PEPPERED: An Existential Platformer Review – Platforming Isn’t the Point. Everything Else Is

It really does pain me to give high scores willy-nilly, but it would be a disservice to PEPPERED: An Existential Platformer if I gave it anything less than the equivalent of a high five. From a supermodel that plays video games, drinks beer, and laughs at your jokes. All of them.

This might piss some people off in how I’m reviewing this, and perhaps a spoiler if you genuinely want to read all the way to the bottom, but I have to be clear that it’s the broad ‘design’ that gets this accolade, more so than the actual gameplay. Let me explain.

PEPPERED: An Existential Platformer is a platform game, and there’s no waste in other qualifiers, as it is very much in the field of existential. It’s what you leave out rather than what you leave in. This is great for thinkers like me who relish in ambiguity and personal interpretations.

But before you swipe left, or whatever it is you kids do, don’t confuse this with a highly philosophical, preachy title. For context, movement is initially conducted on a swivel chair, bullets adhere to speed limits and stop signs, shopping trolleys are a conventional form of travel, and death is certainly not the end.

Free Will Is A Thing

A quick reveal of review tactics: I seldom look up a game before playing it. That has the potential to skew my opinion or expectations quite dramatically. If there’s a samurai on the front, I expect to see some swordplay. A fish? Dating.

That clean slate provides a natural response, but it’s also an ignorant one, as I’d completely forgotten the ‘existential platformer’ part attached to PEPPERED. So, when I was swivel-chair-bound collecting coins and making coffee with some pedestrian decision-making, I thought I was playing a mildly interactive visual novel/simulation.

Then, following a series of seemingly natural decisions, I got my first ending after 20 minutes and thought I had one of those choices matter scenarios, a bit like Sucker For Love: Crush Landing. No problem, as I enjoyed that a lot.

On my next run through PEPPERED: An Existential Platformer, I took the next obvious step and changed paths and was a bit more rebellious. What resulted was a dynamic title scene and a game with legs. My own. My hero was now standing on their own two feet/paws (no idea what it is), and I am now in a bona fide platformer.

Earth’s Greatest Star

I could have hidden that from you, about forgetting that this is called PEPPERED: An Existential Platformer, but that was the revelation, and I was like, oooh… existential. And it’s a platformer. I get it. However, the platformer side of things actually was less appealing, which was quite ironic.

In this world, nobody dies. The God of Death has been imprisoned by Earth’s greatest hero, Theodore Glagolev, for the past 99 years. Every year, Theodore uses a star to secure that prison, but on the 100th anniversary, he hasn’t shown up. More importantly, it’s on the day you apply to be a coffee boy.

PEPPERED: An Existential Platformer truly is about the choices you make. Taking control of your fate unleashes a fantastic array of opportunities, oddball characters, hilarious dialogue, and being branded a thief. Star Thief, to be precise. Guess what you’re going to steal?

Star Thieves Can’t Jump

Folks want to live forever, so they aren’t too happy about this, and random citizens will hunt/report you as they’re hopeful Theodore will return. However, not everyone wants to live forever, and a cult that worships the God of Death is manifesting his inevitable release.

You’ll be going through various locations to reach Death’s Castle, but you have a cop on your trail, who is takes instructions from a highly incompetent police chief. Clearly, she’s the competent one, but the skits are pretty darn funny, and very meta. No, not that Zuckerberg fella.

Star Thief can do a handful of platforming things. Obviously, jump, but no double-jump. He can dive bomb certain surfaces to launch up, as well as slide through tight spaces, too. It’s quite generic, really, and, as mentioned, the weak part of the game.

PEPPERED: An Existential Platformer isn’t a precision platformer, though developer Mostly Games engineered that into the design, as we’re essentially immortal. Deaths will teleport you back to a checkpoint, and you can trigger a death to spawn at a checkpoint that’s perhaps behind a wall or otherwise unreachable.

One Shot, Many Consequences

Yes, you’re immortal, but based on your choices, that shifts and lives become limited. The star in question shifts to multiple stars, and everything that preceded the way you were playing, and its narrative before it, gets thrown out the window. And that’s what I love about PEPPERED: An Existential Platformer.

It’s really funny. Not belly-laugh cheap shots, but layered jokes, ideas, and situations that are so absurd that they start to make sense. In comparison to the first ending, the rest of the game was entirely different and is trolling you.

A great emphasis in PEPPERED: An Existential Platformer is that everything is one shot. That could be read as a permadeath situation and a full list of frustrations, but no, it’s quite literal. If you encounter a boss or mini-game type thing, if you lose, you can’t try again, and the story adapts.

Though that equally makes it tough, as there are no manual save points as such, and you’re heavily reliant on checkpoints which can put you further and further away from your goal. And, to repeat those statements, the platforming isn’t the best, so having to redo areas isn’t so much fun.

How Existential

What is fun is how unique the experience is. The characters are quirky, the dialogue is unlike anything else, and I love the artwork, which is perfectly suited to how… existential this is. It’s a game about breaking the fourth wall without trying to be clever. Quite effortless, in fact.

I also really liked the music. It was a subtle hip-hop – sometimes chiptune affair that was understated and matched the nuanced delivery. PEPPERED: An Existential Platformer isn’t that philosophical thing where you’re questioning your life, as the scenarios in the game aren’t likely to reflect your life experiences.

It is quite a short playthrough, though there’s a fair amount of threads to pull at, and again, I need to draw your attention to the one-shot idea. After finishing your first playthrough, you can go back and play areas and redo them.

The actual gameplay part isn’t as enjoyable as the concept, and I wasn’t that thrilled about having to repeat platforming sections. From my perspective, everything is going for this game apart from the platforming aspect. It’s not horrible; it’s just pretty average.