♫ “Stolen apples taste the sweetest”
10 word description: Fast-paced racing platformer filled with crashes and stunts. Game Center.
10 word review: Fun, funny, colourful and easy to pick up and play.
You will like this if you enjoy: Endless runners, although this isn’t one. Dressing up as an old lady and chasing an apple thief on roller skates.
The good news: Graphics, controls and entertainment value are all impressive. Level design and environmental components are mostly well conceived. Consumables and unlockable characters are inexpensive (using in-game currency), so the IAPs are totally optional. The “vintage video” replays of your completed levels are very good. The crashes (Granny, not the game) are often very funny.
The bad news: The novelty and casual joy of the first set of levels (Farm World) fades slightly in the next zone, where the pretty rural environments are swapped for stark, angular cityscapes and stinky sewers. I’m willing to accept that this is just something that I happened to notice; as far as anyone else is concerned it probably won’t influence their enjoyment of the game one way or the other.
Arcadelife verdict: Although this isn’t an endless runner, the controls and general principles make it feel like one – a very good one! The old-lady-on-roller-skates character is amusing, as are the unlockable dog and old man. Earning enough coins to buy them, if you can’t wait to unlock them by completing the appropriate worlds, is very easy and doesn’t involve extreme level repetition. Environmental elements such as the zip-lines add variety to the racing and a fair amount of challenge in later levels. Personally, I prefer the relatively relaxed levels of the first world but then I’m getting old and I have enough brutal, crushing defeat in my gaming life playing Dark Souls!
Overall, Granny Smith is a very nice variation on the runner theme and an easy recommendation.
Arcadelife rating
Visuals – 9/10
Audio – 8.5/10
Controls – 9/10
Content – 8.5/10
Fun – 8.5/10
Final rating – 87/100
Rating categories explained here.
Version reviewed by Arcadelife is 1.0.0
Granny Smith website link