Ah. That’s more like it.

As the one person I know who likes Donkey Kong Country, Drill Dozer, and that one burrowing escape sequence from Ori and the Will of the Wisps, I knew Pepper Grinder was going to be right up my alley. What impressed me though, was just how precisely the game melded its influences into something that felt simultaneously fresh yet familiar. The level design is classic obstacle escalation (introduce a concept, scale it up, throw in a twist, and then run the player through a final exam into their victory lap) with DKC inspired secrets with skull coin collectibles for unlocking secret levels. Many of the usual formula beats are present as well to force execution tests, from the usual moving parts in the forms of cannons, rope swings, and grappling points, to constantly present sources of danger like the freezing ocean or the temporary dirt patches created from cooling lava. What sets Pepper Grinder apart however, is that the terrain itself is the main obstacle. It feels like such a natural pairing to seamlessly mesh environmental navigation with the course’s very foundation, and the best moments of the game lean into funneling the player through various layers of shifting and isolated terrain while tearing through all that may stand in their way.

That said, I think to really understand the nuances of Pepper Grinder, one has to readily commit to its time attack mode. I could have been sold on the game-feel alone as an amalgam of Donkey Kong Country’s momentum physics and Drill Dozer’s force feedback, but playing under circumstances that force you to squeeze every possible second out of the timer gives the player a better appreciation of its movement mechanics. Pepper is not very fast on foot, nor can she naturally jump very far. Therefore, you’d think that most speed comes from tunneling through terrain, but it’s not quite that either. Rather, the player has to maintain momentum through the interplay of drilling and jumping by exiting terrain via the drill run (boosting right as you’re about to leave a patch of dirt), which commits the player to the projected arc leaving the terrain but with the reward of significantly more speed. The result is some of the weightiest and most satisfying movement I have ever experienced in any platformer. I was constantly figuring out new ways to save seconds by timing by boosts both within terrain and right before exiting terrain (since you can’t just spam boost and using it too early can lock you out from getting the necessary boost jump out of terrain), skipping certain obstacles entirely with well-placed drill runs, and figuring out how to manage my health to bypass unfavorable cycles and damage boost past mines and thorns. Some of those gold time attack medals were tight ordeals, but I absolutely savored every moment of the grind.

Bosses as a whole are a significant improvement from the usual quality of those in Donkey Kong Country. You’re not safe just waiting above ground, and burrowing to dodge attacks forces you to at least dash-dance underground since drilling means you can’t stay in one place. As a result, the player is constantly on the move, and you’re incentivized to do so anyways given that most of the bosses require multiple hits to defeat and aren’t the usual “invincible until they’re done attacking” crop from DKC. The biggest complaint I can levy here is that boss hit/hurtboxes can feel imprecise; I’ve heard that many players have had difficulty figuring out how to correctly drill into the beetle boss’s underbelly, and while I had no issues there, I did die a few times from the skeleton king’s heel hitbox where there was no visible attack in its vicinity. Still, I much prefer these boss fights over many of its peers, and figuring out when and how to best aim drill runs from the ground to speedrun bosses was just as much of a pleasure as speedrunning the courses themselves.

There are a few questionable design choices that could be touched upon here. Firstly, there’s a shop system present where you can purchase optional stickers from a gacha machine as well as temporary health boosts. The former is mostly forgivable given that they don’t impact the gameplay otherwise and can be cleared in about three minutes of purchasing and opening capsules. That said, I feel as if the latter could be removed entirely given that I never felt pressured to purchase insurance for courses and bosses, especially because I was often taking hits anyways to skip past obstacles and because you’re not going to regain the extra health capacity in-level once it’s gone. Secondly, bosses in time-attack mode force you to watch their opening unskippable cutscenes before getting to the action, and this gets extremely irritating when you’re constantly restarting fights to get better times. Finally, Pepper Grinder has a few gimmick areas in the forms of a couple of robot platforming segments, two snowmobile sections where you just hold forward on the control stick, and a couple of run-and-gun levels with little drilling involved. I can look past most of these given that they don’t take up much time and that I enjoyed all the minecart levels from DKC as is, though I do wish that they spaced the gimmicks apart a bit more given that levels 4-3 and 4-4 both have significant run and gun segments sending each course off.

If I did have any lasting complaints, it would be that I just want more of this game. Most players will finish adventure mode in under four hours. That said, even despite a lack of polish here and there, I absolutely adore Pepper Grinder. At this time of writing, I’ve 100%ed the game and even gone back to a few time trials after snagging all the gold medals just to further polish my records. It’s often difficult for me to pin down what makes a game feel good to play, but in this case, I just know. Pepper Grinder feels like an adrenaline rush made just for me, and though its execution barriers and short length will likely make this a tough sell for many, it is undoubtably some of the most fun I have had with a game this year. If you’re curious or enjoy anything that I’ve discussed in this write-up, please give the demo a shot. They don’t make 2D platformers like this anymore, and Pepper Grinder’s existence leaves me wondering why when they absolutely killed it on their first try.

A transcendent experience

I grew up with poker (my grandfather is the God of Poker), so this was both very nostalgic for me and an inspired twist on a classic

The music is masterful, the sound effects are mesmerizing, and it's going to go down in history as one of the most perfect roguelikes ever created

10/10

P.S. - I can't wait to see if the modding community gets hold of this. I can't IMAGINE what crazy decks and Jokers they could make

I don't think one simply stops playing Balatro, but I've beaten the game with every deck and had a win on gold difficulty, so I feel qualified to review it now. Balatro is very fun and incredibly addictive, but is it the best deckbuilder roguelike? Well... maybe. While this game is very good, I don't quite think it's the second coming of the messiah as many others seem to.

The great deckbuilder roguelikes before Balatro have all been enriched by sort of being two games in one. In something like Slay the Spire or Monster Train, you have the strategic element of building your deck and the tactical element of actually playing with the deck you've made, but I find that the tactical element of Balatro is a bit lacking. At it's best, playing a blind in Balatro consists of milling your hand until you hit the one or two hand types you've based your build around, and at worst with some joker combinations it barely even matters what you actually play.

This lack of moment-to-moment tactical depth leads to a couple of issues for me. In most great Roguelikes (specifically thinking of The Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon here but it applies to deckbuilders too), you supplement shortfalls on a strategic front with player skill. That is to say, it's perfectly possible to beat Enter the Gungeon with a mediocre loadout if you just 'git gud' at using the tools at your disposal. This isn't a theme at all in Balatro; if you don't happen to get some good jokers by, say, ante 3, then that run is just dead and no level of player skill is going to fix that. This can make the game feel very frustrating at times; if you just roll badly when it comes to your first few jokers, there really isn't much you can do about it except sigh and hold the reset button.

The lack of a tactical side in Balatro also makes the game feel a bit brainless at times; while I greatly enjoy this game, it often feels like I'm enjoying it more on the level of something like Vampire Survivors or Cookie Clicker. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy both of those idle games greatly, but I don't like having to compare Balatro to them because Balatro feels like it could be so much more. I think the lack of context doesn't help with this gamefeel either; while the theming in Monster Train is kinda weird and cringey, it feels more tactile to actually be fighting against something rather than just have a raw number go up as in Balatro.

But all that said, this is absolutely not intended to be a negative review, because the strategic side of gameplay in Balatro is fantastic. There are so many different ways to break this game; I'm 50+ hours in and still finding new uses for jokers that I never would have dreamed of. Despite there being almost 200 jokers, none (or at least barely any) of them feel objectively bad or useless; some jokers are niche but powerful, some are only of value in the early game, but every card in here has its place. The game is also excellent at sprinkling little rewards throughout; most of the jokers are unlocked through side objectives rather than just for beating the game, and going for these extra goals can make you play in a completely different way, and it always feels like you are achieving something. Add on top of that the challenges, the many different deck types and the many different ways you can augment a run outside of jokers, and there really is just an obscene amount of content and replayability in here.

The game feels really good too... I'd compare it to Vampire Survivors again (this time in a good way) in terms of how great it is at using visuals and sound design to keep your lizard brain as happy as it can possibly be. And while I discussed downsides of the overall theming earlier, it really is great at both making this both stand out and be accessible. There's no big walls of text to read on your playing cards, it's just the standard pack of 52 that everybody knows, and you score using standard poker hands. Anyone familiar with poker will need no time to understand how to play this, and even if you aren't familiar it won't take long because everything in this game is very clear and presented upfront to the player. Balatro could definitely do with some more music though; the one song in the game is pretty good, but man do you get tired of it after 20+ hours of playtime, thank god for the mute button.

So in short yes, Balatro good. Balatro very good. I don't think it's the new undisputed champion of deckbuilding roguelikes as a genre and, while I don't think it would take much tweaking for it to become that champion, I don't think that's the niche that Balatro is looking to fill. It's probably better to think of Balatro as it's own thing... Balatro is to deckbuilders what Vampire Survivors is to bullet hells, a spin on the formula that completely changes the gameplay and gamefeel, opening it up to a whole new audience without alienating prior fans of the genre. And viewed through this lens, Balatro could hardly be any better.