Pizza Possum

Genre: Stealth

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local Split-Screen)

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

Pizza Possum is a family-friendly Stealth game released in 2023 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. In this game, players control the titular possum, trying to gobble up all the food he can get his grubby little hands on, with the hopes of making it through the royal town until he can reach the giant pizza at the town’s highest point, all while avoiding cops looking to catch him.

Pizza Possum’s presentation makes use of relatively simple, colorful, slightly cartoony 3D visuals that look endearing even if they’re not technically impressive, and do a great job making the abundant food look enticing. However, while the game looks good, the absolute star of the presentation is the sound.

Where to even begin here… the music is generally lighthearted and whimsical, but it also responds to what you’re doing, changing if you jump into hiding, or if you get spotted by the cops. In addition, your possum character is constantly making little noises, whether it’s his adorable munching noises as he horks down food while you’re walking around, or his possibly even more adorable screams as he realizes he’s been spotted and starts scurrying for safety, only to be followed by his devious chuckles once he loses his pursuers. This abundance of personality is present in the cops too, with each type of cop making their own noises, such as the standard dog cops making dopey “bum bum bum” noises as they walk their rounds.

The gameplay here is an interesting spin on the Stealth genre. Your overall goal is to grab up enough food in each area to earn a key that will unlock the gates to the next area, and ideally reach the possum hidey hole that acts as a checkpoint before any cop catches you.

Food in each area is plentiful, and even respawns after a short while, but just grabbing up any food only fills up your food points meter slowly, which can be slow going, so unless you prefer to be slower and not take risks, you’ll want to look for higher-value foods that can take longer to eat and are usually better-patrolled, making them riskier targets.

The way this game handles the “getting caught” part of Stealth games is really interesting too. For the most part, cops in this game are just as fast as you are, if not faster, and the moment one catches you, you lose all your food and get booted back to the last checkpoint. And apart from a limited supply of disposable items, you don’t have any way to stop cops, either – pretty much all you can do is run, or hop into a bush to hide, and if they see you jump in the bush it won’t work as a hiding spot.

Because of your limited abilities, often your only way to evade capture is to use the environment to your advantage, hopping down from ledges or rooftops, which cops have difficulty following you down. And because the game’s contiguous level design has progression tied to working your way upward through the village, going down usually means some amount of backtracking and losing progress you’ve made through the game’s map. What’s more, if you’re not careful about where you go when doing this, you could easily run into other cops, resulting in a frantic chain of running into cop after cop and scrambling to get to safety, something that’s delightfully fun, even if it means you’re just giving yourself more work to get back to where you were before.

My main complaints regarding this game are that I think it could do an even better job framing its gameplay. The game is roughly an hour or two long, with extra stuff to unlock, but I feel like this could have been built up to be an excellent Roguelike. Get rid of the checkpoints, make the game’s maps randomized, and have different bonuses in each run, and I could absolutely see this being a game you could come back to time and again to top your previous score.

As it is, though, Pizza Possum is a truly delightful family-friendly Stealth game while it lasts, and its relatively low price of $7 helps to take the sting away from the game’s short length. If you’re curious to see what a great Stealth game that’s light on mechanics looks like, Pizza Possum is well worth seeking out, and for more casual players I think this makes for a delightful lighthearted spin on the “cops and robbers” theme. Either way, this is absolutely a game worth getting.

tl;dr – Pizza Possum is a family-friendly Stealth game where players take the role of a hungry possum trying to gobble up all food in sight without being nabbed by the cops. The core mechanics here are simple but work well, with some inspired mechanics that put a new spin on the Stealth genre, and an absolutely adorable presentation. I do wish this game built on the core gameplay to give it longer legs, but the short length is easily excused by the low $7 price. Overall, this is an outstanding game well worth checking out for casual gamers and Stealth die-hards alike.

Grade: B+

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

Pizza Possum

Genre: Stealth

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local Split-Screen)

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Review:

Pizza Possum is not the sort of game you would expect to receive much improvement on Nintendo Switch 2, and you would be right. Its visuals are still very low-resolution, and the framerate is fine but no better on Nintendo Switch 2.

I did see one improvement, however – the loading time to get to the title screen shortened from 16 seconds to 12. Pretty minor in the grand scheme of things? Sure. But not every game can get a Pokemon Scarlet and Violet-sized improvement on Nintendo Switch 2.

In the end, Pizza Possum is still an adorable Stealth game that I absolutely recommend, and while it’s not much-improved on Nintendo Switch 2, it’s still well worth playing, regardless of what platform you play it on.

tl;dr – Pizza Possum is a family-friendly Stealth game where players take the role of a hungry possum trying to gobble up all food in sight without being nabbed by the cops. The core mechanics here are simple but work well, with some inspired mechanics that put a new spin on the Stealth genre, and an absolutely adorable presentation. I do wish this game built on the core gameplay to give it longer legs, but the short length is easily excused by the low $7 price. Overall, this is an outstanding game well worth checking out for casual gamers and Stealth die-hards alike.

Grade: B+

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