Many modern indie games are passionate fan homages to forgotten cult hits underappreciated in their day. Just recently, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk brought back Jet Set Radio’s vibes for a new generation. And now, developer Ahr Ech's Pepper Grinder revives the drill-based platforming of Drill Dozer, a 2006 Game Boy Advance title developed by Game Freak between Pokemon installments. We played a brief Pepper Grinder demo before its 2024 release and concluded that more games should give you power tools. It's just that fun.

A Spicy World

The brief, three-level demo we played didn’t give us much insight into Pepper Grinder’s plot, but we know the basic premise. Playing as the shipwrecked Pepper, you must use a drill to travel the island and find your treasure. Honestly, it doesn’t need to be more complicated than that. 

Pepper Grinder impresses with its bold and colorful pixel art. Expressive enemies emerge from the ground. Environments crackle and shake as you tunnel forward with tremendous force. Stellar sound design turns constant whirring into music for your ears. It’s an indie game that resembles your awesome memories of retro games without being beholden to their limitations. It’s like Shovel Knight, another title that happens to be about digging. We don’t know Pepper Grinder’s PC specs yet, but we played the demo on a Steam Deck at a perfect 60 frames per second.

The Daily Grind

Pretty much everything in Pepper Grinder revolves around the drill. Sure, you can walk forward and perform a tiny little hop. But when you need to spin through enemies and barrel through rock, press that trigger and start drilling. 

As a platforming mechanic, the drill adds a satisfying sense of analog fluidity to a genre that can easily feel like a boxy grid. Mastering the tool oftentimes means thinking more like a fish than a mole. For example, by diving into rock and accelerating upward at the proper point in your arc, you receive a propulsive boost upon remerging. It's vital for leaping across large gaps and avoiding obstacles. You can also keep your breaching chain going by collecting items in front of you, similar to rings in a Sonic the Hedgehog game.

Pepper Grinder is at its best (at least in this demo) when it embraces these chaotic combos. Some enemies can only be damaged from certain angles, and we loved dancing around them before dashing into them like an angry narwhal. The game feels downright elegant as you snake forward in a continuous loop. Levels guide you into these paths with their unconventional designs. 

It’s not perfect, though. We understand the game must ramp up the challenge, but it occasionally forces you to follow a single narrow unbroken line and dumps you back to the beginning if you deviate from the rote sequence. This was especially frustrating with gates that change directions once you drill through them. The drill is too inherently unstable for this kind of precise movement. It’s much better suited for flee-flowing locomotion and exploration. 

The demo also gave us a glimpse of the world map, where you select levels, and the item shop, where you use collected treasures to buy power-ups (like health boosts) from the in-game gacha machine. We’ll have to wait until the final release to see if the game has more to offer beyond its series of short stages. 

Drill, Baby, Drill

Video games love themes of empowerment, and in Pepper Grinder, not even the earth’s crust can stop you from cutting a path toward platforming victory. Like Drill Dozer before it, Pepper Grinder is Ecco the Dolphin meets Black and Decker. We’ll find out just how deeply Pepper Grinder burrows into our hearts when it launches on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2024. 

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