Order a Pizza is the Only Good Bad Dad Game

You probably haven’t heard of Rocket Adrift’s Order a Pizza. It’s a free visual novel on itch.io, and I only chanced upon it because the developers and I stumbled across each other on Twitter. So it goes. But I’m here to tell you that not only is Order a Pizza the best “Sad Dad™” game out there, it’s the only good one. 

Let’s take a moment to talk about the genre, shall we? It’s no secret that video games have become fairly interested in depicting fatherhood, as many devs have found themselves becoming dads. From Joel, to Booker DeWitt, to Kratos, male devs have been churning out men to explore their relationships to their own fathers and how that may impact their approach to fatherhood. Really, it’s just revealed that toxic masculinity is alive and well. And while most of these games can seemingly acknowledge that fact, that’s about all they seem prepared to do. God of War (2018) and Bioshock: Infinite can tell you that Booker and Kratos are bad, that they’re supposed to be an example of what not to do, but that’s about it. There’s no real conversation around how they could potentially break these patterns, or how their children might be able to, beyond simply killing their fathers and moving on. 

These characters are doomed to be angry, selfish, and abusive forever. There is no hope to learn, to grow, to change. The cycle will either be ended by patricide, or patricide will allow it to continue. That’s dismal as fuck and has left me continuously asking “men, are you okay?” I think the answer to that is pretty obvious. After God of War (2018) got so much acclaim for its story of fatherhood, I pretty much gave up on the notion that games could engage with these issues beyond what we’ve seen repeated over and over again. But then came Order a Pizza. 

The protagonist is a divorced dad who’s introducing his daughter, Abby, to his new girlfriend, Margot. Obviously, this is an awkward and sensitive situation, one that needs to be handled with care, so clearly the only way to make sure the night goes off without a hitch is to order the perfect pizza. Right? That’s how these things work, yeah? Without getting into too many spoilers, because this is a game folks should absolutely experience themselves, Order a Pizza recognizes how absolutely batshit that kind of thinking is, and forces its protagonist to confront that. Much like how Kratos finally being able to put his hand on his son’s shoulder doesn’t actually do anything to aid the healing process, ordering the perfect pizza will not save the protag from being an absent father and a less than stellar boyfriend. 

I hope that going forward, more devs can take a page out of Rocket Adrift’s book and actually create art that manages to challenge some of these toxic notions instead of just passive navel gazing. Until then, I fear video games will continue their trend of Sad Dads Without Substance.