Pizza Possum

A light snack. 

One look at the trailer for Pizza Possum and you can certainly grasp what sort of experience you will have. As the titular possum you will run, eat, and stealth your way to the top of this quaint seaside village as you attempt to secure a larger-than-life pizza from Bella Chonki, the resident dog leader of this villa. While Pizza Possum never amounts to much more than this, it is a charming experience that can certainly provide a few brief hours of entertainment.

If you were expecting a narrative alongside this possum’s journey, you sadly won’t find one here. That is unless you agree that Bella Chonki hoping that no one steals their pizza to be anything worthy of anything more than a simple napkin pitch. While the hungry Possum mentions that a stolen pizza is the best pizza, that is about all you are getting here. It’s also worth noting that Pizza Possum can be played in co-op, allowing the two of you to embark on this pizza quest together.

Pizza Possum is essentially a run-based game in that your main focus is progressing from the bottom of the village and consuming various pizzas, bread, fish, and desserts, to somehow form a key out of those meals and use said keys to unlock paths on your way to the top. Each run is only within this single location, but the paths you take will provide a small but needed sense of variety. You’ll access checkpoints on the way, but those do fail in aiding your journey after your first run, but more on that later. 

Eat bite you consume on your journey fills a meter. Once the meter is filled, you’ll earn the key to unlock the paths ahead. As you move up the tower, you’ll have options on which path to take. There are a few choices to make, but many of those paths lead to specific junctions that then branch out until the last leg of the journey. Eventually, you’ll get to a point where stealth just isn’t in the cards and you’ll come to rely on items you have to get the delicious task done. 

Items vary from potions to speed you up, roadblocks to stop your followers, and smoke bombs that will become your new best friend. I do have to say that I wish you could equip two items to use instead of just the one. It’s not because I want more options as I attempt to run from my pursuers, but simply because moving through another item or collecting one due to the path not being wide enough, will replace your current item. The amount of times I had to move back into my previous item to collect it was constant. When you have smoke bombs and then are forced to take roadblocks, or that you running around to avoid capture has you collecting something else instead, was likely my biggest annoyance. Had you been able to carry two items, then you could at least have your needed item there as a backup. 

As you move around the island, you’ll have to rely on bushes or obstacles to stay hidden. Move too close to the various dogs around the village and a Metal Gear Solid exclamation mark will trigger and you’ll be chased. While most enemies are slow, some can pounce you and capture you. Your points are then totaled up and then contribute to unlocking new items, such as those smoke bombs or masks that make you remain hidden. 

While small nibbles of food are everywhere, from bread to pizzas to deserts as far as the eye can see, you’ll also encounter massive cakes and other dishes that fill your meter incredibly fast, they just take a while to chow down on them. I do recommend unlocking a path and then consuming a lot of easy-to-find food before progressing to unlock the next door quicker, simply because the amount of enemies nearby increases dramatically. In fact, the final area where you are meant to slowly eat a pizza is filled with a group of enemies, despite what the trailer indicates. Constantly tossing out my smoke bombs until it was consumed was the only means to get that pizza fully eaten. 

After you eat the pizza, Bella Chonki will give you their crown. The game is essentially over when you collect three crowns, but this is where Pizza Possum went from a fun little experience to something I really had no desire to keep playing. When you start a game, your starting point has a podium for three crowns; you can see where this is going. However, once you collect a crown, you can only maintain it should you not get caught for the ENTIRE next run. This means you have to do two flawless runs in one go as checkpoints will not keep the crown on your head. While this crown can scare away the dogs that will chase you down, it has a cooldown that forces you to rely on the items you have currently unlocked. Mess up even a single time and that first crown is gone. With a second crown in my hand and two areas before the final crown was in my hand. I got stuck on the side of a railing and was captured. It was at this point that I was done. 

I think Pizza Possum is a fun idea, but its replayability feels drastically hollow and far too challenging for who I think its target audience truly is. I did have a fun time during my first run, but its desire to force two flawless runs back to back on me was a bizarre and daming choice, one that feels like needless padding behind what is essentially a game built around the same hour experience over and over again. Pizza Possum feels like a game built off a game jam, a small bite-size experience that was polished up enough to release. It’s certainly charming and has a good foundation, but its length could have been structured out of new locations or other gameplay ideas instead of a rinse-and-repeat concept that doesn’t quite satisfy, no matter the ingredients or toppings built upon its titular pizza.

Developer - Cosy Computer. Publisher - Raw Fury. Released - September 28th, 2023. Available On - Xbox Series X/S, PS5, Nintendo Switch, PC. Rated - (E) - Comic Mischief. Platform Reviewed - Steam Deck. Review Access - A review code was provided by the PR/publisher for the purpose of this review.