Peppy's Adventure Review

Peppy's Adventure is a puzzle game where you play as Peppy, a bunny who is trying to save all of the bunnies that have been kidnapped by the evil foxes. In this cutesy adventure, you'll play throughout numerous worlds with the directional keys on a hand-drawn style setting with cute music to accompany you.

I’ll get this out of the way right now: Peppy’s Adventure isn’t a graphical feast under any means. Although I’m not saying the title is ugly, it does have a simplistic drawing style that isn’t necessarily the most charming I’ve seen; the same can be said for the audio, but the cute music is far better than the graphics. That said, the game more than makes up for it with its gameplay aspect.

Peppy's Adventure is either a game you love or hate, and I don't see any options between those two. You play with four directional keys trying to solve puzzles as some foxes follow you around each area, often working as an obstacle to overcome, but sometimes also serving to your advantage to click buttons. The simplicity ends at its controls, however, as Peppy's Adventure isn't scared to make you feel dumb, and that's what's great about it. Going into it, I was confident that I'd breeze through these levels but soon found myself hopelessly stuck unlike I've ever been before. 

When I say Peppy's Adventure is puzzling, I'm not even joking. Each of the game's levels after the second world (of six) felt gruellingly difficult which made me question how much of an intellectual I actually was. To remedy the criminally high difficulty, Peppy's Adventure gives you three skips. Once you're out, you can return to whichever level you used one on and complete it to retrieve the skip and use it elsewhere. I loved this system, as it allowed me to pass frustrating levels and return once I'd learned more or had dealt with getting stuck trying the same solution while expecting a different outcome.

Like a madman (madwoman?), I was stuck trying the same actions expecting different results, as Albert Einstein's definition of insanity, and "insanity" is pretty close to what Peppy's Adventure made me feel. Unforgivingly difficult, I would spend nearly an hour per level (often more on some) before I ultimately chose to give up. So naturally, it felt great whenever I could pass them!... That is, if I could.

The game's difficulty is both its strongest and weakest point, as those who are hardcore puzzle players will love spending time trying to figure out how to get past World 2 and finally into World 6 without losing their minds. On the contrary, dunces like me will get hopelessly stuck and struggle to get past the level at all. Although Peppy's Adventure offers you the possibility for a hint that works as a picture that suggests what you should do, it isn't forthcoming enough so that I could pass the one level I spent so long stuck in. And soon, this difficulty confirmed my main worry: Peppy's Adventure might be just a bit too hard for some.

Its simplistic controls serve to make you underestimate how much the game is going to make you want to cry yourself to sleep, as it will pummel apart your intellectual self-esteem incredibly fast. Although I didn't mind being hopelessly stuck because I am well aware of how dense I can be at times, it didn't feel possible for me to complete these a lot of the time, and it slowly dwindled my excitement. Of all of the puzzle games I've played (even Kombinera, which I mentioned as an incredibly difficult challenge in my review), Peppy's Adventure felt like the hardest. And that is, truthfully speaking, the game's best and worst feature.

Aside from the difficulty, there are numerous additional objectives per world that are sure to make it challenging for even the smartest of players. Each level will calculate your time and give you stars according to how well you did. The singular instance in which I got a four-star (which, as far as I could tell, was the highest score) was in Level 1-5, and thenceforth the four stars were not only very difficult, it felt borderline unachievable. The timed system on top of the chasing system with the foxes stopped Peppy's Adventure from being a relaxing puzzle game and made it easily the most stressful game I've played in recent times. And I just reviewed ELDEN RING!

In every world, there are also two special challenges and a golden leaf to acquire. The special challenges continue to elude me to this day, as they are often passing the level without senseless fox genocide (which was my go-to tactic against them). And although I did manage to get one golden leaf, I can't confidently say I'll do it again without another stroke of luck.

Truth is, despite being too stupid to fully finish Peppy's Adventure, the game is pretty great. Although a lot of its content is gated behind levels much too difficult for me to beat, I enjoyed my time with it; it offered me a level of difficulty I hadn't faced before. Numerous collectibles throughout the worlds are sure to increase the difficulty every once in a while, which should be a welcoming feature for those smarter than me.