Indie development team, CreepyToad, has brought a new co-op or single-player horror title to our libraries. Still, you can forget how cute and innocent your grandmother is because they have created a monster with ‘Granny: Escape Together’, and she is anything but adorable; something nightmares are made from. 

Granny: Escape Together starts off like all good horror stories. You are randomly walking through a forest which looks creepy to begin with then you stop to see someone or something dancing in the distance, scratching your head and wondering why you are in a forest,  that someone vanishes and then ends up behind you hitting you in the head with a baseball bat. You are lucky enough to wake up in a room where you are left to your own devices to escape from a house. Alright, that might not be all horror stories but that is how this one goes and it has you more intrigued as to why you were even in the creepy-looking forest and how you ended up in this current situation. 

There was not too much to remember with the controls. The main thing you need to know is there is no jumping and no sprinting as you search through the house for a means to escape. You are walking around or crouching out of sight mostly as you navigate the many levels of the house. You could also plug your Xbox controller in if you are not much of a keyboard and mouse person. You had your basic interaction keybinds to pick things up or use them on another item and then things like being able to throw. There was not much to remember which was good because I spent most of the time escaping from Granny since you can’t 360 no scope her or something. 

Knowing it’s not going to be as simple as walking out of the front door and saying ‘Catch ya’ to Granny and Grandpa, these types of games both excite me and frustrate me. I like that each session item won’t always spawn in the same location so you can’t get used to getting things from the same place each time.

The developers did a great job of adding multiple locations you can escape with up to 3; the front door, garage and the basement, which all have their own puzzles and items required to grant freedom. During your hunting of items you will be met with Granny and Grandpa all the time patrolling the halls of the house and the dog that guards the kennel.

If you don’t think that is enough Granny has also put traps all over the house from bells hooked up to wire to her walking around and dropping bear traps that you need to try and move around. I’ll be the first to admit that I was streaming this whilst playing and had some viewers helping me with things I might have missed or what needed to go with what to reveal a new item, which helped a little as some things that seemed straightforward were the complete opposite.

I was unfortunately unable to test the co-op for this game which would have been some great fun as I think you could organise your friends to do something loud to lure away Gran whilst you are sneaking around the house. Some great strategising opportunities. I kept checking if there was a random server I could join but was unable to find one. 

It takes a bit to weird me out with sounds but hearing Granny running around the house screeching lines to ensure you are on your toes was a freakish experience. It was not so much what she was saying but her scratchy sounding voice just put the cherry on top for me. The sound effects though were quite simplistic such as the creaking of doors or snipping of wire. Apart from that you have some background music that would change from calm and collected to ‘Whippy Run’ in an instant.

While cool this would sometimes take away from the jump scares of running into the old folk as you knew they were rounding the corner. I found the grunts of Grandpa a little more on the repetitive side of things and almost got annoying whilst playing the game down in the basement section.

I was a little on the fence about the graphics with this one. Sometimes they looked interesting and other times they looked super basic. There could have been some more work put into it. The developers did a great job on the character model for Granny with some great textures, making her look menacing. It was a little disturbing though that it only seemed to look super detailed when she was about to kill you and whilst she was roaming the house didn’t seem as rendered in. Grandpa was the same graphically wise. 

I wish there was a little more time put into the lighting. You ran around with the torch but the torch was super overpowered so it really lit up in front of you so there was no need for you to get in nice and close to see something to then be spooked by Granny. It would have looked and felt super spooky if there was some more lighting or lack of lighting and more textures put into a couple of things just to really immerse you into the title. 

Granny: Escape Together is a fun, little, time-killing game where you want to find the quickest way to escape the household but you also don’t want to keep doing it the same way and the frustration it brings when Granny finally catches up with you is great. I would love to see maybe some new houses in the future added to keep the game spicy and not becoming repetitive. You can pick the game up on Steam for AUD $14.50 which is a great price point for this style and length of game, adding some value to your dollar. 

Written by: Hayden Nelson