Pepper Grinder is a wonderfully retro game. Its detailed pixel art, gorgeous environmental backdrops, charming cast of characters, and focus on fun gameplay concepts made me feel like I was playing a classic SNES platformer.  Pepper Grinder may be short, and it may not do anything revolutionary, but it is remarkably polished and is purely distilled fun. There’s no fat on this game, every level has its own ideas and mechanics that put a twist on the drilling and digging platforming.

 The key mechanic in Pepper Grinder is the drill. You tunnel through sand, earth, and snow, avoiding obstacles along the way. As you pop out of the ground you can boost yourself and launch yourself from platform to platform. It’s a remarkably smooth mechanic that the entire foundation of the game is built upon. Digging through the ground is intuitive to control, fast-paced, and allows for some creative level design. And Pepper Grinder delivers that in spades.

While it may be a short game, Pepper Grinder makes up for that with the sheer variety in its levels. Every level is distinct in some way. There are grapple points to swing between patches of earth, falling chunks of snow to flow through, cannons that blast you across the sky, gatling guns to mow down enemies, and a variety of locations to explore. One minute you’ll be gunning down goons in a volcano and the next you will be diving in shark-infested waters and splitting boats in half.

What makes Pepper Grinder feel like a retro game is its charm. There’s no dialogue or much of a narrative at all. The main character, Pepper, washes up on shore and has her treasure stolen. The rest of the adventure is just using her newfound drill to hunt down her missing treasure. But what makes the game so endearing is the visual story that is told. Traveling through the lands and encountering a handful of friendly faces like a farmer mole and a friendly giant is reminiscent of SNES era games such as Super Mario World and Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island. And this retro influence is also obviously present in the art style of Pepper Grinder.

The game is full of lovingly crafted pixel art and animations. The levels, environments, and characters all come to life in its high-fidelity pixel art style. Even with the bright colors and fast-paced platforming, I felt that visual clarity was extremely good. I never lost track of where I was or where I was supposed to be going. The presentation is further bolstered by a great soundtrack of mixed genres: jazz, rock, drum and bass, and even drum and bass. 

There’s no arguing that Pepper Grinder is a short game. There’s only two dozen or so levels and each can be completed in 5-10 minutes. But I don’t think being short is necessarily negative. The developer obviously did not want to pad that game out with repetitive levels or filler content, which can be seen from how every level has its own gimmick or trick. Additionally, there are 5 hidden coins in every level to be found if you are interested in collectible hunting. And I found quite a bit of fun in the time trial mode, trying to get the gold medal on every level. It never felt overly challenging, but I loved finding shortcuts or optimizations to spare a few seconds.

The only major flaw with Pepper Grinder is the boss fights. There are only four of them, but none of them are particularly fun. They are neat concepts, but are unfortunately in cramped arenas that feel awkward to maneuver in. The last boss in particular is a huge difficulty spike, I could see tons of players giving up before seeing the credits because of how frustrating that fight can be. And to make matters worse, if you are doing the time trial mode you will have to deal with 30-second unskippable cutscenes on every single attempt of every boss. Truly maddening.

Pepper Grinder definitely isn’t a revolutionary game. It doesn’t dwell on any of its ideas or mechanics. If you are looking for a platformer that slowly evolves as the player gets better, Pepper Grinder may not be for you. It’s a game that delivers on a fun and fluid base movement system while throwing a bunch of different ideas at the player. Sure, many of those ideas could be explored further and expanded upon, but I appreciate the brevity of the game. And if you are looking to master the game’s mechanics, time trial mode can provide a decent but reasonable challenge.

I love when a game focuses on just being fun. And that’s what Pepper Grinder is. It may be on the shorter side, but that’s only because there is not any fat on this game whatsoever. Every level is its own idea. And the basic drilling movement is just pure fun. Although it doesn’t do anything revolutionary it manages to feel nostalgic and reminiscent of classic Nintendo platformers. It is for these reasons that I give Pepper Grinder a 7.5/10. Definitely give this game a shot if you want a quick burst of platforming fun.