No Delivery by Oates
- Tori Braley
- Feb 26, 2022
- 3 min read
The game opens up with an old VHS-style video of a manager taking a pizza order over the phone. You get to customize a pizza, including asking for it to be boneless. Regardless of your choices, she tells you they only have regular pepperoni pizzas so that’s what everyone is getting. There is then a fun little bit that happens so she can say there is no delivery, at least not anymore. At this point, the manager addresses the player directly, breaking the fourth wall. You, the player, have been hired. The game then switches to a training video to explain how the game works and you are sent on to the tutorial. The tutorial is straightforward and based on my playthrough, seems to be intended for your first character to die/be fired in order to learn the reroll mechanic.
When your character dies, a new one is present with a random stat block and job title. Each job title is like a character’s class, and each one comes with its own special moves that use either HP or items to perform. All of the game occurs after hours and most of the game subsists in the Wrong Turns, which work as dungeons that often provide you with key items. Wrong Turn is a little misleading as you are required to defeat some of them to progress in the game. Not all Wrong Turns are necessary though, you can reach an ending to the game without most of them, but that only gives you a small glimpse into the game. Later into the game, you gain the ability to call upon allies that you have aided along the way to help you conquer the Wrong Turns.
With the game taking place in a cursed FNAF-esce pizza parlor, the setting is reinforced in the items you find. The main collectibles are tickets, trash, pizza, dirty dishes, folding stools, batteries, brooms, razors, and money. Razors and brooms are important to unblock specific areas of the map. Trash, dirty dishes, and batteries were used for special moves. You could also sell trash and dirty dishes to the trashcans to get money. Money can then be used at vending machines to get more items or at the manager console to permanently upgrade your employee dossiers. You can also find several consumables that heal you or aid in fights.
The enemies and puzzles weren’t too hard to get past. Several fights were avoidable, mimic gift boxes for example you can just walk past as long as you don’t desperately need items. A couple of the fights are also presented as arcade games to beat, which is a nice change of pace. After completing the game I did discover an easy way to complete the game is to invest in stuns, but even without that knowledge I never really felt stuck.
The plot is not told directly to the player, instead, there is a steady drip of hints to an underlying secret. The different endings give a different outlook on what happened to the pizzeria. Small bits of the story show up everywhere, even when rolling a new character there are vague, sinister messages that reinforce the atmosphere. The more you explore, the more you discover and begin to question what is happening. After I reached all five endings I discovered a prequel called One Night at the Steeze, where you play as the child featured in No Delivery and explore the pizzeria and discover the manager doing some sketchy things to keep the business going. I also learned about a very short hidden game called We Deliver, where you play as the manager and interact with the demonic happenings of the pizzeria.
The game is creepy and addicting. I would feel my skin crawl and have a visceral reaction to certain scenes, but it also kept me invested. I was so interested in the game’s lore that I even sought out the prequel and hidden game. I have become a huge Oates fan and am excited to play anything they make.
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