Good Pizza, Great Pizza

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Good Pizza, Great Pizza is a family-friendly Arcade-style game where players take the role of the owner and cook behind a new pizza shop, tasked with making pizzas to order for customers, as well as making purchase decisions that will build your small shop into something that can compete with your competition across the street. This game was originally released on mobile devices in 2014 and ported to the Nintendo Switch in 2020.

The presentation in this game is extremely endearing, with silly, cartoony characters and surprisingly tasty-looking (but also cartoony) pizza, that even has nice little touches like cheese browning appropriately when it’s cooked. This is paired with a lovely light-hearted soundtrack, some funny writing, and fun nonsense babble noises when characters speak.

The gameplay here is good as well, with players choosing their toppings, manually spreading them on their pizza, and conversing with customers, many of whom will make strangely-worded orders that you’ll either have to try to figure out, or risk upsetting the customer by asking for clarification, a clever touch. All told, this is a solid, if a bit simple, game.

Having said that… I cannot recommend it on the Nintendo Switch. The gamepad controls for this game are serviceable, but a tad awkward, with players having to get used to moving a cursor with the right stick while controlling the spread of ingredients with the left. That’s fine… but the thing is, I’ve played this game on mobile devices, and while the game may work well enough with a gamepad, it is a game clearly meant for play with a touchscreen… and the Nintendo Switch version sadly does not make use of the touchscreen. On top of that, it’s hard to ignore that the Nintendo Switch version is $10, while the mobile version is free (with ads). I am perfectly fine for paying for an ad-free version of a good game… but less fine with paying for an inferior version.

It’s frustrating that this port of Good Pizza, Great Pizza drops the ball on the inclusion of touchscreen controls, because it is otherwise a delightful little Arcade game with a nice presentation and fun gameplay. But I cannot ignore that without touchscreen controls, this version of the game is inferior to its mobile counterpart. It’s still a decent game worth playing, but maybe play it on your smartphone instead.

tl;dr – Good Pizza, Great Pizza is an Arcade-style game that has you making pizzas to order and managing your restaurant. The presentation here is nice, and the gameplay is good, but without touchscreen controls, this version is inferior to the one you can get for free (with ads) on your smartphone.

Grade: B-

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