Adriatic Pizza

TLDR: if you care for mechanics, exploration, mini-games and coziness over story and narrative I'd recommend you give this one a shot. Don't wait for a discount since the price is 100% fair for what this game is.
A hard recommendation here but still one that I'm willing to make. You can see by my play time that I quickly realized what this game was and where it was going and decided it was not for me. However, I believe in encouraging artists and this recommendation comes in that spirit.
Going with the good things first, it's a *very* interesting concept and the aesthetics are beautiful. I love exploration in games but most games make it so hand-holdy that it detracts from the "exploration" feeling, Adriatic Pizza fully commits to it in a very interesting way which I would say is one of it strong suits. The map, traversal and exploration are beautiful and would love to see more done with them. It also has a lot of "mini-games" which mix up gameplay and their execution is good: quick, short and simple mini-games that engage you without overstaying their welcome.
That being said, there were three key areas where the game lost me: readability, story and writing.
To get the most mechanical and shallow out of the way first, like I said, the art direction here is great - that's not up for debate - however, the high-contrast look mixed with the pixelated-filter make readability an issue at times. It made my eyes feel tired very quickly which was made worse by the fact that white is often used as a primary color and a highlight color. This made reading some key aspects of the game hard (items you're highlighting, things you're interacting with, white things in front of other white things...).
Then there's the story which I'll combine with the writing. This feels like a game that was supposed to have a sort of Stardew Valley-ish or Papers, Please-ish kind of narrative. A story that is simple, personal and delivered in a ludo-narrative kind of way. However, from the first impressions it feels like it chooses to go for a sort of traditional ham-fisted exposition-first narrative that detracts from the minimalistic journey you'd expect. Which brings me to the writing.
Leaving aside typos/grammatical errors - which are understandable and to be expected from a non-english solo dev - it feels like the lack of familiarity with the language might have detracted from the script. Character dialogue lacks a humanity and personality making every NPC feel the same, which makes it hard to connect with any of them. In a game in which it seems like "people" would be a driving force, this is an issue.
In conclusion, Adriatic Pizza is an interesting game that's worth a shot and might be best suited to people that look for mechanical experimentation over narrative. It's a fun time and fairly priced so go give it a try if that sound good to you.

Steam User 1

Reviewed last year

TLDR: if you care for mechanics, exploration, mini-games and coziness over story and narrative I'd recommend you give this one a shot. Don't wait for a discount since the price is 100% fair for what this game is.
A hard recommendation here but still one that I'm willing to make. You can see by my play time that I quickly realized what this game was and where it was going and decided it was not for me. However, I believe in encouraging artists and this recommendation comes in that spirit.
Going with the good things first, it's a *very* interesting concept and the aesthetics are beautiful. I love exploration in games but most games make it so hand-holdy that it detracts from the "exploration" feeling, Adriatic Pizza fully commits to it in a very interesting way which I would say is one of it strong suits. The map, traversal and exploration are beautiful and would love to see more done with them. It also has a lot of "mini-games" which mix up gameplay and their execution is good: quick, short and simple mini-games that engage you without overstaying their welcome.
That being said, there were three key areas where the game lost me: readability, story and writing.
To get the most mechanical and shallow out of the way first, like I said, the art direction here is great - that's not up for debate - however, the high-contrast look mixed with the pixelated-filter make readability an issue at times. It made my eyes feel tired very quickly which was made worse by the fact that white is often used as a primary color and a highlight color. This made reading some key aspects of the game hard (items you're highlighting, things you're interacting with, white things in front of other white things...).
Then there's the story which I'll combine with the writing. This feels like a game that was supposed to have a sort of Stardew Valley-ish or Papers, Please-ish kind of narrative. A story that is simple, personal and delivered in a ludo-narrative kind of way. However, from the first impressions it feels like it chooses to go for a sort of traditional ham-fisted exposition-first narrative that detracts from the minimalistic journey you'd expect. Which brings me to the writing.
Leaving aside typos/grammatical errors - which are understandable and to be expected from a non-english solo dev - it feels like the lack of familiarity with the language might have detracted from the script. Character dialogue lacks a humanity and personality making every NPC feel the same, which makes it hard to connect with any of them. In a game in which it seems like "people" would be a driving force, this is an issue.
In conclusion, Adriatic Pizza is an interesting game that's worth a shot and might be best suited to people that look for mechanical experimentation over narrative. It's a fun time and fairly priced so go give it a try if that sound good to you.

Adriatic Pizza

Game Discussion

Anonymous

Steam User 1