The beauty of smaller, indie games is that they’re good at taking a simple mechanic and building a whole experience around it. That’s what Pepper Grinder does, and does well. Mostly.
Pepper Grinder is a game that probably could’ve come out on the NES. It’s built around one basic mechanic: digging with a giant pepper grinder. The controls are simple: hit the ZR-button to dig. You can hit the B-button coming out to get a boost, or sail through the air if your angle is right. That’s basically it.
There’s not much in the way of story. You play as a girl who’s had her possessions stolen by some unfriendly creatures. She comes across a giant pepper grinder to use as a weapon and starts exacting revenge. You’re not even told the girl’s name, and there’s no spoken or written dialogue, but you get the idea: start digging and kicking butt with your pepper grinder. You can’t be stopped.
There’s four worlds with five levels in each world, so 20 levels total, plus boss fights, but developers MP2 and Ahr Ech makes each one count. You’re constantly collecting jewels as you plow and fly around which can be spent in a store that sells keys, collectibles, and health power-ups. Each stage has five golden skull coins to collect that you can use as currency in the store as well. Also, there’s a time trial mode for speedrunners, which this style of gameplay seems made for.
New ideas are constantly being introduced from level to level, which I won’t spoil, but the gameplay never gets dull. You don’t spend all your time digging, but it’s the one thing you spend the most time doing. It’s interspersed with other creative ideas, so nothing overstays its welcome, and overall, the stages are fun to play.
Unfortunately, the whole experience is brought down by one of the worst final boss fights I’ve run across in years. It’s a tedious, repetitive slog with very questionable controls, and it was one of those times I really wondered if developers actually play their own games, or are capable of beating their own games because I can’t imagine anyone trying to navigate the controls in that fight and thinking it’s well-designed.
The other bosses in the game were hit and miss, but the last boss is by far the worst. It’s unfortunate because I was very ready to give this game a really good score until I got to this fight.
Pepper Grinder’s controls have this annoying quirk where sometimes, after she shoots out of a patch of sand, she will keep grinding into the next patch of sand, even if your hands are completely off the controls. It was only a minor annoyance during most of the game, but during the last boss fight, the controls seemed like they were actively fighting against me because of the precision in the navigation that’s required. It made the fight, which was already bad, even worse. After dying many times to the last boss, I became resigned that there was no easy way to get through it, and I had to slog it out, which I eventually did.
The visuals are standard pixel-art you see in a lot of indie titles now. It serves the game, but is not visually stunning. However, the music is fantastic and makes an impression right away. Even the title screen track hits hard and sounds great.
VERDICT
Pepper Grinder is a whole game built around one idea: using a pepper grinder to destroy anything in your path. It’s small, short, to-the-point, and is a perfect example of why indie games exist, and should exist. While playing through it, I thought frequently that it could use a sequel given how many clever ideas the game has. Hopefully, a sequel would have vast improvement in the overall boss battle design as well because the last boss fight was an absolute downer and made me glad I was mostly finished with it, although I did go back and get all the medals. Overall, Pepper Grinder is a short but fun time with some good replay value, and not a small amount of frustration with its boss battles, but still recommended.
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