The grandma in Granny is not human, that’s for sure, and it doesn’t take a loremaster to figure it out, either. No matter if you shoot her in the face with a crossbow or a gun, heck, even if you freeze her and shatter her to pieces, she will not die. She’ll just patiently re-spawn and start creeping around the house to find you with renewed motivation.

What kind of futuristic hearing aid might she possess that lets her know exactly where you drop an item as light as post-it? It’s settled. She’s not like you and me. As such, if you’re ever going to beat this game, you need to ignore Granny and focus on the task at hand – your escape.

Survival Tips vs. Crazy Granny

As soon as you wake up in the First Bedroom on the First Floor (see our rooms guide for orientation), Granny spawns in the Basement, a couple of levels underneath you. She then enters rooms randomly in search for you and picks up the pace to your exact location whenever you make some kind of noise. But there are actually a number of ways to die in addition to Granny’s straightforward baseball bat. These include:

• Jump scares performed by Granny when she sees you hiding under the bed or in a wardrobe.
• Falling through the floor in the Jail Room on the Second Floor.
• Playing with Granny’s delightful pet Spider in the Special Room on the Second Floor.

There are also several ways to alert Granny of your presence, which, ideally, you would like to avoid:

• Items dropped on the floor, either purposefully or by mistake (when you pick up an item while already holding one in hand).
• Creaking floorboards at various places throughout the house (on Hard or higher difficulty settings).
• Some actions, such as, for instance, breaking planks or moving boxes to reveal secret areas.
• Walking inside the Jail Room on the Second Floor without breaking the security camera.
• Walking over a bell alarm set up by Granny.
• Walking into a bear trap set up by Granny.

To beat the game, you essentially have to survive long enough to gather all the necessary items for either of the two escape routes. To do so, make sure you are always silent and learn your way around hiding spots in different rooms. Remember, though, that if Granny sees you sneaking into one of these, she will jump scare the heck out of you.

Running Out the Front Door

When the “Extra Locks” setting in turned on, there are no less than 7 locks on the Main Door in the Main Hallway. We have already looked at the location and uses of keys, single-use items, and multiple-use items in other articles. In what follows, we focus on the checklist of necessary items for the Front Door escape route.

To open the Main Door, you’ll need the following tools and keys (fewer when on lower difficulty settings):

• The Hammer (to remove the wooden plank).
• The Cutting Pliers (to remove the wire locks; one is found on the door itself, the other is inside a panel in the Basement).
• The Screwdriver (to open a panel in the Backyard and pull a secret lever that unhinges the metal lock at the top of the door).
• The Padlock Code (for the number padlock).
• The Padlock Key (for the regular padlock).
• The Battery (for the battery lock).
• The Master Key (for the lock on the door handle).

You can try to stash all of the above at a safe location and use them all once you have everything on the checklist, but this is not necessarily the best way to go about it. Remember that you can only hold one item at a time and so you’ll have to keep running back and forth between the door and your stash. Meanwhile, Granny will be on your tail the entire time and, while you can disable her temporarily, she respawns in as little as 15 seconds on the hardest difficulty.

As such, it makes more sense to use each key/tool as it becomes available to you. Although the Crossbow and Shotgun are not technically needed to open the door, you can easily add at least one of them to the list because you will very likely have to shoot Granny more than once to buy yourself enough time to open the door safely.

Driving the Hell Out

The car was added as an alternative escape route in Patch 1.5, giving the player even more choices in terms of how to adapt to specific item finds. If you want to drive your way out of Granny’s terrifying abode, you need these items:

• The Gasoline Can (to fill up the tank at the back of the car; this escape is no longer possible if the player blows up the can using the Shotgun before fuelling the car).
• The Engine Part (placed at the front of the car, under the hood).
• The Wrench (used to screw in the engine; must be used on 6 screws).
• The Spark Plug (also placed at the front of the car).
• The Car Battery (still at the front of the car).
• The Car Key (needed to open the trunk and to start the car).
• The Padlock Key (needed to open the garage door).

You will always need these seven items to escape by car, regardless of the difficulty you’re playing on. In addition, it takes a while to fuel the tank and screw in the engine, so consider carefully how you intend to survive in the process. To give yourself enough time to get everything done, you can draw Granny into the sauna room, seal the room using the wooden plank on the door, and turn on the sauna. This will temporarily stun grandma, although for only 15 seconds on the hardest difficulty.

Once you’re inside the car and have started the engine, Granny cannot technically pull you out to kill you. Just make sure that you have previously unlocked the garage door, because otherwise you will surely get clubbed as soon as you exit the car to do so.

That’s it, it’s that simple! Only… of course, it isn’t. It’s literally a nightmare to survive in Granny, but try to push through the tenth time she scares you to death and then kills you. Eventually (Practice Mode is especially good for this), you will learn your way around the house. You’ll get to your Crossbow quick as a ninja and the massive satisfaction of blasting Granny in the face will be worth your while. Trust us.