Granny versus the ANTI-VAXX

Granny versus the ANTI-VAXX is a top-down action / adventure where you defend a care home under attack by anti-vaxx zombies.

The campaign mode starts around the care home and lets you expand your actions in the whole city, pitting you against coughing anti-vaxx zombies, paperwork-throwing bureaucrats and capitalist overlords who want to infect everyone for their death cult.

You won’t be alone. The game lets you play as Granny, her grandson Marcus, or her partner-in-crime Ethel. Other citizens will join you in your defense of the care home and the city. Later levels will give you new abilities & weapons, but also feature tougher and more cunning enemies.

Currently in development with an early access release expected December 2022 and a 1.0 release in 2023. There will be regular updates in the meantime.

You can buy the game and follow the development on itch.io.

Accessibility

Reading

The main part of the story is told through conversations in the beginning of each level. They are always high contrast white text on dark background, and the speaker is always clearly indicated. (work in progress screenshot)

The reading is done at your own pace, you click to advance to the next part of the text.

Characters in-game have speech balloons with random quotes or remarks, these are also high-contrast white on black. (work in progress screenshot)

Control

In the main campaign levels, the character is controlled by moving with the keyboard and aiming with the mouse. However, I’m testing a different, optional control scheme where you only need one hand to move the character, and aiming/shooting is done automatically. This is also convenient if you are a parent and you only have one hand free for gaming, another for supporting a child (which is where I got the idea from at first). This is still in progress but there will be levels to test this in pre-release updates.

Using a gamepad or other controller: while not supported yet, you can already use e.g. steam to do this: you can add any game to the steam launcher, also non-steam games, and then you can use all controllers supported by steam to play games, including this one.

Whenever you press escape in a level, the game pauses and you get a menu to restart the level, quit, or select a different level.

Difficulty

Levels are very short and you can choose to start any level at will, whether you finished a previous level or not. Since the main story dialogue is always at the beginning, you never have to miss a story part because you couldn’t finish a level.

There are no quick-time events (I hate these with a burning passion).

There are two tutorial levels (one is already done and will be in the early access release) that are always accessible from the level selection screen, they provide a “normal” level with easier enemies and lots of explanations throughout the level. (work in progress screenshot)