Grannygeddon

What is Grannygeddon?

It is Thursday, bingo night at the Los Rosales retirement home, and the jackpot has climbed to 300 euros plus a basket of cold cuts. That is precisely when the zombies turn up, and they have not come to fill a card. Grannygeddon is a pixel-art action game about keeping that night alive with whatever an abuela has within reach: a slipper, knitting needles, bingo balls, grandpa's shotgun, hairspray and a lighter, a pressure cooker, and a set of dentures that comes back like a boomerang.

The defence travels. It starts at the bingo hall, moves to a bus breakdown near Benidorm, climbs to a mountain of chocolate and churros, and ends with the pensioners' trip reaching the Moon. One player can hold the line alone, but the design points at online groups of up to four grannies, each on her own computer. It is a free HTML5 game from Achiote Games that runs in the browser and arrived on 24 October 2026.

How to play

Each of the four levels builds its own kind of trouble, and the job is to defend something specific in each one. In the bingo hall it is the ball cage. On the Benidorm excursion the traffic does not stop for anyone and a zombie seagull has designs on the tortilla. In the snow, zombies ride up on the chairlift while the Yeti lobs snowballs. On the Moon, gravity is low, jumps are huge, and a giant Fumigator is in the way.

Between waves the rhythm changes. Medicines can be picked up in the field, and Doña Pepa's pharmacy sells weapons and upgrades. Barricades can be raised in the street to slow the push, and a fallen companion can be revived rather than left behind. Bosses carry a weak spot, so the fight is as much about finding the right target as about firing.

Playing with others works through a room system rather than a public lobby list: one player creates a room and shares a five-letter code, and everyone else joins with it. Each player can run the game in her own language, choosing between English, Spanish and French, so a mixed group does not need to agree on one setting before starting.

Controls

Movement is on WASD, throwing is on J, and jumping is available on either K or Space. Weapons are switched with the number keys 1 through 7, with L, or with the mouse wheel, which matters because the arsenal is broad enough that cycling through it quickly becomes part of surviving a wave.

Holding S builds or repairs barricades, and pressing S together with K drops down a floor, a combination worth learning early since levels stack vertically. M mutes the game and Esc pauses it. There is no aiming or reload key to memorise beyond that set, so the learning curve sits in weapon choice and barricade placement rather than in finger gymnastics.

Tips for your first run

Start solo or with one friend before filling a room. A single granny sees the wave patterns clearly, and the four levels each teach something different about spacing: the bingo hall punishes leaving the ball cage open, Benidorm punishes standing in the road, the snow punishes ignoring the chairlift, and the Moon rewards using the low gravity to reposition rather than to show off.

Treat barricades as a resource rather than decoration. Holding S to repair them mid-wave is faster than rebuilding after they break, and the street layouts give room to layer them. Bosses are the other thing to plan for: every one has a weak point, and hitting armour instead wastes the window.

• Learn the weapon switch early; seven slots and a mouse wheel are faster than panic.
• Find each boss's weak spot before emptying a full magazine into it.
• Spend between waves at Doña Pepa's pharmacy rather than hoarding.
• Revive downed companions; a four-granny room is only as strong as its weakest link.
• Repair barricades with S held down while the wave is still moving.
• On the Moon, use the low gravity for distance, not for height.

Content and replayability

Four levels are on offer, and each one changes the enemy pressure rather than just the wallpaper. Bingo night is the straight classic. The excursion adds traffic and a zombie seagull guarding the tortilla. The snow adds chairlift arrivals and a Yeti throwing snowballs. The Moon flips the movement rules with low gravity and puts a giant Fumigator at the end of the trip.

The weapon list is deliberately daft and deliberately varied: slipper, knitting needles, bingo balls, grandpa's shotgun, hairspray with a lighter, pressure cooker and boomerang dentures. Because bosses hide weak spots, repeated runs have something to solve rather than something to grind. Online rooms of up to four, a five-letter code for inviting friends, and per-player language choice make it easy to reassemble the same group. Solo play is fully supported for anyone who would rather not coordinate a squad.

Presentation and performance

The look is 2D pixel art, and the tone is comedy rather than dread: a retirement home, a basket of cold cuts, a tortilla under threat from a seagull, and a Yeti with a snowball supply. The art direction carries the premise, which is why the four scenarios read as jokes rather than as a level list.

It runs as an HTML5 game in the browser, so there is nothing to install before the first wave. A mute key and a pause key are mapped directly, which helps in shared rooms and open-plan spaces. The game also sends anonymous gameplay statistics, with no personal data attached, so difficulty can be balanced, and the main menu offers a switch to turn that off if you would rather not share them.

Who should play it

This suits players who want an arcade action game with a joke in its teeth and a friend or three alongside. The premise rewards anyone who has watched a grandparent take a bingo night very seriously, and the four-scenario structure keeps a session moving between wildly different settings instead of grinding one arena.

It is also a reasonable fit for groups who cannot agree on a single language, since English, Spanish and French can be set per player, and for players who prefer a browser tab to a download. Solo players get the same levels and the same arsenal without needing a room code. Anyone looking for a grim survival game should look elsewhere; the tone here is a slipper thrown at a zombie.