Pepper Grinder

I was surprised by the luke-warm reviews of this game, but I get it now. Despite looking like a joy to play, this game includes a lot of clunky moments that really suck the joy out of it: bosses with long periods of invincibility, enemies without clear indications of their attacks. I wonder if they had some sort of anti-playtest sentiment because I have no idea how they fumbled this so close to the finish line.

Pretty solid game that falls apart a little towards the end. - The platforming and tunnelling using the drill is sick, but when you have to hop up ledges and over gaps with normal movement it can be a bit annoying. - Enemies work well until you reach stages where they throw a whole bunch at you. The gameplay was designed for speed over precision, so trying to deal with multiple enemies at once without taking damage is hard. - The bosses feel tedious because they require patience, but when you're drilling you can't stop moving and on foot you're slow and vulnerable. It's less that the boss attacks you and more that they just attack and you stumble into them, which can feel unfair. Figuring out safe areas and how attacks are telegraphed is important. But also yeah, they can be a bit long. - Music bangs. Make sure you spend your coins on keys before cosmetics. You can end up short on coins for a key but the coins you need are in the level the key unlocks.

The drill based movement in this game has a weighty momentum and brain tickling sound design that makes the moment to moment gameplay of Pepper Grinder a real joy. The game doesn't out-stay its welcome and the course designs are compact and full of novel gimmicks that keeps the game feeling pacy and exciting. There are small difficulty spikes when it comes to boss fight time, but if you've played Devolver published games like Gato Roboto or The Messenger before, you should be fine here. Optional challenges offer additional reasons to replay levels. Each level has 5 hidden skull coins to find and there are time trials too, although I fell off the game once I got all of the coins. I place this alongside Crypt Custodian as an affordable and adorable way to spend 10 or so hours with a tightly put together action game.

The kind of game you could have held up as a new icon of platforming about 10 years ago. The competition is a bit stiffer these days, but it still carves out a unique and worthwhile experience in level progression with the central high momentum drilling mechanic. The length of the game is about appropriate for how long it took me to start getting tired of this gameplay, and it wisely chooses to break up some of that with sequences of causal wanton destruction. Even so, variable feelings on the secondary mechanics. Grappling has a few flow issues, but is broadly a good addition. Some of the enemy threat patterns dampen the flow, but it's mostly fine. The machine gun segments though grated on me when they venture into full bullet hell territory instead of being a whimsical walk of mayhem. The level of annoyance I felt is sparse enough in the experience to soldier through without huge complaint, but I would give some credence to negative reviews which felt some of the momentum killing wa...

Nice little platformer, the movement while digging felt great.

Fun Platformer that isnt to hard and isnt to easy, Its more fun with a controller and MnK, Would deff suggest this title! honestly anything Made by, Produced By, Looked at by Devolver Digital is amazing, Have never played a bad game by them, or produced by them.

i dig it

Satisfying, short, and varied. There’s no padding here, all levels are fun and the bosses are a great challenge.

fun

Really great. The flow of the movement is fantastic. Id love to see what this team does next.