75) The Pizza Delivery Boy Who Saved the World (2018)

Developed by Oh, a Rock! Studios, The Pizza Delivery Boy Who Saved the World bills itself as a semi-autobiographical visual novel about pizza and time travel. We play as Doug Rivers, a man seemingly stuck delivering pizza for a local pizzeria while dealing with lazy coworkers, idiotic customers, and a boss that is equal parts corrupt and incompetent. This all changes when, after yet another exciting day of slinging pies, he's approached by a man who claims to be him from the future. What follows is an absurd tale of how a listless delivery boy ends up uncovering a secret that's set to rock the world to its very core.

The game itself is fairly straightforward and mostly inoffensive. It's a visual novel in which you go about your day to day life with a handful of choices you can make sprinkled in. These choices mostly boil down to how you interact with the people around you and how you go about performing your job. That said, there were a few times where my choices straight up didn't seem to matter, as I would choose an option only to have Doug voice his opinion and do something else instead. These moments seemed rare, though they do prove a bit frustrating as what little agency the genre allows you is stripped away. Still, their inclusion rarely left a lingering sting as the ways in which Doug justifies his disobedience were often humorous enough to make up for the slight.

A visual novel lives and dies by its writing, and the writing on display is charming and humorous enough. While there were only a handful of jokes that really landed with me, the writing is self-aware enough that even the bad jokes elicited a chuckle. My only real grievance would be that the characters seem to be very specific caricatures of some of the worst coworkers imaginable. Whether it be the painfully greedy shop owner, the completely irrational customers, or the lazy coworkers, every character comes off as being a specific grudge that the writer had with people they'd interacted with in the past. That said, as someone who comes from a food service background myself, these portrayals are unfortunately accurate.

While not long and certainly lacking in replay value, The Pizza Delivery Boy Who Saved the World accomplishes what it sets out to do. The writing is generally funny, though there are a few jokes that seem like they'd be funnier if you knew the people involved. It presents an amusing look into the life of a guy who just wants to deliver pizzas and go home, but continuously finds himself in increasingly bizarre and frustrating situations. If nothing else, I can appreciate that everyone involved seemed as though they probably had a blast making the game, and sometimes that's enough. I can certainly think of worse ways to spend an afternoon, even if the game, much like our protagonist, rarely aspires to anything greater.