Pizza Tower seems and appears like virtually nothing else in gaming proper now, its wacky ’90s Cartoon Cartoon-style animation accompanied by a bafflingly catchy soundtrack—assume traditional blue sky, turn-of-the-millennium Sega vibes pushed to even larger heights. Of its two main composers, Ronan “Mr. Sauceman” de Castel got here to music late, with Pizza Tower not solely being his first skilled work, however first publicly obtainable music, interval. Catching up with the opposite major composer, ClascyJitto (additionally credited as Frostix), I discovered that whereas they have been publishing their very own work for lots longer, they’re additionally nonetheless in highschool.
Pizza Tower is already a recreation of the 12 months contender in a packed 2023, with a number of the crispiest, most impressed 2D platforming of the previous 10 years forming the dough beneath that attractive artwork and bangin’ soundtrack’s sauce, cheese, anchovies, pineapples, and many others. The indie devs labored on it for 5 years bolstered by an energetic Discord, and that group is the place de Castel and ClascyJitto first got here to the venture as followers. “I joined the Discord method early in improvement and I began making remixes of a number of the early variations of the songs that had been out,” ClascyJitto advised me. De Castel had already been introduced on as composer by lead developer McPig, and each had been impressed by ClascyJitto’s takes on the early soundtrack. “Ronan preferred the remixes and McPig steered the concept of bringing me on as one other composer for the sport.”
The tracklist is fairly evenly break up between each composers, with the chilliness major menu theme Pizza Deluxe offered by visitor composer Submit Elvis, and regardless of their completely different backgrounds and vast geographic gulf (ClascyJitto is predicated on the east coast of the US, de Castel in France), they managed to create an enormous, but very cohesive soundtrack united by that propulsive, funky, nearly infectiously optimistic early aughts vibe. Severely, it is nothing however pre-Monetary Disaster magic, a timeline the place Sega managed to maintain making {hardware}.
Pizza Tunes
The ice world (properly, freezer world) monitor Celsius Troubles is my favourite of ClascyJitto’s contributions, with this notably dancy break within the tune partway via that basically will get me each time. The composer themself, in the meantime, singles out Wednesdays, What’s on the Child’s Menu, Wudpecker (additionally praised by de Castel once we spoke), and to my delight, tutorial theme funiculi vacation. It is a lowkey tackle nineteenth century Neapolitan anthem (and supply of the pizza supply tune within the Spider-Man 2 recreation) Funiculì, Funiculà.
Whereas a lot of ClascyJitto’s different music outdoors Pizza Tower has a concentrate on sampling and remixing (together with the monitor Lonely Poisoner, which they cited as a favourite), Pizza Tower’s OST required extra conventional composition, one thing they characterised as getting them outdoors their consolation zone. “Making music for Pizza Tower is form of like a enjoyable little recreation for me,” ClascyJitto mentioned. “[It] positively makes me do issues I would not usually do.
“Like in Oregano Mirage & Celcius Troubles, the melodies are very energetic in a method. They transfer a complete bunch. I look again and surprise how I had the endurance to place in every word one after the other. These days I might get very drained doing that!”
It is such a fantastic soundtrack I might barely consider ClascyJitto continues to be of their teenagers. It wasn’t till we homed in on how Pizza Tower’s success had affected their life that I requested in the event that they needed to steadiness engaged on it with a day job, and so they advised me the “solely factor [they’re] actually balancing is faculty”—particularly highschool.
On the time of our dialog they had been chafing on the strict formalism of a music idea class—a bit ironic, given the circumstances. Although they attempt to preserve their work and persona on-line separate from their private life, ClascyJitto acknowledges “it might be actually humorous to tug the ‘are you aware who I’m?’ card.”
Other than leaving the choice of hitting a music trainer with a “I co-created a finest promoting soundtrack” on the desk, ClascyJitto advised me contributing to Pizza Tower hadn’t rocked the boat on their life an excessive amount of: “It is positively grounded me in how a lot nothing modified in any respect.”
“I used to be at all times assured that my music was good,” they went on, “however seeing all these actual individuals verify that could be very nice.” ClascyJitto continues to be cranking away with new work on SoundCloud and Bandcamp underneath the deal with RiZi, not too long ago releasing the album Hello-Velocity Explosion Machine, whereas additionally tinkering on a pair video games, too: Earth Mechanica and Kipidon.