Granny

Granny is a horror escape game in which the player wakes up trapped in the house of a strange old woman and must find a way out within five nights, without being caught by the granny, who moves mainly by sound and smell, and carried back down to the basement. On the touchscreen, the game combines slow exploration of individual rooms, collecting items, and solving simple puzzles with the need to move quietly - running, opening doors, and even just tripping over a trap makes noise that summons the granny, so the tension is held together more by the quiet stealth mechanics and the randomized layout of the house on every new attempt than by direct action or combat. Keys, tools, and parts for assembling the escape are also placed differently every time, so not even a repeated attempt can be memorized and replayed by heart.

DVloper built Granny on cheap but surprisingly effective graphics and sound design, where creaking stairs and distant footsteps work better than any classic jump scares, and the game became a hit mainly thanks to a younger audience and YouTube streamers who turned fear and random deaths into entertaining content for millions of viewers. It is free-to-play with ads and the option to buy hints or skip part of the puzzles, which is a common but somewhat intrusive model for this type of once-through game. The game's success also kicked off an entire series of further titles from the same studio using the same recipe of fear of being chased.

Why play it: For players who want a short, tense stealth horror game for a few evenings and don't mind ads and offers of paid hints.