A very jovial runner (or roller) about a granny who’s not willing to put up with any crap!

Mediocre Games is a game developing studio that specializes in making… well, not-so-mediocre games, actually. One of these not-so-mediocre games is Granny Smith, which is really about an actual granny named Smith and not, as many would imagine, about some fake Australian apple.

But, we could also have our apple pie and eat it too, could we not? Why not have a granny named Smith chasing after apples by the same name? I mean, not everything has to fit into an either/or dilemma (and Mediocre Games knows this well). Result: We have a game about Granny Smith trying to recover her Granny Smiths! Brilliant, no?

But enough puns for now. Let’s dive right into the game which, oddly unbeknownst to me, generated a lot of hype about 10 years ago. 

One of the first things worth praising about this game is how well it has aged (as if one more pun could hurt!) since it came out in 2012! I was immensely surprised, after watching some old footage, by how good-looking this game was back then and how it still manages to look amazing even though there’s been hardly any significant upgrades. Impressive, to say the least!

You could claim that a feat like this is not very hard to pull out since Granny Smith is basically a 3D side-scroller and not particularly resource-demanding. You could be “correct” in making that assumption. Still, I’d answer that not many devs did pull this out as successfully as Mediocre Games did (a largely misleading name). And yes, the gameplay is simplistic and streamlined. There are no complicated gestures you need to perform or gyroscopes you need to calibrate or barometers to set up… you get the drill.

You only have to look after two big buttons sitting prominently below each thumb area. One of them is the jump button (which is what you’ll be using most of the time), and the other one is the “grab” button on the left side which, as the illustration suggests, prompts granny to use her cane to grab onto and slide through power lines, ropes, and levers. 

On another note, some of the most awe-inspiring moments have Granny Smith breaking through walls, ceilings, and doors. A lot of stuff occurring during your playthrough would genuinely make you go ouchie! But grandma doesn’t even break a sweat! Heck, she doesn’t even appear to so much as mess her hair up, for crying out loud!

All this frenzy is not all for naught, though. You are on a quest to chase some good-for-nothing apple thief and teach him a couple of lessons. You’ll also be essentially willing to recover all your dear apples, even if that means traversing across hostile inhabitable caves and planets to achieve this. That felon will not be stealing them apples and get away with it!

Along the way, you’ll obtain items such as banana peels and baseballs which you can use to slow the thief down and one-up him. These are bought with the coins that you collect during your hasty rollerskating journey. If you accrue enough coins, you could use all that dough to  skip difficult levels, but I’m not sure you want to do that.

Another neat feature that this game offers is the vintage replays. They add a very nice and classy touch to your gameplay and gel well with the overall “ethos” of the game.

In addition, you can unlock other characters such as Scruffy the dog or Stanley (Granny Smith’s husband) who wields a black umbrella as his cane. A great team if there ever was one!

In total, there are about 52 levels divided into four main areas: Farm, City, Industry, and Space. Plus, each area has up to three bonus levels. That’s quite a lot of content for you to explore and marvel at! (though the least that you’ll be doing is “smell the flowers”).

Finally, I’d have to say the music is incredibly fitting. If you crave jazz (like I do) you’d definitely appreciate the bop pieces you’ll find here. It gets a bit more psychedelic as you reach later areas in the game, conveying a sense of increasing alienation from your original tranquil rural surroundings (and I mean alienation quite literally, by the way!)

Granny Smith is a delicious pun made into a video game that should draw a smile on your face while constantly leaving you fixed at the edge of your seat. Amazingly, you can experience all this thrill with just two buttons! Frankly, for $1.55, Granny Smith is money well spent!

Fasten your rollerblades and roll over to the comments section to voice your opinion about this magnificent piece of retro gaming art!