Pepper Grinder (NS) – Review
by
Evan Norris
, posted 3 hours ago / 309 Views
Some games need an army of developers, programmers, artists, and technicians to succeed. Epic in size and scope, and featuring many moving parts, they simply can’t come together without scores of people working in tandem. Other games, smaller in budget and less ambitious technologically, can triumph even with only a single hard-working developer with a clear vision. Look at games like Retro City Rampage, Iconoclasts, and Chained Echoes, to name only a few. Joining the ranks of those single-developer titles is Pepper Grinder, a cheeky high-concept 2D action game about a girl and a drill.
Pepper Grinder tells the story of treasure-hunting buccaneer Pepper, who washes up on a mysterious shore after a violent storm wrecks her ship. Too weak to lift a finger, she watches as a group of bipedal narwal-like creatures abscond with her spoils. Once she recovers her strength she heads inland to reclaim her lost gold. There she finds a left-behind power tool — a mechanical drill named Grinder. Armed with this powerful item, Pepper burrows her way through the whole of the island, searching for what’s hers.
The way developer Ahr Ech (staffed by solo programmer Riv Hester) delivers the game’s story is interesting. Without any voiced lines or even text, the studio manages to weave a comprehensible tale. The audience learns everything through environmental clues or inference. There’s even a winking scene toward the very end when the narwal underlings hold up wooden signs to describe past events, as if language eluded the entire island.
While this approach is clever and unobtrusive, it doesn’t fully explain all the characters, monsters, and history of the island. Ahr Ech is, in a way, a victim of its own success. It’s so effective with character designs, production design, and indirect storytelling that you want to know more. As it stands, the game keeps its audience at arm’s length.
It gives the audience a great big bear hug, however, when it comes to gameplay. It pulls you in, explains the basics, and invites you to go wild through its bite-sized levels. In terms of mechanics, it’s all relatively simple. Pepper can run and jump, and use Grinder to drill into any permeable surface. While the game has some rudimentary platforming, it’s really all about the drilling, which is exemplary. The controls are perfect. You can enter and exit each drill-able area with ease, burrow effortlessly, and stop on a dime. The game just feels great to control.
Ahr Ech pairs these smooth, responsive controls with a parade of creative locomotion ideas that helps each level feel like its own thing. At times, you must use Grinder to move elevators or flip platforms. At other times, you’ll have to launch Pepper out of a moving cannon (think the barrel sections in Donkey Kong Country). In later scenes, you’ll swing around grapple points, power an iron golem, and drill through falling ice, sticky goo, and disintegrating cooled lava. There’s a certain Super Mario-ish inventiveness here, as mechanical conceits are introduced and discarded with abandon.
Because Pepper Grinder refuses to linger too long on any certain mechanic or level layout, the game is over rather quickly. It took me only three hours to complete each level and topple the final boss. You can return to previous levels to find every last skull coin (each stage has five of them) or compete for the best time, but the fact remains: this is a short game.
To be fair, hunting for coins is a good time, and it’s satisfying to blaze through each level and just hit that Time Trial benchmark. But the rewards aren’t always worth it. In some cases, they are; you’ll need skull coins to unlock a secret level in each world. In other cases, not so much. You can use leftover coins on cosmetics for Pepper or on sticker pages. These pages, accessible from the overworld map, are still shots from game levels where you can place stickers either earned in Time Trial or purchased in a gacha machine in the curiosity shop. You can position stickers to create a scene and also change the filter and tint. It’s just not very engaging. It’s a rare miss in a game filled with mostly hits.
One of those hits is surely art direction. The game boasts a lovely pixel art cartoon aesthetic that’s alternatively cutesy and macabre. There’s a strong sense of depth and perspective in each level, despite the 2D limitations. It’s also quite moody and atmospheric. The opening world near the coast is warm, airy, and sun-baked, while the final world is moldy, gray, and dank. Sound design only amplifies the atmosphere, whether it’s the aggressive, crunchy drilling of Grinder or the crackling of dusty bones.
The music is also quite good. Composed by Xeecee, it’s a provocative, eclectic mix of lo-fi beats, polyrhythms, and breakbeat sounds.
As for technical performance, Pepper Grinder is almost flawless. I did experience a single glitch during the world three boss fight when the boss stopped fighting back. Publisher Devolver Digital has also reported a bug related to the final form of the world four boss, but a patch is on the way. I didn’t encounter it during my playthrough.
Pepper Grinder is proof you don’t need a legion of developers to make a good game. Sometimes all you need is a single person with a strong work ethic and a dream. Thanks to Riv Hester’s diligence, Pepper Grinder succeeds mechanically, creatively, and visually. It could do with better unlockables and would certainly benefit from a longer running time, but overall it hits the right marks. Hopefully this isn’t the last we see of plucky pirate Pepper and her grinding machine.
VGChartz Verdict
This review is based on a digital copy of Pepper Grinder for the NS, provided by the publisher.