annoying bait; if you want to P-rank the boss, literally just ignore them. Being able to get extra damage sounds nice, but they'll fuck you into taking damage every single time.

4) Pepperman: The perfect introduction to how boss fights in Pizza Tower work as a whole. A powerful foe who uses particular attacks in a recognizable pattern, mixed in with stage hazards that keep you on your toes and keep things semi-random. He's second-lowest on the list solely because the big statue that slides across the ground in his second phase sometimes feels unfairly hard to dodge if he's using a particular attack.

3) The Vigilante: The pistol is a surprisingly well thought-out gimmick for this fight; the difficulty curve of the Vigilante is entirely based on how good you can get at timing your charge shot so it slams into him the instant his invincibility frames run out. Once you get really good at it, you can hit him with a charge and two regular shots as soon as he becomes vulnerable, completely cheesing (no pun intended) the boss. And... that can make it kind of a joke, unfortunately. Vigilante is legitimately the easiest boss in the game once you master the pistol.

2) Fake Peppino: I don't think there's any way to really describe or recapture the feeling of just seeing Fake Peppino for the first time, let alone fighting him. The off-putting and deranged music that sounds like it's trying to be happy or funky and just not quite understanding how to, the way the Fake Fake Peppinos swarm in greater intensity the further in the fight you get, the subtle implication that the entire boss room is an extension of Fake Peppino... the fight itself is mechanically great, but it's the sheer presentation that makes it the second best and the perfect pre-final boss.

1) Pizzaface: ...Hence why the boss with the best presentation of all gets my pick for the best boss in the game. Can the first phase get a little unfairly chaotic once his health gets low enough? Sure. Is the pistol's charge shot rendered completely pointless by the second phase having no invincibility frames? Sure. Is the third phase a little too easy, even if it's trying to make you feel like Peppino's fucking invincible? Sure. But much like the horror of seeing Fake Peppino, words cannot describe the triumph of beating the final boss for the first time, and seeing Peppino get the vengeance he so rightfully deserves for all the shit he's been put through.