Imagine a game in which you play as Grandma. If you come from, say, an Italian family or something, you can only imagine playing as your nonna would imply in playing as a wise, angry, ungodly strong being who’s got more clout and intimidation skills than the entire Mafia put together. But no, this is not the kind of grandma we’re dealing with today. In the oddly named Grandma No!, we play as the most disastrous, irresponsible, disgusting, borderline senile old lady around. Supposedly, this was meant to be a humorous game. I can’t say it was.

Summing the game up in one picture.

The premise goes as follows. As a nameless grandma, you receive a phone call from your son, who wants to leave his baby with you for a day or so, as he and his wife are going to a nude beach. Before you can say anything (or not, as this granny is mute), the baby is thrown at you, and your ungrateful son vanishes. So, you might think that the game’s objective revolves around taking care of your grandson while the parents are out having fun, right? Nope. The main objective in Grandma No! is to merely do a bunch of house chores until the game tells you to stop. Very occasionally, these chores will be related to the baby.

Grandma No! goes for an Octodad-esque approach to its gameplay and overall sense of humor. It uses an excessively plasticine (albeit colorful) visual style, focused on absurdity and slapstick, where you are given intentionally crude and crappy controls to solve chores such as doing the laundry, mowing the lawn, planting trees, and putting out fires. Sometimes, things are as straightforward as they can get – mowing the lawn requires grabbing a lawnmower and doing the obvious. In other moments, you might need to, uh, “improvise” in order to solve a puzzle, such as vomiting on flaming objects as a means to put out a fire in your living room. Yes, this is the kind of humor we’re dealing with.

“This is fine…”

I won’t say that I didn’t laugh like once or twice with some absurdist moments, such as the one time I farted on a barbecue grill and created an explosion, or the time I found out there’s a button where grandma just fully ragdolls and falls face flat on the floor. I am not that cold. With that being said, it’s clear that this game was made with streamers in mind. You can clearly imagine the Game Grumps doing an episode on this game, laughing and commenting on some of its more absurdist sections, and narrating some of the dialogue that is shown onscreen – there is quite a bit of actually decent voice acting, but all of grandma’s inner thoughts are muted.

In fact, the game lasts as long as a streaming session on Twitch. You can probably beat Grandma No! in its entirety in about 90 minutes. If you cannot be bothered with the extras, the game can be beaten in even less time. There’s just not enough substance, and once you’ve seen an elderly woman incompetently putting out a fire with her own vomit, the game will have already peaked in terms of absurdity. The controls are bad, but not Octodad bad. Your character is also human, invincible, and a grandma – the novelty of seeing hell break lose due to slapstick humor and incompetence isn’t that high.

… but why?

Yep, I just wasn’t amused. Grandma No! goes for cheap humor, almost expecting further comment and dialogue from a Twitch streamer showcasing it to their followers. It’s short, uninteresting, and somewhat devoid of replayability. I’m not saying you can’t laugh a bit with some of its sections (I certainly did, like twice), but there are better comedic and slapstick-focused titles out there. It’s just a forgettable novelty. If you’re really starving for some comedic slapstick, just grab Octodad instead.

Grandma, No! is available now on PC.

Reviewed on Intel i7-12700H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3060 6GB.

A copy of Grandma, No! was provided by the publisher.