Fast Food

Ya hungry?

Pizza Possum follows our unnamed possum protagonist with sizable stamina and an even bigger appetite.  Our marsupial friend has decided what’s on the menu today is the village’s dog-leader’s king-sized pizza and anything else that looks good along the way.  But the dogs aren’t just going to let anyone come in and eat what’s rightfully theirs, so you’ll have to sneak and steal as much as your stomach can hold until you can retrieve the final prize.  And bring your raccoon buddy with you as well, I’m sure he’s just as hungry.

Controls are very easy to pick up and also pretty easy to master, as movement is combined with Possum automatically eating everything that it touches.  This allows for quick eating and quicker decisions on where to go and how to avoid the dog guards.  Various shrubberies can be accessed to hide and plan your next move, but general line of sight breaks are best used when eating on the go.  If you’re playing co-op and you or your partner in crime get picked up by the guards, running into the guard will knock your friend loose and allow a quick escape.

The village is split up into multiple parts, most locked away with keys being acquired once enough points are rewarded through stuffing your face.  Not every path must be unlocked to get to the top so there’s a small bit of replayable exploration to see what else is around town.  Various collectibles are available and big plates of food worth massive amounts of points are scattered around the area as well, so taking the time to risk it for the Italian biscuit is very beneficial for your stomach and point counter.  Sadly, there is only one map available so once you’ve branched to every path, there aren’t any other different villages to pilfer.

You’ll face a variety of different animals on your way to the king’s prominent pizza: earlier guards are slower to react and easier to dodge while guards closer to the king easily outpace you and will need some consistent jukes to avoid capture.  With Pizza Possum being a roguelite game, your point counter gets added to a total counter after every run and items are unlocked at set increments.  Items can really turn the tide of pursuit, ranging from fresh drinks to grant speed boosts, dropping roadblocks to stop guards in their tracks, to smoke bombs to disorient pursuers.  These are picked up at random in boxes strewn throughout the area and are used with a single button press.  There are more items I didn’t get to, but only because stacking smoke bombs was the tried and true method that took my partner and I to the King’s promised land.

Once you absolutely decimate the King’s pizza, Possum and Raccoon decide they’re still hungry and figure they might as well just get his next delivery too. The game then tasks you with achieving victory multiple times to receive the true ending.  There’s an additional stipulation: if you both get caught after the first win, you’ll have to do it all over again as the game demands 2 perfect runs in a row. We achieved that immediately.  I’m serious, the speed boost drinks and smoke bombs are so absurdly powerful you can cheese your way through the game, despite the 2nd and 3rd playthroughs increasing the quantity and difficulty of guards.

Going through Pizza Possum’s village the 1st time, getting caught multiple times, and then subsequently speedrunning through the additional quests to the top twice more took my partner and I around 90 minutes all told.  Pizza Possum is a very short game, but a $7 asking price for the amount of absurdist scenarios on offer feels right. Nothing is funnier than the high pitched screams of a pursued possum with a ballooned stomach full of stolen food, and that makes it all the more worthwhile to take quick spin around town and see what Cosy Computer have on their plate.

7/10