Pizza Tower appears and feels like virtually nothing else in gaming proper now, its wacky ’90s Cartoon Cartoon-style animation accompanied by a bafflingly catchy soundtrack—suppose basic 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 out there 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.
I used to be all the time assured that my music was good, however seeing all these actual individuals affirm that may be very nice.”
ClascyJitto
Pizza Tower is already a recreation of the 12 months contender in a packed 2023, with among the crispiest, most impressed 2D platforming of the previous 10 years forming the dough beneath that beautiful artwork and bangin’ soundtrack’s sauce, cheese, anchovies, pineapples, and so forth. The indie devs labored on it for 5 years bolstered by an energetic Discord, and that neighborhood is the place de Castel and ClascyJitto first got here to the mission as followers. “I joined the Discord manner early in improvement and I began making remixes of among the early variations of the songs that had been out,” ClascyJitto instructed 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 appreciated the remixes and McPig instructed the thought of bringing me on as one other composer for the sport.”
The tracklist is fairly evenly break up between each composers, with the coolness major menu theme Pizza Deluxe supplied by visitor composer Submit Elvis, and regardless of their totally different backgrounds and broad geographic gulf (ClascyJitto relies 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, virtually 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 by means of that actually 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 after 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 give attention to 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 kind of like a enjoyable little recreation for me,” ClascyJitto stated. “[It] undoubtedly makes me do issues I would not usually do.
“Like in Oregano Mirage & Celcius Troubles, the melodies are very energetic in a manner. They transfer a complete bunch. I look again and marvel how I had the persistence to place in every observe one after the other. These days I might get very drained doing that!”
It is such an important soundtrack I may barely imagine ClascyJitto remains 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 instructed me the “solely factor [they’re] actually balancing is faculty”—specifically 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 maintain their work and persona on-line separate from their private life, ClascyJitto acknowledges “it might be actually humorous to tug the ‘have you learnt who I’m?’ card.”
Except for leaving the choice of hitting a music instructor with a “I co-created a greatest promoting soundtrack” on the desk, ClascyJitto instructed me contributing to Pizza Tower hadn’t rocked the boat on their life an excessive amount of: “It is undoubtedly grounded me in how a lot nothing modified in any respect.”
“I used to be all the time assured that my music was good,” they went on, “however seeing all these actual individuals affirm that may be very nice.” ClascyJitto remains to be cranking away with new work on SoundCloud and Bandcamp beneath the deal with RiZi, not too long ago releasing the album Hello-Pace Explosion Machine, whereas additionally tinkering on a pair video games, too: Earth Mechanica and Kipidon.
