PEPPERED: An Existential Platformer will bully you. It will remember when you died over and over and punish you for it. It will remember if you did or didn’t make the ‘right’ choices and smack you across the face a little. PEPPERED is a game that doesn’t suffer fools gladly. You’ll have to be on your game and ready to make some tough choices if you want to defeat the God Of Death.

This God Of Death has been trapped and survives each year by the famous Theodore, presenting him with a Life Star. However,  when Theodore goes missing, your protagonist decides to take matters into their own hands and steals the Life Star in order to kill the God of Death. This prompts the world’s media to dub the protagonist the title of Star Thief, and suddenly you’re on the run as nothing has worked out how you planned….

A lot of things didn’t go as I had planned in PEPPERED, and that’s where the ‘existential’ element of this platformer comes into play. For example, your first run will probably finish within ten minutes; but don’t worry, this is all part of the magic of PEPPERED. The game itself runs for about two hours, but really does depend on the choices that you make.

It also depends on how good you are at platforming, which can be difficult to master in PEPPERED. The way new game mechanics are introduced and then challenge you to use them all at once reminds me a lot of Guacamelee 2, another colourful platformer that really puts the player’s quick reaction times to the test. Star Thief’s main moves involve jumping and sliding, and using her cape as a parachute to maneuver herself around certain airborne obstacles.

The most challenging I felt was when PEPPERED introduced a ‘burn’ mechanic that saw me having to hide from the level’s blistering sun. It also introduced mechanical wheels that would slice me to death if I didn’t press a traffic light-type button that would disengage these wheels for an allocated time. Sometimes, however, moving Star Thief around was a bit clunky, especially if a new game mechanic had just been introduced.  Overall, though, PEPPERED rarely made me feel like I wasn’t challenged.

The world of PEPPERED: An Existential Platformer is littered with eclectic characters, settings and ideas. Its humour is surreal and dark, poking fun and commenting on the absurdity of our capitalist world. Do you want to do good things and be a hero? Or do you want to make a crapload of money and succumb to being a rich, powerful yet soulless workaholic?

The game plays on these ideas by including multiple elements that discuss this life conundrum. Firstly, it will place you in an office setting and give you the choice: save the world, or get a job? Whilst in this office, your main way of moving around is by slowly shuffling on an office chair, the diegetic sound of the wheels crunching against the ground a reminder that life here will be slow and tedious, yet consistent.

This tediousness mainly comes from some clunky gameplay, as the world of PEPPERED is a fun place to hang out in, mainly due to its world where characters look and feel like a less dark version of the personalities in Bojack Horseman. PEPPERED is littered with anthropomorphic characters, such as a koala store owner, a manipulative cat who drags on the end of a cigarette holder and many more wacky combos.

The protagonist Star Thief doesn’t have a recognisable animal comparison, looking like a cross between an alien and an animal’s skeleton, showing how far devs Mostly Games wanted to push the absurdity of their world. It’s these absurd elements that made me continue to explore PEPPERED: An Existential Platformer and where its magic lies.