Heat Meter

Heat Meter is an unused mechanic in Pizza Tower.

Behavior

The Heat Meter was a glass bar on the player's HUD, which fills up with red color over time when enemies are defeated, but gradually empties itself if none are being defeated.

The more the bar was filled, the more points Pizza Toppings will give, but the player would lose more points upon taking damage. Additionally, as the bar filled, enemies would become faster.

Enemy Behaviour

In the April 2021 Patreon build, if the Heat Meter was filled up enough, enemies exhibited new behavior depending on the enemy, usually in the form of a new attack. However, no enemies that give transformations had any special Heat Meter exclusive attacks, only getting faster. The bar was also separated between 4 stages, when the bar fills up, the next stage starts. The player needs to collect points and defeat enemies to fill up the bar. Otherwise, after some time the bar will quickly drain.

In PT_Eggplantv15, new attack behaviors were removed. Instead, some of the enemies are marked as elite, and can use their Heat Meter attacks. The bar became a singular one, with different stages being reused for different animations, and the drain became much slower. When the Heat Meter became high, the player would get extra points.


Enemy Name	Behavior Changes	Animations
Cheeseslime	Can swing a baseball bat at the player if in range.
Forknight	Can perform a rush towards the player using a jetpack when close to them. The enemy will immediately turn around if needed.
Swedish Monkey	Throws bananas with menacing faces on them, which will hurt the player upon contact instead of making them slip.
Mini John	Can perform a jump-kick when near the player. The jump-kick also works when Mini John was already in the air from falling off a platform.
Pencer	Stands in place, until he spots the player. He will ready himself and charge much faster, after which he will run around at normal speed.
Flying Anchovy	Inhales and inflates itself like a pufferfish and performs a body slam downwards.
Tribe Cheese	Throws a pizza axe that travels in an arc.
Bandito Chicken	Drops big explosive bones that split into two smaller bones when they explode.
U.F.Olive	The olive may pop out of the U.F.O. after it was destroyed and walk around on the ground. When walking around, it holds a ray gun which it will fire at the player with.
Pineacool	Instead of taunting, he gets on his side to perform a breakdance attack that weakly rebounds off of walls.
Spit Cheese	Spits a bigger cheese spike that splits into 2 smaller spikes when landing.
Noise Goblin	Fired arrows will home in on the player.
Pickle	Occasionally duplicates itself.
Shrimp Thug	Throws knives at the player instead of punching them.
Cardboard Tank	Charges at the player, flattening them if caught.
Noisey	Scrunches up and holds its breath, the rest of the attack isn't definitively known, but it is highly likely to be an also unused attack in which it bounces into the air.
Ninja Slice	Throws out a series of punches that shoot out energy projectiles at the player instead of kicking.
Pizza Slug	Takes out a gun and shoots at the player instead of coughing up smoke.
Snowman	Slides much faster.
Pizza Soldier	Takes out a pizza cutter and holds it up threateningly before swiping it downwards, damaging the player if they touch it.

Trivia

The mechanic was similar to a mechanic from God Hand. It was originally showcased in a video that was posted on the Pizza Tower Discord Server.
- However, Pizza Tower Guy was ashamed of it back then and made a new video where the heat meter idea was edited out. However, it had then returned in April 2021 just to get removed again in October 2022.
Previously, when enemies were able to use their Heat Meter attacks they would have been given an alternate palette to signify that they had changed.
- Some of the alternate appearances that enemies were going to use when the Heat Meter was at a high level were first used in the Noise's Hardoween demo. In Noise's Hardoween, these only served as recolors and did not affect the gameplay.
Shrimp Thug was originally planned to have a blue knife-throwing variant as a separate enemy, but it was scrapped after the Heat Meter used this attack for the regular Shrimp Thug.
- This was brought back in the final game as Elite Shrimp Thug.
Besides Shrimp Thug's, some other attacks were reused for the final game:
- Bandito Chicken now only drops explosive bones instead of regular ones. The explosive bones do not leave regular bones.
- Tribe Cheese's axe became its only attack.
- U.F.Olive's grounded variant became its own separate enemy.
- Pizza Slug's gun was used for Elite Pizza Slug.
The Heat Meter can still be accessed with the debug console; however, it's not available in the game's current version.