Pizza Tower began as a role-playing video game with survival horror elements before evolving into a platformer inspired by Nintendo's dormant Wario Land series, to which McPig wanted to provide a spiritual successor.

It was developed with GameMaker and features a cartoonish, high-resolution pixel art style inspired by SpongeBob SquarePants and French comics.

Tour De Pizza supported the game with updates adding new content into 2024, alongside a port for the Nintendo Switch.

Each level has a distinct theme and unique game mechanics,[1] such as a cemetery with surfable corpses and a Five Nights at Freddy's homage with jump scares.

[6] Certain levels feature power-ups that alter Peppino's abilities, such as guns or knight armor,[3][5] and Gustavo, an alternate player character who rides on the back of his giant pet rat.

[3] A portal allows the player to do an optional second lap in which they return to the end and must make their way back to the entrance again for bonus points.

The highest rank, P, can only be acquired if the player obtains enough points, finds the three secrets, collects the treasure, and completes a second lap while maintaining a single, uninterrupted combo.

[18] The concept originated from the Peppino character, who McPig created for comics and drawings in which he imagined pizza monsters appearing in his restaurant at night.

McPig conceived a role-playing video game (RPG) with survival horror elements similar to Resident Evil in which Peppino traversed his restaurant while battling pizza monsters.

He began developing Weenie Cop, a platform game featuring a sentient hot dog who battled junk food criminals.

(2008) and McPig felt it needed a spiritual successor in the vein of games like A Hat in Time (2017), Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (2019), and Wargroove (2019) to show its publisher, Nintendo, that fans were still interested.

[18] McPig initially designed Pizza Tower as a maze-like, puzzle-oriented platform game similar to Wario Land.

It evolved as McPig and Sertif observed how players played a 2019 demo that experimented "with a more free-form moveset" and decided to emphasize speed and score-attack elements.

[18] McPig and Sertif introduced the secondary playable character, Gustavo, to streamline a pizza delivery-based level as they reduced the maze-like design.

PC Gamer theorized that the number of power-ups changing Peppino's moveset made the addition of multiple characters with unique sprites unfeasible.

[17][18] SpongeBob SquarePants and the French comics McPig had grown up reading inspired Pizza Tower's pixel art style.

[17] He based the Noise on the Noid, an advertising mascot used by the pizza chain Domino's, feeling he would be a suitable villain for a pizza-based game.

[16] McPig recruited ClascyJitto, a high school student who published music on SoundCloud and Bandcamp in their spare time, after they shared remixes of de Castel's work in the Discord server.

[19] McPig started promoting Pizza Tower in 2018 by sharing screenshots on Tumblr, before moving to Twitter to raise its profile.

[12] Pizza Tower has developed a large fandom, which Sertif attributed to the demos, Patreon builds, and livestreamers such as Vinesauce showcasing it.

[18] Following the release, Tour De Pizza collaborated with Fangamer to produce merchandise including plushies, T-shirts, and pins,[23] and the Discord server's membership grew from 5,000 to 20,000 before McPig and Sertif discontinued it.

[30] Critics were surprised by Pizza Tower's quality and considered it a worthy substitute for Wario Land,[c] some calling it a rare spiritual successor that is better than its inspiration.

[1] MeriStation said Pizza Tower was "an instant classic" and a breath of fresh air in the side-scrolling indie scene, which they felt was lacking creativity.

[e] IGN said the intentionally cheap-looking art style lent Pizza Tower a striking, idiosyncratic appearance,[3] and Multiplayer.it said the levels were so detailed that players would continue to find new animations for hours.

[g] IGN enjoyed Pizza Tower's use of the cartoon trope in which characters are depicted in a different style for comedic effect,[3] and alongside PC Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun, praised the expressiveness of Peppino.

They enjoyed each level's distinct theme and mechanics as well as the secrets scattered throughout,[h] and compared the sense of speed to the Sonic the Hedgehog series.

[1][3][4] Reviewers felt it improved and expanded on the Wario Land formula,[f] with Den of Geek calling it "faster, crazier, [and] sillier".

[2] Polygon and IGN highlighted the escape sequences,[3][5] Multiplayer.it said the power-ups surpassed Wario Land's in terms of surrealness and fun,[4] and PC Gamer said the final boss's spectacle rivaled that of the Bayonetta series.

While its levels were still designed in Wario Land's slow and methodical fashion, Rock Paper Shotgun wrote, Pizza Tower expects the player to move fast, leading to the repeated frustration of losing momentum.