With the game Sporty Peppers, sport is not just a story of consoles

Playful and immersive sports games are usually Nintendo’s favorite field. With iconic franchises such as Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Ring Fit Adventure or the very recent Nintendo Switch Sports, many Big N fans have taken to the shower after a good gaming session. As many as they are, it is still reserved for a certain part of players across the world, which is a shame when you consider the benefits of sport on mental and physical health.

It is from this observation that the idea of Sporty Peppers. This punchy name designates a video game that allows you to play sports while having fun, without hardware or console and at a derisory cost. Available on PC via Steam, Sporty Peppers offers you 3 mini-games in which you will have to run, do squats or jump, to win. The only equipment you will need is a smartphone.

It is your mobile device that will indeed take care of transcribing your movements in the mini-games thanks to the front camera of this one, via the Sporty Tracker application. Sporty Peppers therefore works like any other game, but is even more accessible for the general public. But what is it worth in use?

Sporty Peppers in the starting blocks

For the moment 3 mini-games are offered in Sporty Peppers, and the developers are already announcing that 4 games per year are expected, which is equivalent to a release every 3 months. Those already available are called Golden Run, Winter Rush and Fast Libero. We started our training with GoldenRunwhich looks just like the mobile game Temple Run.

To move, you must run in place and then jump when you encounter obstacles or holes in your path. You must also pause when a fireball is heading towards you, in order to summon a shield. This is the game that seemed to us the most playful because of its environment quite far from reality, and its very fun gameplay. As an appetizer, we don’t do better.

We then moved on to winter rush, which puts you in the shoes of an alpine skier. In its mechanism, we are dealing with a runner (type Subway Surfer) that asks you to change lanes to avoid obstacles or take rewards. Sporty Peppers nevertheless adds the possibility of doing tricks by doing a squat before each springboard you take.

Of the three games, this is the one that required the most effort from us, not at the sporting level, but at the level of understanding the movements. We sometimes found the operation too reactive, and many times not enough. The balance is rather complicated to find and squats are only very rarely taken into account. Never mind, even if the reliability is not at the top, on your side, you still burn as many calories. Nonetheless, it adds a slightly frustrating dimension.

Finally, we ended our session with Fast Libero, which puts you in the shoes of an athlete. In competition against 4 players, you must reach the end of the track as quickly as possible while avoiding obstacles in 3 rounds: the first you must jump to avoid them, the second you will have to do squats to pass under them, and the third you mix everything up a bit.

This is the mini-game that required the most physical effort as it is based on a fairly high pace. Chaining running, jumping and squats turns out to be a rather intense exercise, which will not leave you unmoved at the end of the session.

Why Sporty Peppers is a winning bet?

All the strength of Sporty Peppers, in addition to its very entertaining aspect, lies in its accessibility. In 2021, more than 77% of the French population over the age of 15 owned a smartphone in France according to INSEE. On the computer side, about 80% of households owned one in 2019. It goes without saying that since the start of the pandemic, this figure has been greatly boosted, as evidenced by the shortage of components that still affects the technology sector.

material level, Sporty Peppers is therefore a fun sports solution that is more accessible than any console game, and is also available at a lower cost. For the first 3 games, you will have to pay the mere sum of €3.99. The whole thing takes you a good twenty minutes and even more if you decide to play it again or test the online modes. Without being completely complete, Sporty Peppers nevertheless offers a viable and promising solution.

However, make no mistake. Whether Sporty Peppers has an omnipresent playful side, it remains above all a sport. At the end of a session, you must stretch to avoid any inconvenience the next day (or the same day in our case). We regret a lack of awareness of warming up and stretching. The interface therefore remains very simple, understandable, but still too minimalist for the potential of the game. For example, we would have liked to have a calorie counter or a stopwatch that shows us how long the session lasted. Sporty Peppers nevertheless remains well done, and only asks to be perfected.