Pepper Grinder Review – Short And Spicy
It only takes a glance to understand Pepper Grinder’s inventive gimmick. A small girl named Pepper–a pirate by trade–wields a drill named Grinder that’s roughly the size of her entire body. The gear allows her to grind through soft surfaces with ease, complete with the ability to launch out of the surface with a leap. That might have been enough to carry the game by itself, but what’s most surprising about Pepper Grinder is its sheer variety. Though it’s short, that brevity helps to make the campaign a no-filler thrill ride that continuously pushes the boundaries of its central mechanic.
It turns out Grinder is a pretty versatile tool, even regarding its most basic function. You can burrow through the ground, which immediately feels natural and smooth. At the same time, you can’t simply turn on a dime with an instant about-face like a typical platformer–you have to handle turns by curving an arc out of your drilling path. Additionally, when you pop out of the surface of the dirt, you won’t gain much distance unless you jump just before breaking through. Those little touches give the core mechanic a sense of finesse, imitating the feeling of a playful dolphin–or at least, a dolphin video game like the classic Ecco.
Now Playing: Pepper Grinder GameSpot Video Review
Once you get the hang of it, drilling through soil and leaping out of the surface in a perfect arc, only to catch another piece of soft ground in the distance and continue your digging, feels thrilling and acrobatic. The drillable surfaces are nicely differentiated from hard environmental pieces, so you quickly learn to read a level and see the path through it, evoking a feeling similar to performing a great run in Tony Hawk. Collectibles like gems are scattered strategically throughout the stages to both subtly guide your eye along the path, while also sometimes setting traps for your greed.
Aside from being a traversal tool, Grinder is also your primary and often only weapon. It’s not enough to simply run into most enemies with a spinning drill, though–they often have their own specific approach to defeat them, like beetles with a hard upper carapace who need to be stabbed from the underside by burrowing underground. The main enemies, a breed of vicious narwhal-like creatures with horns on their head, are just as capable of hurting you with a head-on collision as you are of hurting them. None of the regular enemies are terribly tough by themselves, but they introduce new ways of approaching stages and obstacles as you need to get around them or through them to continue on your path.
A platformer with a standout hook like this one probably could have coasted on it, but Pepper Grinder doesn’t rest on its laurels. Instead, it consistently introduces new elements to master. These either integrate with your balletic burrowing or provide a change of pace from it. Grabbing a key with your drill will make it turn a lock, and you can use the kinetic energy to power machines. You’ll also shoot from cannons, drill holes into the bottoms of ships to make them take on water, carve through skyscrapers to make them collapse as you traverse through, and even pilot a giant mech. What appears at first to be a simple tool gives way to constant delightful little surprises.
A series of boss battles ramp up the difficulty nicely, taking the skills you’ve learned and putting them to the test. The first is relatively straightforward, as you dodge projectiles by moving through the soil and wait for the opportune moment to attack from the underside, while the second severely limits the amount of soft ground available and challenges you to leap high into the air to do damage. They progress from there, including one tough encounter with another human-like character that has roughly your size and agility. All this leads to a final boss encounter that is one of the most tense and difficult retro platformer bosses I’ve seen in a long time, which felt satisfying to overcome.
And on top of all this, Pepper Grinder carries itself with a cute, pixel-punk personality. Pepper’s diminutive sprite artwork has a charm to it, like how she revs up her trusty drill threateningly when coming face-to-face with a boss, or how she raises her pirate flag to declare victory in an area. The enemies can sometimes be seen doing their own pirate duties before you crash their party. And though story sequences are few and far between, they were just enough to explain what was going on with mimed, dialogue-free action. A short story sequence just before the final boss even made me laugh out loud.
Gallery
At such a breakneck pace of new ideas, Pepper Grinder doesn’t last very long, which is to its credit. I finished the campaign in roughly four hours, which is a relatively short playtime. Every stage also has a time-trial option, and there are still collectibles and cosmetics to unlock like stickers and hairstyles. The most important collectibles are Skull Coins, a limited resource–five per stage–that can be used to unlock special bonus stages in each of the four worlds. These are used to further explore gameplay concepts that had been introduced in the main stages. The first one, for example, takes the cannon mechanic to its logical conclusion with an entire stage built around ping-ponging from cannon to cannon, which felt pleasanlty reminiscent of Donkey Kong Country’s famous barrel stages.
Perhaps because of its brevity, I enjoyed every minute, and I appreciate the rare instance of a game that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Rather than slog through filler stages to pad its length, Pepper Grinder is bursting with new ideas for exactly as long as it can sustain that momentum. There’s something admirable about approaching its length with that level of confidence. I would have loved to play even more, if it could have sustained that pace, but this felt like a conscious choice to let the best ideas shine.
Pepper Grinder is here for a good time, not for a long time. Every piece, from the core drilling mechanic itself to the various ways it manifests with cannons and mechs and more, feels meticulously engineered to teach you a new concept, wring the fun out of it, and then move on to the next. That sense of propulsion makes every moment fun and engaging. It’s a great little gem of a game which, like its heroine, may be small in size but makes every bit count.
Making A Marvel Movie Sounds Like “A F**king Nightmare,” Kristen Stewart Says
No one should expect Kristen Stewart to appear in a Marvel movie anytime soon, as the actress has said the process sounds like “a f**king nightmare.”
“I will likely never do a Marvel movie … it sounds like a f**king nightmare, actually,” Stewart said on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast (via Variety).
Stewart went on to say she has some conditions that could change her mind. If Barbie director Greta Gerwig asked her to be in a Marvel movie, “then I would do it,” she said. Stewart also mentioned how she might consider it, but only under the pretense that “the system would have to change.”
“You would have to put so much money and so much trust into one person … and it doesn’t happen,” she said. “And so therefore what ends up happening is this algorithmic, weird experience where you can’t feel personal at all about it. So likely not. But maybe the world changes, that’s what I’m saying.”
Stewart said she has nothing against big movies, though, saying she enjoys making these “because I like people to watch them when I’m in them.” She starred in a massive franchise with the Twilight series opposite Robert Pattinson from 2008-2012. More recently, though, Stewart has opted to make smaller films, including her newest, Love Lies Bleeding. Stewart received an Academy Award nomination for playing Princess Diana in the movie Spencer.
Before this, Ray Winstone, who played a villain in the MCU movie Black Widow, said making Marvel movies can be “soul-destroying” and that he considered quitting the project. Dakota Johnson, who starred in Madame Web, recently shared her opinions on superhero filmmaking, too, saying she is unlikely to ever make another superhero film again.
“It’s so hard to get movies made, and in these big movies that get made–and it’s even starting to happen with the little ones, which is what’s really freaking me out–decisions are being made by committees, and art does not do well when it’s made by committee,” she said. “Films are made by a filmmaker and a team of artists around them. You cannot make art based on numbers and algorithms.”
Marvel owner Disney is changing things up with regards to the release schedule for its Marvel movies. In years past, Marvel would release multiple new films per year, but in 2024, Marvel has just one new movie coming–Deadpool and Wolverine. This is part of Disney’s wider strategy to release fewer, better movies.
Following Baldur’s Gate 3, WotC And Hasbro Are Investing $1 Billion In Their AAA Game Ecosystem
Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast want a bigger piece of the gaming industry’s pie, especially after the huge success of Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3. To that end, both companies are investing nearly one billion dollars into their shared gaming ecosystem, which includes half a dozen studios. Some of these studios are working on more Dungeons & Dragons games, while others are working on other Hasbro IP–Atomic Arcade is tackling a G.I. Joe Snake Eyes game, for example–and still more are creating brand-new IPs. We saw one of these new IPs revealed at last year’s The Game Awards: Archetype Entertainment’s Exodus.
At GDC 2024, I sat down with Dan Ayoub, Head of Digital Product Development at Wizards of the Coast, to talk about what these new games will look like, how WotC and Hasbro plan to protect developers’ jobs while pouring a ton of money into a brand-new initiative, and whether future D&D games will stay in Faerun or explore other settings (I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Eberron).
Now Playing: Why Baldur’s Gate 3 Is GameSpot’s Game Of The Year 2023
GameSpot: I was really surprised to learn y’all have a ton of studios working on several new games. Has this been going on for a while and I just haven’t been privy to it?
Ayoub: I wish I could say that was the case. It has really been something we haven’t talked too much about. But if you think about it, it just makes a ton of sense, right? Hasbro is a company focused on games and play, but it’s kind of a well-kept secret that we’ve got this incredible video games [division] going on. So if you think about it, Hasbro’s a 100-year-old company. And like you, I grew up playing D&D, and a lot of Hasbro board games and things like that. But I look at my own kids and things like that, and their play engagement patterns are entirely different.
So if you think about it, if you squint, yeah, of course it makes sense for Hasbro to have all of these games going on. And certainly, you referenced Baldur’s Gate [3], Monopoly Go!–we’ve been doing a lot on the license side and I think we’ve been a little more out there talking about that. But I’m really excited to be able to talk about what we’re doing internally because we’ve got a billion dollars in games being developed right now, across multiple studios across North America. So why don’t we just jump right into it? So I guess the first studio worth talking about, because we just announced it at The Game Awards, is our Archetype studio out of Austin. And that’s being run by James Olin and a bunch of the Mass Effect 1 and 2 team.
And a common thing you’re going to see as I talk about the studios is we’ve built these studios around people and teams with DNA behind the types of things that we’re trying to make. So that’s been a really exciting project to work with the team on, and we were thrilled to finally be able to announce that to the world [at] The Game Awards. And frankly, the reaction blew us away; [we’re] just blown out the water. So I think that was a great watershed moment too, because it was not just the coming out of the game for us, but I kind of saw it as our studio’s coming out.
We’ve got [a studio] in Montreal that’s working on a large Dungeons & Dragons-based game. That’s Invoke Studio. We’ve got Atomic Arcade in North Carolina that’s working on Snake Eyes. As we like to say [that that game is] not your daddy’s G.I. Joe. A very edgy take on Snake Eyes, and I’ll come back to the strategy there a little bit. And, of course, we’ve got Archetype and also Skeleton Key in Austin–I can’t say too much about [Skeleton Key’s project], but it’s something spooky.
And I think if you look at the different studios, you’ve got some really interesting approaches with each. You look at Exodus and it’s like, okay, this is a new IP, this is not an existing Hasbro or Wizards IP. And one of the great things about being in Hasbro [is] we’ve got toys. We’ve got all these other things we can do with it. So rather than, “Okay here’s a Hasbro IP, go make a game,” we’re trying to go the other way–create something through a digital space where it’s the fastest-growing medium and where more and more eyeballs are going, so that feels like the right place to do it.
Then of course you look at Atomic and Invoke and those are classical Hasbro or Wizards IP from G.I. Joe to Dungeons & Dragons. And Skeleton Key again is kind of like, okay, we’re going to try and do something new and innovative from a gaming side. So we’ve got, as I mentioned, about a billion dollars in games being developed, you got hundreds of people across all of these studios who are actively hiring as well. So we’re growing up these studio infrastructures. So it’s quite a large endeavor happening under the Hasbro umbrella right now.
Are there any, for lack of a better word, safeguards designed for this level of forward-looking and spending? I love the idea of all these studios growing and tackling all these new IPs, but also–just reading our industry right now–there’s just so many studios that grew a little bit too quickly over the pandemic and now good people are being laid off because the numbers aren’t quite matching the numbers that people were bringing in in 2020 and 2021.
We’re being diligent about our growth and I think the good thing is we’re obviously on the other side of the pandemic now. I think the studios are really now coming into that period where they’re growing. I think we’ve certainly looked and seen the lessons over the last couple of years. I think we’re being very diligent about our growth. We’ve got a lot of seasoned professionals who have been in the industry for a long time, and of course we’re still part of Hasbro, so we’ve got that constant dialogue back and forth with Hasbro about how quickly does it make sense to be growing and things like that. But this is a core part of Hasbro’s growth strategy, over the next several years. So the investment obviously is considerable, but yeah, I like to think we’re being very measured and diligent and just making sure we’re not growing too quickly.
Going back to what you said earlier, what do you mean when you’re saying that WotC and Hasbro are trying to build to the strengths of these studios? What’s the process?
[In some cases,] we went out and sought certain people. And in some cases it was the opposite, it was just people we were talking to. So, [as an example,] Atomic Arcade is doing the Snake Eyes game. We’ve got a lot of folks there that worked on Arkham, like our studio head. We wanted people who brought Batman to life, to, in very much the same way, what we want to do with Snake Eyes. And honestly, I cannot wait to show you. I’m a huge G.I. Joe fan and if you had seen what the team has done–I cannot wait to show this to people. And that replicates across our studio ecosystem. It was very much a conversation of, “Okay, what kind of game do we want to do? What makes sense, and what are the strengths we can bring to it?” And a big part of that strength is just talent that’s already done it before.
How are they bringing Snake Eyes to life in a video game?
So myself and a lot of people on the team, at the risk of aging us, grew up with the ’80s cartoon and things like that, and then the comic books and things and all of that fun. So the question is, in some respects, the philosophical creative approach of how do we make this [game] work in a medium where new people might be discovering it [for the first time]? And the answer to that is just obviously make a great game first.
[Snake Eyes] is just an amazing character. He’s got that mix of commando, but he’s also a ninja. And I won’t say too much about the story or the game and things like that, but he is definitely the piece with which we’re looking to introduce or reintroduce a bunch of other characters and things like that back to the world. I don’t know if you were a big comic guy, but I was and I’m going to totally sound like a geek here but, in issue 21–it was one of those famous comics–there was just no dialogue, it just totally focused on [Snake Eyes being mute]. And for a character that can’t communicate, they can’t speak, it actually creates some fun gameplay mechanics for us as well.
When the time comes, we will have you sit down with [the game] and you will love it. [The team] have come up with some really, really clever ideas.
Can we expect to see more totally new ideas that don’t connect to any existing Hasbro IP?
We have a couple of ideas in the oven. So the short answer is yes, you can expect to see us do more new IP campaigns as a medium. Again, I’ll go back to my statement, Hasbro is a company that has play in its DNA and that is what it was based on. And play has changed over the last hundred years considerably. And Hasbro is making a lot of investments in the video game space because that’s where people are playing, more and more. So some of those will be expressions of things like G.I. Joe, like D&D. But you are going to see more and more new IP being developed under that banner as well.
For all these studios, are they independent? Do they communicate with each other? Are they helping each other out? What’s their relationship?
Yeah, great question. The goal is building a lot of the studios, they’re all being built obviously under very strong creative leadership. So we want to give them the flexibility, it’s all about empowering the creative powerhouses we’ve brought in. And they do communicate amongst one another as well. So it’s kind of a combination where they’ve got a tremendous amount of creative independence. My role and our role within Hasbro is just how do we plus things up so four plus four equals 10? How do we amplify what they’ve got? We bring some structure to it, some centralized services, so we’re not replicating things with everybody. But yeah, the teams have a tremendous amount of creative liberty. We all work together really, really well. I am fortunate that I know many of these creatives, the industry is so small, from other stages of my own career. So yeah, it’s a nice mix where everyone’s got a lot of creative freedom, but they get the benefits that come with being part of a larger organization.
Given the success of Baldur’s Gate 3, is the goal for all of your D&D projects to replicate those systems? Or make games that are as different as possible an experience from Baldur’s Gate 3?
We were obviously thrilled at the reception of Baldur’s Gate 3. I think that proved a lot of things. People want these kinds of games and they want high quality, and things that are true to the franchise. So we obviously don’t exist on an island. When we make a D&D game, we work with the D&D team. We also want to tie into what they’re planning for future releases and things like that. So the different types of games and the roadmaps we have are tied in with a larger D&D strategy. So you may see some overlap, but if you do, it’s intentional. And that’s kind of where I go back to the studios having their creative freedom, but there’s still that larger plan. So you’re going to be seeing a number of different kinds of D&D experiences coming.
In terms of working with the D&D brand and doing your best to be on the same page, how do studios work alongside the system change as D&D 5e transitions to One D&D?
It’s an influence in some cases. So let me go and use Baldur’s Gate as an example. I mean, that was a very direct expression of the books and the [5e] rule set, and we will do games that are like that. And we will also do games that are just more action oriented and things like that, but it’ll always be grounded in some form to D&D, whether that grounding might be from a direct expression of the rule set, it might be the world, it might be characters. We’ll express it in different ways, but it’ll always be authentic.
And in terms of just settings, and maybe you can’t get into this, but Baldur’s Gate 3 is obviously set in Faerun, the best-known D&D setting right now and one that–at least for me–I’m a little tired of playing in. Any efforts to try to create a D&D-inspired game that isn’t necessarily set in that main world of Faerun?
Yes.
Just yes?
Obviously you hit the nail on the head–that’s certainly the most popular area. When you go to people wanting expressions of what they know, that’s a big part of it. We are going to play around the edges, a little bit as well. I can’t say too much more than that.
Look, man, Eberron is right there.
It’s funny, I’m a huge D&D player and I’m playing in Eberron right now.
Hell yeah. Any sort of roadmap for all of these games?
We definitely have a roadmap that goes pretty far in, actually, with dates kind of written in pencil as to when we think all of them are coming. And as we do project updates and things with the teams and things like that, we are constantly evaluating and reevaluating. You can probably guess based on what’s been announced, kind of like how the ball starts rolling. But we’ve not called any dates yet, although that time will certainly come when we feel a good level of confidence.
We don’t want to rush out with anything. This business is really, really important to us. It’s close to me personally. It’s close to all of the creatives we brought in, so we’re very diligent about making sure everything has time to get to the right stage.
This interview was edited for both brevity and readability.
