On first glance Pepper Grinder is remarkable because of it's central gameplay conceit, on second glance I found remarkable because of everything else. Because while the digging gameplay of the titular grinder is really fun, it's not what kept me engaged. It was the world the game portrays that fascinated me the most. Initially I kinda assumed it would be a harmless, vividly rendered world like so many others 2D platformers (like what the boxart would imply). But Pepper Grinder is absolutely obsessed with death. Enemies explode into small bones, the one big collectible is skull coins and in the end you burrow through layers of bone. In its second half the game makes the tantalizing decision to mostly forego the complexities of its central movement system in favor of gimmicks and fights: controlling a robot of mass destruction, sinking ships with enemies on them, killing hundreds of goons in a final skirmish, destroying houses and firing a gatling gun. This doesn't meaningfully build on any gameplay dynamics, but instead on the thematic resonance of this game's obsession with death. You tear through an entire civilization in your conquest. You have no context as why you are doing this until the very end.