Pepper Grinder Review (PC)

Back in 2017, I watched YouTuber videogamedunkey’s “The Good Year” where he detailed his hopes for game releases that were to take place that year. His video contained an incredibly high amount of optimism for AAA titles like Breath of the Wild as well as indie “masterpieces for your wallet” like Hollow Knight. Towards the end of the video, he mentions a few of upcoming indies he saw and played at PAX East 2017. Most notable from that video was a game that was “tucked away at PAX in a corner on this little tiny screen.” That game was called Pepper Grinder.

It’s been almost seven years since “The Good Year” graced our YouTube feeds. Most folks would probably not even recall Dunkey talking about Pepper Grinder because of how it was a “blink and you miss it” type of mention. He showed a little girl with a massive drill moving through the ground, flying through the air, and swooping through spiny vines. At the time, he mentioned that the demo had “this great sense of flow,” alluding to Ahr Ech hitting something truly special with the game.

Some of you might be questioning whether or not Pepper Grinder has lived up to its seven+ year development period. We know that many games who end up being announced too soon come and go, most being shadows of what could have been, or perhaps what should have been. The game development process is incredibly laborious for those who truly love gaming: You want to produce something that you (a player!) will love, but you have to recognize that refinement takes time, and in turn, resources.

It’s clear that developer Ahr Ech loves platforming. His approach to developing Pepper Grinder is a testament to the joy of retro platforming without bloating the game with artificially difficult segments for the purpose of increasing game time. What you play is what you get, and the time you spend in Pepper Grinder will give you opportunities to demonstrate navigational mastery while also being an imaginative experience that’s approachable for tons of players.

Alas, I’ve spent too much time gushing about Pepper Grinder without explaining why. Let’s get to the review.

Pepper Grinder looks like a classic platformer in that you’re set in a 2D-plane, you get from point A to point B, the level ends, and then you move on. Rinse and repeat through a handful of levels until you reach a boss level. That sort of thing. It’s set up in such a fashion that there are a small number of optional levels that are unlocked by collecting coins (more on this in a moment), but you’re not required to complete these levels in order to proceed.

That’s where the platforming similarities end, for the most part. Pepper Grinder plays unlike any platformer I’ve ever played. Usually, platformers take place on the ground, or at least slightly above it. Underground portions of platforming were often stationary, save for the occasional digging minigames like Yoshi’s Island’s Mole Tank power-up minigame. Attempting to freely drill/dig in any direction never felt right, no thanks to early titles’ use of the D-Pad as the sole or primary means of navigation. For the case of Yoshi turning into a Mole Tank and tunneling through the dirt, there was no platforming aspect. There was only tedium and clunky digging.

Pepper Grinder makes digging fun – no joke. Pepper’s oversized drill, Grinder, effortlessly glides through multiple compositions, be it water, jelly, to regular ol’ dirt. I remember seeing another critic describe the movement akin to a dolphin gliding through water – I agree. The drill can be used for combat, too, meaning any enemy in my way while underground gets slain instantly.

There’s a sense of joy that gets perfectly encapsulated in Pepper Grinder, albeit one that takes some slight getting used to because of joysticks. 2D platformers are inherently restricted by the plane in which they exist, meaning the player is typically expected to move up, down, side-to-side, and occasionally diagonally. Here, movement follows a circular (tubular?) pattern, which is perfect for those who use joysticks. I conducted this review using a DualSense; if you prefer to use controllers, I recommend using one with a joystick to accommodate your thumbs.

Of course, it wasn’t entirely easy for me to relearn free-flowing traversal. Again, I had been repeatedly conditioned to expect to be confined to a 2D plane, limiting my movement. The first few levels of Pepper Grinder involved me struggling with properly navigating the levels and picking everything up in a way that I could “complete” everything. This meant that I had to time an acceleration when exiting the ground, positioning me in a way where I could avoid danger, and even figuring out how to optimize my movement.

I learned quickly that I needn’t focus too hard on “precision” in the purist of senses thanks to Pepper Grinder’s level designs. Most of the levels have gem pathways that visually illustrate a recommended path to take when drilling, making jumps and navigation far easier. Even more, I could very easily identify where to go thanks to how those paths illustrated a linear path forward. Each level had hidden coins that were almost all hidden behind slightly cracked ground and positioned just off the beaten path, but I never felt like I was encouraged to explore.

I’m going to make a controversial statement here: For Pepper Grinder, linearity is acceptable. Scratch that – I prefer its levels to be linear for now. Pepper Grinder changed the way I approached moving in a 2D plane and shifted my expectations in how I could and should move about a level. Linear levels kept me focused on moving forward and figuring out how to optimize my movement rather than simply staying alive. If there is a future for Pepper Grinder (which I hope there is – soon, please!), I would love branching paths. But for now, linearity is a blessing and allows me to appreciate the creativity found in each of the game’s levels.

By the end of the second level, I was worried that I would be digging and only digging in Pepper Grinder. I was quickly corrected when my drill was used as a gun, an above-ground vehicle, and I was granted a hookshot that swung me around in a circle through the air. Each level creatively “shakes up” player expectations, bringing Pepper out of the ground and through multiple environments. It was refreshing to constantly maintain momentum and flow through the elements thanks to how well the levels creatively utilized new mechanics while also encouraging me to speed through them in timed trials.

Part of the reason why I enjoyed Pepper Grinder as much as I did was because I was constantly surprised by each level’s uniqueness and mechanics. I would often think to myself, “Oh wow! The level is changing!” I could climb waterfalls of ice. Lava chunks fell into the ocean, creating new pathways for me to drill through. No two levels felt alike, even though some mechanics from earlier levels would re-emerge in later levels. I was driven forward by excitement in the form of wondering what each new level would bring and require me to do other than just digging – since I wasn’t always tasked with digging!

Once I had completed a level for the first time, I could return to the level and complete a timed trial for sticker rewards. This is where the gem pathways I mentioned earlier came most handy. While the trials lacked checkpoints, the paths of gems were literal golden roads to encourage me to stay on a simple path and not deviate in order to meet the time. The reward of stickers was a nice way to reward me for succeeding, yet it didn’t make me feel like I was “missing out” on hidden content for not being “good enough” to meet an arbitrary time limit.

At the end of each biome, I was able to fight a boss battle. The bosses involve several phases, all the while adhering to a set pattern of attacks. One boss battle involved a cinematic phase, requiring me to jump from multiple moving platforms (I’m being intentionally vague here as to not spoil anything). But, for the most part, digging was the primary means of movement and whittling down the bosses’ health bars.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that digging was the de facto means of taking down bosses. I hate to say it, but Pepper Grinder’s bosses were one of its weaker points. I appreciated how I was able to quickly and effortlessly dodge bosses’ attacks that were above- and underground, but I wanted the same level of creativity found in the levels to emerge most of the boss battles. For instance, the first boss battle felt like a drawn out waiting game for the boss to slowly trundle its way into a position for me to get underneath it and turn it over. I also kept hoping for biome-specific mechanics to make their way into the boss battles to remind me of the most recent mechanic I had learned, giving me one final opportunity to demonstrate mastery of that mini mechanic.

Instead, Pepper Grinder asked me to demonstrate my ability to dodge projectiles and utilize Grinder to the best of my abilities. Since the game’s secondary objectives are that of time trials, I know that taking advantage of attack patterns and getting multiple hits in a single phase is a great way of quickly slaying a boss, but I would have loved some innovation on the boss front. Only then would I think Pepper Grinder would have appropriately hit its mastery peak in terms of increasingly difficult and unique platforming.

The boss battles shouldn’t be a reason for you to pass on Pepper Grinder, however. My quibbles aside, it excels in ways most platformers struggle with achieving on the traversal alone. Moving through dirt like a dolphin soars through the water and air might seem contradictory, or even fantastical. It somehow manages to encapsulate free flowing digging without any of the clunkiness that comes with going underground. I just want something more, and that’s okay. It’s worth the experience.

Pepper Grinder’s scrappy aesthetic comes through with Pepper’s pirate/nautical elements alongside the Narlings – narwhal pirates who serve as Pepper’s enemies. The level aesthetics are creative, too, incorporating passive elements in the backgrounds (like giants and volcanoes who mess with the level) and active elements that dramatically change the level’s layout.

The game’s soundtrack is eclectic, which I think is quite fitting for the overall thematic of the game. Levels’ background music ranges from EDM, Drum and Bass (DnB), to jazz. While the game lacks a “theme song” in the most specific sense, there’s a bounciness and snappiness to the soundtrack that maintains the game’s overall momentum. On levels that involve frenetic drilling, the songs are appropriately frenetic, too. I liked the soundtrack’s breadth of genres – XEECEE did an excellent job in composing the game’s tunes.

I’m going to let my bias into this conversation for a moment: I ever so desperately want Pepper Grinder to succeed. I’m doing my best to remain unbiased and give credit where credit is due when reviewing, but it’s incredibly rare when a title does so many things right. Pepper Grinder’s level design avoids reusing mechanics, somehow managing to cram imagination into each level in a unique fashion. Platforming gimmicks like insta-deaths and pixel-perfect jumps are absent altogether, making the game’s difficulty curve rise smoothly with the player’s familiarity with Grinder. My time was not wasted when playing Pepper Grinder, as I was not only able to finish it just over four hours after starting. Optional objectives are exactly that, optional, but they’re also rewarding in teaching the player how to take advantage of momentum. My time was respected in the form of replaying a level only to pick up a coin I had missed at the start of the level; upon picking up that coin, I could leave the level and still have it count.

Do I wish there was more content? Absolutely. Ahr Ech nails level design and platforming in ways most platformers haven’t done in a hot minute. It just comes at the expense of a game that can be completed in an afternoon. It’s replayable, though, so I’m more than happy to come back to Pepper Grinder’s levels. I cannot wait to see speedrunners show off their digging and more in an upcoming GDQ.

There’s more to Pepper Grinder than just digging. Ahr Ech successfully managed to cram fluid platforming and free-flowing traversal in ways that make its hallmark digging mechanics joyous while innovating in using the drill for other utilitarian purposes. Its 2D platforming is refreshing and rewarding when you settle into the groove of being able to move in every direction. I truly dug Pepper Grinder, and I sincerely hope that Ahr Ech continues to make fantastic retro platformers while also expanding the current universe of narwhal pirates. Hopefully those games come sooner rather than later.

A review copy of Pepper Grinder was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.