Papa’s Pizzeria Review
Want to know what the Game Developer’s Association general meetings have in common with our week seven game of the week? Pizza.
That’s right, we’re talking about the webgame from Gen Z’s childhood, Papa’s Pizzeria. We’ll be talking in-depth about this adorable yet stressful flash game on February 28 at 6 p.m. in Gaylord 2030.
While I usually like to include a quote from the developers, I could not find an interview with Flipline Studios, (creator’s of the Papa’s series). What I do know is they are a Cleveland, Ohio based game developer who develops web games.
For the few who don’t know, Papa’s Pizzeria is a game that stars Roy, a normal pizza delivery boy who is tasked with running the restaurant while Papa Louie, the owner, is out of town on vacation. Now Roy must run a pizza restaurant all on his own.
The game is very simple yet accomplishes so much. There are four areas you have to manage all at once: the order counter, the prep station, the oven, and the slice counter.
You can guess what each area does. Each one is a different minigame for you to manage.
This is where the fun comes in, as you must take orders while frying a pizza in the oven, and scoot over to slice up the pizza to prepare it to go, and then prep a pizza with the ingredients, then back to serving that sliced pizza, and so on until the day is done.
I do also want to mention how cool it is for a flash game to have dynamic music. As you go between areas, the music shifts depending on what you are doing. Cheery music plays while you finish slicing up a pizza, but a more percussion focused track plays while you are waiting for pizzas to cook in the oven.
After finishing an order, you get ranked on how well you made the pizza for each category. Then, you are awarded with tips.
The more tips you get, the more your rank goes up. The more your rank goes up, the more customers you unlock.
Each customer always has a certain pizza they want to order, and every time you make the pizza well, their star rank goes up. The more stars they have, the higher they tip.
And you go on forever making pizzas till you exit out of your browser.
I used to play this game and some of the other Papa’s games all the time back in my elementary days (Papa’s Hot Doggeria being my favorite). But besides bringing back childhood memories for me, it also brought back just how good this game is.
I found myself pretty stressed while playing this game, as it simulates the feeling of working in a restaurant in real life. Managing different tasks is important, as you don’t want to disappoint your customers but you don’t want them waiting too long.
You can believe me, cause I used to work at a pizza restaurant. Fun fact, I used to deliver pizzas by bicycle a few summers ago. And when you get a call from a customer wondering where their pizza is or why we didn’t follow the order, it is not fun.
But Papa’s is really fun. It takes that stress, makes it into a small fun game that my childhood and adulthood self love.
Plus give it some fun artwork that looks straight out of a webcomic, and you got yourself one heck of a masterpiece for all generations.
Learn more about it and share your favorite web games you’ve played at our next general meeting on February 28 at 6 p.m. in Gaylord 2030.
