How speedy implementation fed the fast-paced platforming of Pizza Tower

gamedeveloper.com:

Pizza Tower is a frantic, blisteringly fast platformer that emphasizes linking movements together to maintain speed as you rush through its absurd pizza-based landscapes with a wildly-animated protagonist.

Game Developer spoke with Sertif, the game’s lead programmer, to talk about the continual creating and discarding process that led to their protagonist’s vibrant, varied animations, how they constantly thought about how the movement abilities and skills could link into one another to create seamless high-speed movements, and the thoughts inspired them to do away with any kind of health system and instead encourage players to strive for personal best times.

Pizza Tower is a wild, frantic game inspired by the Wario Land series. Can you tell us how this combination came about?

The idea of the game came to [Pizza Tower's pseudonymous co-developer] McPig around 2018, but back then, it was meant to be more Wario Land-oriented, where the focus was on the puzzles themselves. That was mostly the idea for the whole year in which the game had two demos, a Halloween one and a December one, both incredibly slow compared to what came next. Then, the SAGE 2019 demo happened with a more free-form moveset for Peppino that eventually became the final one. I was hired a year later, and we both took hints on what the players were doing with the SAGE 2019 demo, eventually morphing into this monstrosity of speed, score attack, and Wario Land.

Peppino Spaghetti has a ton of character in his animations, movements, and the faces he makes. What went into his design to make him so expressive? What challenges came from putting so much work into how he looked, moved, and acted?

The idea overall for Peppino is that he is an absolute mess, and we