Interview: Blab Labs Talks Dungeon Pizza, Rat Chunks, and 1,000 Business Cards With a Typo
When a studio answers “what pizza topping must survive the apocalypse?” with “rat chunks” and adds that they’ve done the research, you know you’ve found the right people to run a pizzeria at the bottom of a dungeon.
As part of our coverage of Weird Days: Dark Tales by Warm Light on Steam, we caught up with Blab Labs to talk about Dungeon Pizza, a cooking game set in a pizzeria deep inside a fantasy dungeon, where the ingredients are whatever you can scavenge, barter for, or scrape off the walls.
We spoke about a chef who was supposed to be a dwarf until he became a big chonky cat, a wizard trapped inside a service bell, and the 1,000 business cards that asked people to “wistlist” the game.
Meet Blab Labs
Everyone at Blab Labs does a little bit of everything, but roughly speaking:
- Oscar, Game Designer, Producer and Audio Designer
- Sam, Artist (characters, concepts and key art)
- Maggie, Artist (UI and UX, characters)
- Elly, Artist (environments, characters)
- Louis, Producer and Programmer
The team met while working in a shared office through the Screen Queensland Games Residency, a programme in Brisbane, Australia, that gives a small group of developers (17 in their cohort) space and support to make games for a year.
It was awesome!
The residency is over now, but they’re all still based in Queensland and live close enough to hold regular in-person pizza days to plan and catch up. Most of the actual work happens online.
Pizza days. For a pizza game. Naturally.
Quickfire Round
First console/system you ever owned?
Elly started on a Game Boy Advance with exactly two games: Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Jurassic Park III: The DNA Factor. Which, as she admits, is a very random pairing.
Sam thinks it was either a PC or the original chunky DS, with memories of Pokémon LeafGreen, Fable, Shrek 2, Animal Crossing: Wild World and Nintendogs. Oscar got a Nintendo 64 from a family friend and played Star Wars Episode I: Racer and Ocarina of Time religiously. Maggie’s was the Wii or the DS Lite, in her own words her “Pokemon Heart Gold / Just Dance days.”
Favourite boss fight of all time?
Elly went with the giant flying sand serpent from Shadow of the Colossus.
You travel for a while and step into a desert area only to look up and see this enormous creature flying above you. All you have is a horse, a little bow and a sword and I remember as a kid losing my flipping mind over it.
Oscar picked Master Hand and Crazy Hand from Smash, Sam chose the Primal Dialga fight in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon (and now needs to replay those games), and Maggie went with 1000-THR “Earthmover”, the finale of the Violence layer in ULTRAKILL.
Go-to snack during crunch?
Louis, with his producer hat firmly on, had this to say:
We work hard to avoid crunch!! If we’re crunching enough to have a go-to snack, something has gone VERY wrong, hahaha.
That said, he does get through a lot of almonds at his PC. Oscar once had some extra thick salt and vinegar chips that were very crunchy, which we’re counting. Sam is all about steamed dumplings.
Maggie said “my nails.” We’re moving on.
Pizza topping that must survive the apocalypse?
This one was always going to be a highlight.
Easy, it’s gotta be RAT CHUNKS. We’ve done all the research, it just works.
Maggie went for “every bug”, with considerable enthusiasm. Sam suggested silly, funny mushrooms, on the basis that surely those would still be around.
One game you’d love to experience again for the first time?
Breath of the Wild for Oscar, and Louis agrees completely. Sam picked Pokémon Diamond, and Maggie went with Undertale and/or Deltarune.
The weirdest or creepiest game that has stuck with you for years?
Louis named Majora’s Mask, “the GOAT.” Oscar picked The Static Speaks My Name. Maggie remembers the classic Slender game, where you run around in the dark collecting eight pages, which “tormented baby Maggie big time.” And Sam went with Habbo Hotel.
Habbo Hotel… dear lord.
Honestly, fair.
Eyeballs, Tentacles, and Rat Chunks
Here’s the pitch:
In Dungeon Pizza, you’ve opened your very own pizzeria deep in a fantasy dungeon. Ingredients are hard to come by down here though, so you have to make do with what you can scavenge and barter for. Eyeballs, tentacles, rat chunks, it’s all going on the pizza!
So where did it come from? According to Louis, it came from everyone, with one small push from him back in their shared office in 2025.
I looked at the people who would one day form Blab Labs with me, and thought “I bet these weirdos will agree to put freaky stuff on pizza with me.” That’s as far as my input went, and it turns out I was right!!!
He was right.
The team pull inspiration from well beyond games. The three biggest touchstones are Cooking Mama, the anime Dungeon Meshi (Delicious in Dungeon), and Travis Baldree’s cosy fantasy novel Legends & Lattes. Put those three in a blender and Dungeon Pizza makes a lot of sense.
The Dungeon Itself
For a game in a festival of dark tales, Dungeon Pizza’s darkness comes from where it’s set. For Elly, it’s the dungeon.
This extensive, spooky, unexplored space that dives down into the earth and is filled with weird & wonderful creatures. It’s really fun and always creatively charged, we can throw anything down there.
Louis is excited about something a little more mysterious. The team have found a way to turn the dungeon into an actual character, one with a role in the stories of the adventurers who visit the pizzeria.
But I won’t say too much (to preserve the mystery!)
We’ll have to find out for ourselves, then.
Boss Is a Cat
Asked whether one person’s idea changed the direction of the whole game, the team gave a one-line answer.
Maybe Boss being a cat?????
Asked about their biggest “aha!” moment, they gave the same answer, with even more question marks. Louis explains.
The game started in a much more traditional western fantasy setting, with standard character creation. Louis pictured the player character as a dwarf, or maybe a Tolkien-style halfling. Then Sam suggested the player character could be a big chonky cat.
One of the references for his body shape was, quite literally, a ball of pizza dough.
It was perfect!!! And adding catfolk to the setting really helped us zero in on a vibe as well.
A pizza chef shaped like pizza dough. Hard to argue with that.
Sauce, Spice, and Dialogue Trees
The biggest headache was the dialogue and narrative system. Between reaction images, dialogue choices and responses to different pizza toppings, Elly says it was a LOT. The team had plenty of help from one of their project mentors, William Hinz, and now that it’s in the game it’s extremely satisfying.
Absolutely worth the work.
Louis seconds that, saying they’re still learning what the game needs from them in tools and systems.
We are at its beck and call!
When it comes to creative calls, Louis says the team are very much on the same wavelength. Everyone gives each other’s ideas space, they’re each other’s biggest cheerleaders, and they’re comfortable saying when something isn’t quite working.
It’s a really lovely team to be part of, and I count myself lucky every day!
Everyone also has something they’re especially proud of:
- Elly: the customers
- Louis: sauce spreading, which has a lot going on under the hood to make it feel properly sloppy and squishy
- Maggie: the spice-fuelled pyromancer Jalcifer, or the crusty, dungeon crawler-inspired HUD
- Oscar: the unique fantasy setting the team have built together, with its own flavour
- Sam: making Boss, and creating the game’s key art, which was a first for them
Whenever someone mentions it when they’re playing, I get the warm fuzzies.
That’s Louis on the sauce. We respect a developer who’s proud of their sauce physics.
Secret Codes
Plenty of ideas on this one.
Elly wants a dog option for Boss: one simple code and “the biggest, scruffiest boy spawns into our UI. Surely you could pat him??” Maggie would unlock a pepper spray or an airhorn for skipping the orders of customers you’d rather not serve. Sam would open up a hidden room in the pizzeria, or even an out-of-bounds area to explore a bit of the dungeon.
Louis, meanwhile, has heaps of cheat codes. He needs them for testing.
Top secret though, I’ll never tell.
The Great Wistlist Incident
Every studio has a story they’ll never live down.
Blab Labs had some round business cards made in the shape of pizzas. They looked great, and everyone loved them.
After about a month, someone noticed something.
The cards asked people to “wistlist” the game on Steam.
There were 1,000 of them.
We got 1000 “wistlist” business cards printed hahahAHahAhahAHAHAAA
That’s Elly, who, according to Louis, has never been allowed to live it down. It took forever to get through all 1,000, and when they ordered more, the team were almost scared to check whether the typo had been fixed.
It had.
As for actual bugs, Sam remembers one where Jalcifer, their spicy wizard friend, somehow got shrunk and trapped inside the service bell on the counter.
It would not stop ringing…
Dungeon Pizza at Weird Days
For Blab Labs, being selected means a lot.
The Weird Days team have always been so lovely to work with and we feel like the festival really aligns with our strange pizza game.
During the festival, you can jump into the Dungeon Pizza Steam Playtest, which has just had a brand new narrative update. There’s now a good ending and a bad ending, so choose your toppings wisely.
They’ve also been rooting for fellow selections Innkeep and Sludgineers (fellow Aussies), Tanuki Pon’s Summer, which they describe as “cute as heck”, and Monster Chef, a game from fellow monster eaters.
Before you dive in, there’s one thing you should know.
Someone lives in the walls but don’t be alarmed, they are totally friendly and normal. :^)
Totally normal.
And what should players take away from it all?
We want to show people that life isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be, but you can always find joy in the small things. Cooking, community, work, sleep. It’s all part of the cycle!
Looking Ahead
Release dates and DLC? Top secret, at least until the team have the details themselves. The next big thing is the demo launch, so keep your eyes peeled.
The dream collaboration is Dungeon Meshi, no question. Every time a Dungeon Meshi cosplayer plays the game at a convention, the team freak out. And they wouldn’t say no if Cooking Mama wanted to make weird pizza with them either.
As for what comes after Dungeon Pizza, Louis is excited for Game 2, whatever it ends up being, because there’s so much the team want to make together. Elly reckons there’ll be plenty of blabbing.
Sam has the final word.
Whatever it is, it will be Awesome Sawse.
Wishlist Dungeon Pizza
According to Blab Labs, every wishlist saves one indie developer from the fires of heck, and that goes for any upcoming indie game. If Dungeon Pizza sounds like your kind of weird, jump into the playtest, join the Discord, and add it to your Steam wishlist.
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3834910/Dungeon_Pizza/
Discord: https://discord.gg/22SaXttbAZ
Website: https://blab-labs.net/
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/dungeonpizza.bsky.social
X / Twitter: https://x.com/dungeon_p1zza
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dungeon.pizza
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Dungeon-Pizza
All links: https://linktr.ee/dungeonpizza
Dungeon Pizza is shaping up to be proof that, deep enough underground, anything can be a topping. Just maybe check what’s in the rat chunks first.