Author’s Note: This game is far from politically correct and drops vulgarity like Mick Jagger drops, period, and I will be responding in kind. For the easily offended and those with sensitive sensitivities, I’ll be using lots of swears – you have been warned.
As the world’s greatest World’s Fastest Pizza player, I feel I’m in a unique position to offer a preview insight into the game leading up to its release. First and foremost, I know the developer, Oscar Brittain, and he is an utter madman. His display at the 2015 Perth Games Festival looked as though he’d woken up in his spot at the town hall after a Centrelink pension day bender and just decided to roll with it. It was beautiful. World’s Fastest Pizza is a similarly stunning trainwreck, proving once again that things like “quality” are in the eye of the beholder.
And this Beholder is about ten pints into not giving a toss.
This isn’t a game so much as it is an infuriating test of your twitch reflexes and how long you can pretend that the politically incorrect and taboo isn’t funny. Directional controls are all you have as you direct tortoisman (yep, spelling that right) through a myriad of iconic, dangerous and terrifying “Austrayan” locales, delivering pizza. Trigger-happy, murderous right-wingers will hunt you down, wild animals will chew at your legs, and Doug. Ffffffffuuuuuuuuuucking Doug, that money-nicking, shit-covered turd gurgler. These are just a few of the challenges you’ll endure on your pizza-delivering trial in pursuit of your true goal: Fixing your spaceship so you can get home. I think that somewhere in this paragraph, either the developer or I had a stroke.
You might have gathered that this is meant to be something of a comedy game, and it definitely is funny, but I wouldn’t go in with too lofty a brow. It’s the kind of story one creates while in the throes of a hallucinogen-induced fever dream while mid-way through a Fat Pizza binge. Tortoisman, the aforementioned protagonist, is some kind of cosmic Indian-turtle migrant/refugee caught in the tumultuous events of a pop-culture nod to Superman. Hiding out on Earth, tortoisman has started working for World’s Fastest Pizza, spending his days enduring the local animals and other wildlife that live to murder him. Sometimes it’s because they’re a creature operating on base instinct, lacking the higher brain functions to understand concepts like human morality.
Sometimes it’s because they’re racist, and love Pauline Hanson.
The game itself is very simple, and your cup doesn’t runneth over with content, but credit where it’s due, the joke never really ends. The entire thing is committed to this wholly strange concept, with every design aspect and gameplay element reinforcing the main point. Which, I guess, is that Space-Indian Turtles getting attacked by racists and animals is funny. I can see it. Gameplay is broken up into two main parts: Picking up pizza, and going on delivery runs. When picking up from World’s Fastest Pizza, the titular store that you work at, there’s a vast back alley and side shop for you to explore. Changing costumes, buying power-ups, or braving the “Dangerous Room,” are among the only things awaiting you in this seedy Wonderland (from the perspective of a hobo.) And while I still have no idea what the point of the Dangerous Room is, both my keyboard and I can assure you that’s a frustratingly apt name.
Delivery runs are hectic challenges of your twitch reflexes and sensitivities as you withstand three deliveries across some of the most hostile ‘Strayan territory. Foul mouthed, politically right-leaning, gun-toting bogans and the vicious wildlife their stench attracts are out in force and just waiting for you to get caught on the poorly drawn environments. There are dangers far more infuriating and disgusting than they, however, and so let us talk for a moment about Doug. Doug is covered head to toe in actual shit and will intermittently appear on random stages. If he sees you, he’ll give chase, and will steal a decent chunk of your money if he catches up with you because how else will someone get money when they’re always covered in poop? For someone who wears human feces like a Sunday best, he moves absurdly fast, so be watchful and wary for his tell-tale “snail trail.” Seriously, stay away from Doug.
Because Doug is literally a dirty asshole thief.
I see this game in the same dingy light as titles like Shower With your Dad Simulator 2015 and Timberman; short, cheap titles that give you a quick giggle. For what it’s worth, this is also one of the few games I’ve covered in a long time that has been entirely bug-free and, sad as it is, I think that’s worth celebrating. It’s also one of the few joke games I’ve played that hasn’t stopped every few seconds to metaphorically turn to the screen and shout “DO YOU GET IT!?” I stand by what I said before, in that this isn’t the most sophisticated of humor, but just because its humor is base doesn’t mean it isn’t funny. Appropriately priced, the game is worth picking up if you’re the kind of person that likes poking fun at our collective social heritage here in Australia. And if you’re not, well then you sound like the kind of uptight cunt who wouldn’t like a decent joke game anyway, so whatever, dickhead.
The full release version of World’s Fastest Pizza will be available on Steam and itch.io from March 15th, 2016. A free version of the game can be played on GameJolt over here, right now!: http://gamejolt.com/games/world-s-fastest-pizza-2ish/91940
Disclaimer: The preview code for this game was provided by the developer, and this impression was drawn from four hours of gameplay.
