In a grim, dystopian future, a lone delivery girl-slash-ninja who works for her dad’s pizza parlor must overcome her biggest enemy: a clique of rival, megacorp-allied delivery girl-slash-ninja.
Ninja Pizza Girl looks like a traditional platformer on the surface, but instead of death, the heroine faces depression. Your enemies try to humiliate you by mocking you, verbally harassing you, and even recording your botched jumps and posting them on the internet. The more you’re bullied, the more you succumb to depression, and the world around you eventually becomes washed-out and grey:
To avoid that, you must dodge those rival ninja delivery girls as you jump between buildings and make your way towards your destination. The better you perform, ie. the more stunts you manage to pull off, the more vibrant the world will be, and the faster you can run.
The game’s being developed by Australia-based indie team Disparity Games (you can learn more about them here), who promise to deliver the game early next year on PC, Android, iOS, and Wii U — provided their funding campaign succeeds.
At the moment, Ninja Pizza Girl is chipping away at a $35,000 funding goal in a freshly-started Kickstarter campaign, having raised about $3700 in its first day. If you’re interested, the campaign page has more info, and there’s a pre-alpha demo you can try out here.
Ninja Pizza Girl [Kickstarter, via Steam Greenlight]
Comments
10 responses to “An Australian Game About Pizza-Delivering Ninja Girls… And Bullying”
Saw this at PAX last year. It looked different. This is a family effort and there was actually a story behind its inception. I wish them well
Same. Pretty sure from memory it was some light hearted comedy thing originally. Seem to remember the character yelling at someone about underpants.
I’ve seen this around the traps as well, videos from some places… the depression angle makes the colour thing make more sense.
I’m not a fan of platformers/timed/endless runners, but I’m glad it’s getting made.
That is all sorts of awesome, will have to drop some money when I get home tonight.
I actually played this once at a games thing at QUT. It was fun from what I remember not sure on the music though. Seems generic and I don’t remember the stuff about depression but it sounds different and a cool game mechanic.
Looks interesting, and I’ve wanted to play a game as a ninja pizza deliveryperson ever since reading Snow Crash.
Backed.
Saw this at PAX AUS last year and wondered what it was all about. The demo they put out earlier in the week sold me (despite the characters looking like they were pulled out of Control-Alt-Delete), definitely happy to back the heck out of this one!
Pretty sure this was actually the first game I played at PAX last year. I thought it controlled great for an iPad platformer but seemed a bit simple. Looks like there’s a lot more to it now though (I don’t remember seeing/hearing anything about depression back then), I might have to give it another shot.
Just gave the demo a go, and I can definitely see the potential. I’d really like more levels to play. Like, now.
….. and backed! Didn’t even need to play the pre-alpha. The game sounds great, looks stylish, and I like it having something to say about bullying and depression. Plus, OZ developers!
Thanks for the 1up on this. Wouldn’t have heard of the game otherwise.