To date, 2024 has been a 12 months when it’s potential to leap from one huge, dozens-of-hours-long blockbuster recreation to a different with no break. With Dragon’s Dogma 2 launching simply final week, loads of gamers are in the midst of an epic fantasy journey proper now. However for those who’ve cleared your plate of the buffet of gargantuan video games launched these days, Pepper Grinder makes for the right dessert.
The titular Pepper begins the sport by crashing her pirate ship on shore and instantly having her immense assortment of treasure stolen by a band of horned goblins known as Narlings and their chief Mint. That completely non-verbal introduction is all of the story you’re going to get from Pepper Grinder, as the sport retains its focus tight on its tight, extraordinarily satisfying gameplay.
Identical to with its story, Pepper Grinder retains its mechanics easy — to ease you into issues. You may have a drill, which you’ll spin up with the controller’s proper set off. You can even leap. That’s it. Whereas the drill can be utilized to annihilate Narlings, it’s principally used for motion. Pepper Grinder’s pixelated worlds are stuffed with patches of dust Pepper can drill straight by. Leaping into one with the drill operating lets Pepper “swim” by with the drill continually pulling her ahead, and urgent the leap button grants a pace enhance that lets her leap from one dust clump to a different. It feels much like Ori’s potential to burrow in sand in Ori and the Will of the Wisps, however expanded throughout a complete recreation.
Scattered round every stage are a great deal of Pepper’s stolen jewels, in addition to 5 hidden cranium cash. Jewels can purchase further well being between ranges, in addition to collectible stickers, only for enjoyable. Cranium cash might be traded in for beauty adjustments to Pepper’s hair and cape, or to unlock a secret stage in every world, that are completely value opening and are typically the most effective every area has to supply.
Greater than that, although, searching down cranium cash forces you to go looking each nook of the extent and places your sand-swimming abilities to the check. Pepper Grinder is the very definition of “quick however candy,” clocking in round three to 4 hours, so any motive to spend only a bit longer poking round in it’s greater than welcome.
Regardless of being such a brief recreation, Pepper Grinder is filled with fascinating concepts. Each time you progress to a brand new world, the sport shifts in some elementary means, like whenever you enterprise into an icy ocean, the place each second spent within the water brings you nearer to a freezing demise. Past that, almost each particular person stage introduces its personal twists. All through your quick time with Pepper Grinder, you’ll experience a snowmobile, launch your self out of cannons, pilot a mech, and extra. And each time the sport introduces a intelligent new mechanic, it spends a couple of minutes squeezing each little bit of pleasure it might probably out of it, then tosses it apart for the following one. Due to that, each stage feels markedly completely different, and none of their methods stick round lengthy sufficient to get previous.
Regardless of its easy mechanics Pepper Grinder is usually a troublesome recreation. Whereas it begins simple sufficient, the problem ramps up rapidly, each by throwing harder enemies at you and demanding extra advanced platforming. Thankfully, well-placed checkpoints are dotted round every stage, so retrying sections the place you’ve failed by no means takes too lengthy. Right here, too, the sport’s quick size helps, since ranges go by rapidly sufficient not to wear down their welcome even after they’re tossing you round like a rag doll.
Pepper Grinder proves that it’s value making time for smaller video games even for those who’ve been busy gorging your self on sprawling open-world RPGs. Attending to deeply know a world and immersing your self in its intricacies is nice, however so is blasting by one in just some days and getting each little bit of pleasure you’ll be able to out of it in that point. The right instance of a recreation benefiting from its quick runtime, Pepper Grinder is properly value digging into for platforming followers on the lookout for recent thrills.