.

This is a preview coupled with a supplemental video preview. You can watch the video preview or read the full preview below:

At PAX East 2025, we met up with Joftsoft to see their latest updates to Pizza Bandit. For this meeting, we brought together the crew that helped take on the initial demo and set out to take on any new missions; to undergo this mission, I teamed up with Mattchoz, Samusprimed, and ZombieBloodTV.

For the play session, we were given the option of what mission we would want to undertake; we would ultimately choose to try one of the new levels, Los Pollos Locos (Yes, a Breaking Bad reference). 

Before we set out on the mission, we decided to explore around the home base, the main character’s struggling Pizza shop. We could see that the developers had taken the time to upgrade the different visual aspects of the base.

Alongside the different base upgrades, we quickly found out that the game now features weapon modifications and cosmetic upgrades within the Barber Shop. In the Barber shop, we could change the character’s hat, hair, wardrobe, face paint/facial hair, glasses, masks, backpack, and cosmetic arm.

For our character, we choose to wear the bunny backpack, a burger hat, a chef’s coat, an oni mask, and skull face paint. For my run, I chose to use the Outlaw Fire (Assault Rifle), Rapid Raptor (Sub-machine gun), the Neon Katana, Sentry Gun, and Mirror Ball Grenade.

The Los Polos Locos’ mission objective statement said, “ Our job is to help a jungle operation produce their special product, conceal it in chicken pieces, and load trucks for distribution. Authorities patrol the area, and gangs are watching it, so work fast and stay discreet. The compound is isolated but not safe. Complete this job quickly, and the payment will make the risk worthwhile.”

This mission was a bit more complicated than prior missions since it wasn’t clearly indicating what item each team member was carrying and where we needed to mix the ingredients. Both the chemist and the driver would also suddenly get down without a clear indication of why they were going down.  

After failing to make the recipe three times, we were able to have four successful cooks in a row. Having to deal with both the chemist and the driver going down randomly without a clear indication did get a bit annoying, but the goofy concept of the level made it still a fun experience. If we had more time, we would have loved to check out the new boss level. 

The combat within the game is fairly standard, with most enemies being easy to kill when playing on normal difficulty. The game does have a variety of difficulties to play on; for this demo, we decided to take on the mission on easy just so we could see what it had in store for us. In our previous attempts at playing Pizza Bandit, we had completed the twin terrors boss fight on the hardest difficulty. 

Over the last 9 months, Joftsoft has continued to improve not only the visual aspects of Pizza Bandit but also the gameplay aspects as well. The rolling within the latest demo felt less clunky and as smooth as butter. Shooting within the game seemed like it was fine-tuned to be more precise. The addition of weapon modifications made it so that even if each member of the team used the same items, the modifiers could make them unique and different. 

If you are looking for a fun cooperative shooter to play with your friends, then it would be worth checking out Pizza Bandit. Right now, the game is currently in early access on Steam, so make sure to check it out.