Papa Louie: When Pizzas Attack

Everyone knows Papa Louie as the man who hands you an apron and disappears. Long before that, though, he was a platforming hero with a baseball bat and a hat that doubles as a parachute. Flipline Studios released Papa Louie: When Pizzas Attack! in 2006, and it is the game that introduced the character who would go on to front one of the longest-running series in browser gaming — a side-scroller about a pizzeria owner going into the pizza boxes themselves to get his customers back.

The Platformer That Started a Restaurant Empire

The premise commits fully to its own silliness. Papa's customers and employees have been dragged into surreal worlds inside pizza boxes, guarded by hostile food, and Papa goes in after them. Each level ends with captives to free, and the level design is built around getting to them rather than around reaching a flagpole.

What is striking playing it now is how little of the later series is present. There is no ordering, no ticket queue, no tipping, no shop. It is a straightforward platformer with a distinctive art style — the same thick outlines and expressive faces Flipline would carry into every game afterwards — and the restaurant management formula the studio became known for did not arrive until Papa's Pizzeria the following year. This is the origin point, and it is worth seeing on those terms.

Fighting Through the Pizza Worlds

Papa has two attacks. Z swings at anything next to him, and X throws peppers at things that are not. That split matters more than it sounds, because the enemy roster is designed around it: some food monsters have to be closed down and hit, and others punish you for getting close, so choosing which tool to use is a per-enemy decision rather than a preference.

The movement has one trick, and it is the best thing in the game. Pressing space jumps, and pressing it again while airborne opens Papa's hat as a glide. That turns platforming from a series of committed leaps into something you can adjust mid-flight, and the level design leans on it — gaps that look unjumpable are usually jump-plus-glide, and the trickiest pizza collectibles almost always sit somewhere that requires drifting sideways on the way down.

Some enemies want a specific answer rather than a generic one. Cheese monsters, for instance, cannot simply be hit; they lob balls of cheese at you, and the way to beat them is to knock those balls back where they came from. Figuring out which enemies have a mechanic like that is a large part of the game's difficulty curve.

Controls

Surviving Longer Levels

• Glide more than you jump. Almost every gap becomes trivial with a second tap of space, and gliding lets you look at where you are landing before you commit to it.
• Throw peppers at anything airborne. Trying to melee a flying enemy usually means jumping into it. Ranged attacks solve that problem entirely.
• Pick up pizzas as you go, not as a second pass. Levels do not open up for backtracking as generously as you might expect, and missed collectibles are frequently gone for good.
• Deal with the escorts before the captives. Rushing straight to trapped customers with enemies still active is the most common way to lose progress at the end of a level.
• Learn the pattern, then move fast. Enemies here follow fixed behaviour rather than reacting to you, so a level you have died on once is usually clean on the second attempt.

When Pizzas Attack! has an odd place in Flipline's catalogue: it is the most-referenced of their games and the least-played, because most people arrive at Papa Louie through the cooking games and never go back to the platformer he came from. It is short, it is scrappier than what followed, and it explains where the whole cast came from.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this the first Papa Louie game? Yes. Flipline Studios released it in 2006, before the restaurant management games the character is better known for.

How does the glide work? Jump with space, then press space again while you are in the air. Papa's hat opens and slows his descent, letting you cover far more horizontal distance.

How do I beat the cheese monsters? Do not attack them directly. Knock the balls of cheese they throw back at them instead.

What is the goal of each level? Reach and free the employees and customers being held captive, ideally collecting the pizzas scattered along the route on the way.

Is it a cooking game like Papa's Pizzeria? No. This one is a side-scrolling action platformer. The kitchen games came later and share only the characters and the art style.