First clues passed down from Grandma(88) 

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Dark story-driven "player-versus-narrator" adventure due to arrive on Steam later this year

You know there's a "but" coming when your description of your grandmother is that she "wasn't a Nazi." In ROTxBLAU's upcoming Grandma(88), it'll be your task to figure out what that "but" is, though you can bet that dear ol' granny won't make it easy for you. 

Players assume the role of a girl whose grandmother is dying in the hospital. Before she dies, you're determined to get to the bottom of a "dark family secret that reaches as far back as the Nazi era," which only Grandma knows the answers to. But is Grandma telling the truth? At best she's an entirely unreliable narrator, so you'll need to pay careful attention to the details. As she regales you with (her version of) the past, you'll experience events first-hand as Grandma "doesn't just tell the story – she shapes the world around you, alters memories, and actively tries to keep you from uncovering" what really happened so long ago. You soon find yourself "trapped in a maze of memories, contradictions, and hidden truths," and the only way out is to fully "explore her memories, solve puzzles, and decide when to challenge her version of events." 

At first glance, Grandma(88) seems like any other traditional hand-drawn, third-person point-and-click adventure. Plays like it too, with characters to question and puzzles to solve in order to progress through its surreal, nonlinear world. What makes this game so different is its "unique player-versus-narrator mechanic," in which your grandmother is "both your opponent and your ally." She "controls the world" here, and she decides what you can see at any given time. Your choices play a key role, though, as "every time you question her ... rooms, characters, and objects appear, disappear, or take on entirely new meanings." You must continually discover inconsistencies to "contradict her story and find out what she is hiding," even as she slyly reshapes reality to prevent it.

When and how to press your grandmother is just as important as what to press her on. You can't simply challenge everything in the hopes of catching Grandma out in a lie. Trust is a key family dynamic, so you must pick your spots thoughtfully and carefully, as each decision you make "can have consequences. Push too hard, and Grandma gets angry and refuses to tell you more." Push too gently, though, and you'll never escape her ever-evolving web of deceit. As you make more and more correct "emotionally meaningful choices," you will gradually unravel new fragments of your dark family history, creating the kind of tense pyschological horror that can only come from "intimacy, silence, and the stories families tell to preserve, soften, or suppress their past."

All these buried secrets can't stay hidden much longer, as Grandma(88) is due to launch on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux sometime before the end of this year. (The game is currently still listed under its native German name, Meine Oma(88) but will be released in English as well.)