Heat Meter

The Heat Meter is a mechanic used in Pizza Tower.

Behavior

The Heat Meter is 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.

This acts like a risk-reward mechanic. The more the bar is filled, the more points enemies will give when defeated, but the player loses more points when they get hurt too.

Additionally, enemies are affected by the heat meter depending on how full it is. As the bar fills, enemies become faster and can take more damage. If the Heat Meter is filled up enough, they will also exhibit new behavior depending on the enemy, such as hopping out of the way when you try to run into them at Mach 3, being able to block a dash grab, and even fighting back in some cases. However, no enemies that give transformations have any special Heat meter exclusive attacks.

One example of an enemy fighting back is with the Cheeseslime. Instead of roaming back and forth minding its own business, a Cheeseslime under high Heat Meter Levels will swing at the player with a baseball bat when they are within range.

Effects on enemies

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.
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 is 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 slice-shaped 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 is 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.
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 currently isn't known.
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 blowing smoke.
Pizza Soldier	Takes out a pizza cutter-shaped shank and holds it up threateningly before swiping it downwards, damaging the player if they touch it.

Trivia

• The mechanic is 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 has since returned.
• 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.