As you might guess, the game Pizza Paletti is about the baking and delivery of Pizzas, and in the gamebox the players find a total of 13 street tiles, playing pieces in the forms of lorries and motor-scooters, cards with Pizza-orders, different ingredient cards and smaller tokens showing house numbers. The game is set up by placing the street tiles onto the table, either following a fixed square setup with the 12 smaller tiles being arranged round the larger tile showing the pizzeria or following a more irregular setup creating some longer and some shorter distances between the different tiles. Apart from the pizzeria the street tiles show stores where the players can buy pizza ingredients and residential houses where finished pizzas must be deliviered. To find out which pizzas are currently on order, a deck of pizza cards is shuffled and three cards are revealed. Each of these cards shows a pizza which the players may try to prepare and deliver, and each card is assigned a random face-down house number which will be revealed when a player has finished the pizza.

Pizza Paletti basically follows a collection-and-deliver mechanism, with the players racing to and fro between the pizzeria and the shops to purchase the required ingredients. Pizza dough only can be purchased at the pizzeria, whereas all other ingredients like tuna, mushrooms etc only can be purchased at the various stores. To prevent stockpiling, players are subjected to a purchase limitation so that they only are allowed to purchase a maximum of three ingredients when visiting the pizzeria or a shop. This rule is essential, since otherwise players would purchase a larger quantity of pizza dough in order to save driving time. This would spoil a major part of the game's intentions and mechanics.

Most interesting are the movement rules, since each player is equipped with two playing pieces - a lorry and a motor-scooter. Thus, during a turn a player rolls a total of three dice, but two of these dice must be attributed to the lorry whereas only one dice can be assigned to the scooter. This dice distribution requires the players to make some basic strategic decisions, since they need to keep an eye on their competitors in order to make the best of the movement possibilities. All figures have to stop their movement upon entering a building, so that a transaction (purchase of ingredients or delivery of a pizza) effectively ends a turn.

As indicated, a house number assigned to a pizza order is revealed when the first player finishes the pizza by purchasing all ingredients. Now all players can see where the pizza must be delivered, but the possibility remains that another player succeeds in preparing the pizza so that the player who has revealed the house number actually can be beaten by a player who manages to arrive faster. The first player who delivers a pizza discards all required ingredients, but he receives both the order card and an amount of money as printed on the card.

Two additional elements are used to spice the game up, but whereas one of these options is a more-or-less simplistic barrier which can be placed upon rolling "13" or more, the game gets more sophisticated by a third playing piece which can be assigned to each player - the delivery man. The delivery man does not increased the number of dice rolled, but instead he may be moved either together with the lorry, or he may be assigned some movement points of the lorry's movement allowance. This parallel movement of lorry and delivery man increases a player's movement efficiency at it's target area, but at the same time the players remain highly dependent on the result of their dice-rolls.

Indeed, the game is dominated by the ever-present rolling of dice for movement, and here it seems somewhat counterproductive that the barrier - clearly meant as a balancing mechanism - just can be moved on a higher result. I would have expected the mechanism to work the other way round. However, this sideline observation can be instantly changed if the players desire to do so, and then the players can enjoy a solid, stone-oven baked pizza-game. Testing the game in different playing rounds, the game found - what a surprise - most fans in families with younger children where everybody shares a liking for pizza. Here dice rolling and moving playing pieces still is popular, and the nicely implemented theme strongly augmented the replay value for such a target group.