GROWING MY GRANDPA
If you know me at all, you wouldn’t be surprised that this was the first game that caught my eye at MAGFest. The graphics of Growing My Grandpa! reminded me of old security footage you would see when exploring a Creepypasta, so of course, my morbid curiosity took over. The dev only used about 30 different colors, which gives the game a muted feel.
The story of this game is definitely intriguing: you are literally growing your Grandpa back to life in your basement. If there isn’t any Creepypasta out there yet about some guy slowly bringing his grandpa back to life, there needs to be. The game is reminiscent of a spooky Tamagotchi, you keep Grandpa fed as he slowly grows in the basement cage you keep him in. There is a lot of lore in this game which makes it feel closer to a visual novel. Yames, the solo developer of Growing My Grandpa!, is also a prolific indie horror game dev. I’m excited to explore his portfolio of short and spooky games!
Puppet: So tell me: who are you and what are you working on right now?
Yames: So I’m Yames, I make creepy computer games, I call them. They’re horror games, but they’re more creepy than scary, that’s why I use the ‘creepy’ description. What I’m working on? Well, I just released Growing My Grandpa!, which is available on itch.io and Steam. It’s a combination of sort of a tamagotchi/virtual pet mixed with a point-and-click adventure game. Again, it’s more creepy than scary. It’s got a lot of lore, a lot of backstory to dig into… It takes about three hours to play, there are two endings. What I am currently working on is a sequel to one of my very first games, Discover My Body. The sequel’s called Discover Our Bodies. It sort of continues a lot of the themes of the first one, but like expanded mechanics and story, and it dives more into the world of Discovery My Body.
Puppet: Wow, that is a lot! That’s awesome. I’m a big fan of indie horror, so…
Yames: Great!
Puppet: I’m excited to go check out your other stuff! For sure! Yeah. So tell me a little bit about Growing Grandpa. How did you decide to start making this game, what was it born out of? And also, I’m curious about Creepypasta, and if it has anything to do with any kind of Creepypasta.
Yames: You know, it doesn’t really have anything to do with Creepypasta, really. It’s interesting, ’cause I have a lot of people who are interested in more, like, traditional horror, coming to my games and play it, and then I have a lot of people who are less interested in horror, but they say, ‘Oh, I can play your games, you know, I don’t normally go for horror games, but this is just very intriguing or very interesting,’ and it does the scares in a way where, it’s not like–nothing’s jumping out at you, no jump scares or whatever like that.
Puppet: Yeah.
Yames: But um… how did I come up with Growing My Grandpa!? I don’t know, I think I just had an idea about somebody… I think I was working on trying to think of short-form content for TikTok, right?
Puppet: (laughs)
Yames: I’m on TikTok, but I’m not super active, so I was thinking, ‘OK, what would be a good thing…’ So I thought about like, growing my–I don’t know what it was. I think I imagined something like growing like, a person in a bathtub, through like, via mail order. Like, I would say, ‘Oh, I got these new seeds from the whatever,’ and then throw them in the bathtub. But how did that turn into Growing My Grandpa!? I think…I just thought, it’s interesting, sort of growing my grandpa… like a grandpa is something old, right, but you’re young… There’s sort like a whole paradox of the reverse relationship between going back to something that’s old and creating it. I’m very interested in that sort of thing. And then I think… Yeah, a lot of my games have to do with sort of a combination of science fiction, but then also more fantastical themes, like there’s lots of stuff about psychics, and there’s a big component to Growing My Grandpa! that’s about the occult and symbolic magic and psychoanalytic thinking. There’s a Steam review for Growing My Grandpa! that was something like, ‘An introduction to Lacanian psychoanalysis.’ And I was like, ‘Oh yeah, that kind of makes sense,’ ’cause there's lots of stuff about the mother and the father and desire and all this stuff, so… Yeah, I dunno, these things just really interest me and I really like to dive deep into them when I make my stuff.
Puppet: Yeah, awesome! Well, where can we find Growing Grandpa?
Yames: So Growing My Grandpa! is on Steam and itch.io. It’s my only game on Steam at the moment, but more are coming. You can go to yames.info for more information about that. I also have a Patreon where I release games for people in sort of a semi-exclusive fashion. So Growing My Grandpa!, it was released–they’re called ‘Yames Secret Games’, you know, they’re semi-secret, but somewhat known. So Growing My Grandpa! was actually released first to patrons, you know? You can join for as little as $1 at the moment. But just look out for Discover Our Bodies, and check out the Patreon, follow me on twitter @stretchhamstrung.
Puppet: Awesome! Well, I have one last question for you. And it’s one of our favorites! If you could go back in time and change something or give yourself advice, what would you say to yourself?
Yames: I guess I would just say like… I don’t know. I’d probably just tell myself to chill out.
Puppet: (laughs)
Yames: Keep a good perspective on things, I guess. Yeah, that’s a good way to look at it. Yeah.
Puppet: Yeah. You know, I need that too, chill out and keep a good perspective. That’s… it’s a struggle.
Yames: We’ve all had moments where it’s like, we’ve thought about sometimes where we’re so in our head, and we wish us from the future could come and say, ‘Hey. Calm down. It’s OK,’ you know.
Puppet: Right, it’s gonna be OK, yeah. Just keep with it. Well thank you so much, Yames!
Yames: Yeah, thank you so much!
Puppet: Yeah!
transcription by
EMILY REYNOLDS
coverage by