A visually and mechanically fantastic platformer that unfortunately ends too quickly. All in all I had a great time with Pepper Grinder. From the music to visuals , being art style and character design. The art style reminds me of almost a pixelated adventure time , cute , charming and recognisable. This is also true for the level design , you can see exactly which part of the scenery will react in a certain way to your oversized pepper grinder.

The game starts with the main character waking up on a beach, finds a huge drill and you gain control. That’s it, that’s the only story you get apart from the very end boss. Which leads me to the one noticeable negative. Lack of a story, that being said you can see things appear in the levels and the backgrounds that fill you in on the world. Just not as much to hint at why our character is even there.

So the premise of the game is simple at heart, its a platformer that uses a comically large drill bit to traverse every level. Of course as the levels go on , the game throws in more mechanics, types of terrain and several types of enemies. Through out each level very are coins to collect, vases to break and secret passages to find. There are two currencies in the game , coins which you find every where, but have close to nothing to do with and then you have Doubloons of which there are 5 hidden in every level. With these you can buy a golden key for 10 to unlock a secret level in every world, or you can use them to unlock different hair and cape colours for your character. Finding these is fun and luckily they appear on your HUD in order, so you can see roughly where you missed that one sneaky spot.

Every secret level was unique , every world had a new awesome design and implemented exciting mechanics. The difficulty rose up at a good pace, and at this point I need to mention, this is a controller game. The movement is fluid , never had an issue with it and the button layout is simply intuitive. Back to the difficulty , it was paced very nicely , as soon as I got one mechanic perfected , the game threw another. at the end of every world , roughly 5-7 levels you will get to a boss. All of them have awesome designs and once again they all have a unique mechanic to defeat it that go hand in hand with whatever you dealt with in the levels leading up to it. Although there was one level, the second to last level in the game that really tested my skills and I must say I spent more time on it than any boss fight before that

It’s a real shame that the game is this short, took me just under 4 hours to complete every level and that with taking my time to collect as many secrets as I can. How ever the game gives you a time attack option if you decide to replay a level. At last there are stickers you can buy from each worlds shop keeper a long side sticker pages which act as backgrounds. They don’t really do anything but let you create your own screenshots with quite a few tools at your disposal.

I want to keep this review short, as this game is definitely worth the little time it offers. As to the price it may be a little too much for 4 hours of gameplay at £12.72 / roughly $14 on steam. But if you have the money to spare or see the game on sale I would highly recommend experiencing what this title has to offer.

The game is available on steam and Nintendo switch 28 March 2024

Background

Lawn Mowing Simulator is developed by Skyhook Games, a UK-based developer with experience in developing simulation games. Simulation games differ from many other genres of video games in that they are designed to be as realistic as possible and to simulate certain activities such as playing a sport, running a farm, or creating a rail network. While other games can often be stylized, both in terms of gameplay and graphics, simulation games are usually very realistic (although there are some exceptions). Lawn Mowing Simulator aims to recreate the fun of mowing lawns through playing a videogame.

First Impressions

Lawn Mowing Simulator has nice bright menus that are at first sight appealing to look at. However, once you try to traverse the options you’ll see that the menus are clunky, hard to navigate and that there are too many options. The menus aren’t intuitive at all, and a simpler design may have been a better option for the developers. I also noticed ads for DLC in the menu which shouldn’t be the focus when you are deciding what mode to play on your new game. The overly complicated menus that try to sell you more content when you haven’t even got into a lawn mower for the first time result in a confusing experience where the player may feel overwhelmed with options and game modes.

To be fair to Lawn Mower Simulator, there are free play modes, a career mode, and more, so whereas the game could have just had a free play mode and let the player experience the gameplay primarily through that option, the addition of a career mode is an ambitious choice. There are also 20-30 minute long ‘contract’ modes, where the player is given a contract to cut grass in a certain area. The wealth of game options is a asset to Lawn Mowing simulator it’s just a shame that the menus are so clunky.

Gameplay

The experience of mowing lawns in Lawn Mowing Simulator is a realistic experience as simulator games often are. The player starts off in first-person mode before they get into the Lawn Mowing machine and the way the game feels at this stage, means you may have been expecting to pick up a rifle and start a first-person shooter campaign, but this is lawn mowing, and the games primarily about cutting grass. Once you sit in the machine, the player can switch to third-person mode. Then you get the engine running and can start to drive the Lawn Mower over to a grassy area. The Lawn Mower doesn’t cut grass automatically, you have to press the X button to begin cutting grass. It’s not as satisfying an experience as core gameplay mechanics in other games.

In Resident Evil 4 it is the satisfying shooting and hitting targets that makes the game satisfying, in Zelda:Ocarina of Time, it is Z-targeting, and the resulting combat that makes the game so good. Unfortunately, cutting grass in Lawn Mowing simulator isn’t the amazing gameplay element that it could have been. Cutting grass in Lawn Mowing simulator is serviceable, and I’m sure the game has its fans, but it doesn’t make for a really fun experience, probably similarly to what cutting grass is like in the real world.

Sounds and Visuals

As a simulation game, Lawn Mowing Simulator recreates gardens, parks, and outdoor areas quite realistically. That’s the game’s aim and the graphics look ok. Each blade of grass is depicted. However, the graphics look really dated. They would look bad for an Xbox 360 game, let alone in 2024. Textures are muddy, graphical elements ‘pop in’ regularly, and it doesn’t look good. However, it’s a colorful game, and there are many shades of green. In terms of sound design, there are nature noises that play while you are mowing lawns, and the sound is well done for what is needed. However, there is no soundtrack while playing (at least that I came across). Again the sound and visual design is servicable, but not great.

Conclusion

Overall, I’d say Lawn Mowing Simulator is a serviceable simulation of what it is like to mow lawns. While this is not my kind of game, I can see why others would value it and become addicted to it with its wealth of game modes. However, the menus are clunky, DLC is offered as soon as you start the game, and the graphics are poor, despite doing their job. Any game’s value comes down to its gameplay elements and unlike the great titles out there, the core gameplay elements of Lawn Mowing Simulator are not satisfying, or addictive enough to make this game worth my time. As far as simulation games go, Lawn Mowing Simulator is an average title and should be avoided unless you are passionate about mowing lawns.

” A Gritty game thats always on beat “

This game is fantastic simple fun that takes inspirations from games like hades and hifi rush to a very different level! Hi my name is phant0m and these are my thoughts on the game Beat Slayer!

Visuals

First thing I gotta talk about is the fun and gritty art style. It’s very much a colorful steampunk base mixed with some cool color flourishes to balance a bit of dead grays and awesome brights, the character design is especially awesome since the characters look great! Highly detailed and unique, the level design isn’t as special looking though, although simple it does nothing to peak my interest, neither do the enemies which fall flat just the same.

Gameplay

The gameplay is super inspired by a mix of hades and Hi fi rush, you’ll be fighting on a continuous roguelike mode while hitting and dodging on the even more continuous beat, if you hit the enemies on beat you’ll do more damage and kill the enemies quickly which feels as great as it sounds. It’s fun and super punchy, the weapons have decent variety but I do wish there were more, the skill tree is also super interesting as it truly does make you stronger. The combat is honestly the highlight of the game for me.

Story 

The story is also not bad, the game’s plot follows a simple concept, you are trying to save your brother in a dystopian world where the government is against you, it’s a simple concept, and it would’ve worked well if not for the dialogue, the dialogue loses me on so many instances. I felt that it wasn’t interesting or oftenly the characters stopped talking about important things or what I was doing currently. 

Characters

The characters seem interesting and have quite a few defining traits making them interesting. But they lack any real depth making them bland in the time that i played. They do have cool designs, but not cool enough to be interesting during dialogue or story beats. Speaking of which, the voice actors do a good job of entertaining me, although most of the characters don’t sound different from regular people, they still played their part well enough to show off emotions and fun dialogue, just not heavily immersive.

Music

And The music is really cool, punky and right in rhythm with the combat and world. It’s not an amazing track but it’s good enough to listen and fight during it, there aren’t many tracks but they fill up a good amount of the game. and side note that the game is always consistently on beat, and if you can’t stay on beat they provide an assistance mode that I personally didn’t use, since I could use some rhythm.

Performance

The performance of the game is pretty good, it runs perfectly on my computer, and the controller support is amazing. Didn’t have a single issue in my several hours played.

Verdict 

Anyways if you’re wondering I do recommend this game! It’s super fun, engrossing, punchy and just absolutely awesome. I give this game an 8.5/10 With super minor flaws like the story and characters, but this still absolutely skyrockets to one of my favorite roguelikes out there! Those were my thoughts on Beat Slayer! Thx For Reading! Keep doing great things! You’re good at them. Bye 🙂

Side Notes

This was reviewed on PC which contained an Rx 6750 XT powercolor, and an intel i5 13400f. I ran into 0 crashes or framerate drop issues during my playtime. also the games controller support is amazing, there was 0 problems in connecting my controller and playing.