Pepper Grinder Review: Grinding Has Never Felt Fun, Until Now

Reviewed On: PC
Also Available On: Nintendo Switch
Price: $14.99 USD
Developer: Ahr Ech
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Release Date: March 28, 2024

Please Note: A review code was provided by Devolver Digital but does not influence the opinions in this review.

Devolver Digital is a video game publisher that has produced and will continue (hopefully) to produce beautiful and fun indie games. Sometimes, they are bat shit crazy with some of the titles they produce, and then other times they are slightly more tame. Very rarely will I find a game from them that doesn’t interest me, and thankfully Pepper Grinder did interest me quite a lot! I got to play it for this review on my PC, and I will say I was definitely surprised how much I enjoyed the game! This game was made by a single developer with a team that did the porting to PC and consoles. I absolutely think for a game made by one person, it is extraordinary.

***Beginning of the Game. Captured on PC.***

To be frank, I have a gaming laptop that is kind of powerful for a laptop, but not the most powerful PC that is around in the market. There were absolutely no issues when it came to my PC handling this game and I was very happy with that. I have a HP Victus with an Intel Core i7-12650H, 32.0 GB of RAM, and it is a 3050 TI system; so this game shouldn’t have any issues with this game whatsoever based on the Steam specs. If I had a Steam Deck, I would have checked out the game on the system since it is verified on deck too, but unfortunately I do not have a Steam Deck so I was not able to.

Honestly, there wasn’t as much of a story in the game besides you playing as a young woman named Pepper trying to get a treasure back that was taken from you when you landed on the beach. There are creatures and obstacles trying to block your progress and you must work with your Grinder to get back your treasure that was taken from you. It is a simple premise that doesn’t throw anything stupid into the plot, but also was kind of flat for a story without any big twists but the gameplay in an action platformer is the most important aspect and it is good.

There are terrific design choices for this game that make it very simplistic to learn but for those looking to complete every single challenge possible, it is a bit harder. Over the course of around 25 total levels in the game, you must use the grinder, boost ability, grapple hook, and other features to beat enemies, collect hidden coins, grab currency, and more. Most of the levels will last between five and ten minutes at most if you are playing them at your leisure to collect as much as you can in the game. If you want to play the levels quicker, you can, and I explain that later, but the game wants you to potentially play the levels multiple times to get everything you can. The levels aren’t all that challenging when you take your time, except the bosses are somewhat of a challenge comparatively.

The coins and cash you get in the levels can be used in the shops to purchase keys to unlock bonus levels, sticker sheets and stickers to create dioramas for the worlds, and costumes to change the look of Pepper. On top of that, you can purchase an extra 4 hit points for each level if it is giving you difficulty. I am not ashamed to say that I did this on some of the bosses as they are tricky. Besides just playing the main levels and collecting the coins or currency to use in the shop, you can also complete in time trials for each level that reward you for beating a certain time. I did a couple of these, but most of them are very tricky to get the gold and I don’t normally love doing those kind of things in games so I didn’t do all of them, but they provide a nice challenge. I recorded one of my runs that I did, although I did make a few mistakes so my time isn’t as good as it could be.

Video of a Speedrun level. Captured on PC.

So the gameplay was well crafted, what about everything else in the game. Well, safe to say, the game is pretty in terms of both your eyes and also your ears. The four different worlds have different main colors from the bright orange and red from the magma world, to the bright blue of the ice lands. The art from the enemies, the different levels, and the world as a whole was just well created. The music design throughout the game was nice, but there was nothing absolutely extraordinary or super memorable, but definitely did not disappoint as a whole for my ear drums. The audio design of the grinder, the guns, the enemies, and everything else in the world in my opinion is terrific and better than the music creations and stood out more when playing.

***Some of the different level designs. Captured on PC.***

For me, the game only had two issues, and neither were that terrible to overcome. The first one was that the final boss in the game being so much more difficult compared to everything else. There are two phases in the final boss fight and they spaced it into two separate fights with a checkpoint in-between them. I am glad that they spaced it into two battles because I didn’t want to be playing that fight infinitely. The other issue was the fact that after about 50 pulls in the shop for stickers, I couldn’t complete the first set of stickers which put me off to try to complete any of the sets. Other than these two things, the game was close to being flawless in terms of no bugs, no massive framerate issues and no game crashes.

The game was three and a half hours for me to roll the credits on. I didn’t complete everything possible, and you can definitely add more time if you want to complete all the time challenges, collect everything you can, and 100% the game. For me the big lack of a story isn’t the end of the world, but something for a bigger plot would have been better. Another problem for me is the fact after so many attempts to get the full sticker collection felt pointless and a waste of my time. The game wants to push you to complete time challenges but they are pretty challenging and not something I love to do. I thought the game was a fun time and it never once overstayed its welcome. The games audio design, the overall gameplay in the levels, the cool artistic designs, and more all made the experience worth it in the end though. I don’t normally love grinding for hours on end in RPGs (with the occasional exception), but grinding through the different levels for a few hours was an overall experience I do not regret playing.