BOMBANANA guide

What BOMBANANA is — and what it is not

BOMBANANA is a co-op communication game in the Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes family, rebuilt around three monkeys and physical slapstick. The bomb is real to one player, the answers are real to another, and nobody has both. Steam describes the fantasy plainly: wave, shout, throw bananas — working out how your trio communicates is the actual game.

What it is not: a reflex shooter, a single-player puzzle, or a game with published module answers. Steam lists 23 achievements without printing the tasks, and this guide will not invent them. If your squad wants the trust-building chaos version of defusal, this is it; if you want solo play, the store page does not advertise a solo cover role.

The three roles, and who should take which

Blind Monkey touches the bomb — cutting, pressing, twisting — but cannot see colors or read screens, so color-based rules have to arrive as spoken words from teammates. Deaf Monkey can see the bomb and every gesture in the room but cannot hear, which makes Deaf the relay between what Mute signals and what Blind must do. Mute Monkey is the only player who can open the bomb disposal manual — and cannot speak a word of it.

Assignment advice for a new trio: give Blind to the player with steady hands and patience, give Mute to the player who reads fast and communicates clearly with emotes, and give Deaf to your loudest talker — Deaf is the only role whose main tool is speaking. Rotate every few Campaign levels so nobody becomes the single point of failure; Steam does not rank the roles, and every trio discovers its own best fit. The full capability table lives on the roles page.

How the manual actually works in a run

The manual is a per-module rulebook that only Mute can see. Because each bomb rolls different modules, the manual is not one memorizable page — launch news mentions 14 puzzle modules (11 standard plus 3 CHAOS modules designed to keep Blind busy). A typical circuit: Blind describes out loud what they feel, Mute finds the matching module page, Mute gestures the instruction to Deaf (who sees but cannot hear), and Deaf says it aloud so Blind can act.

Practice the circuit in Custom mode with a long timer and allowed mistakes before you chase Campaign ratings. Agree four or five standing gestures before the timer starts — yes, no, left, right, wait — because inventing signals mid-bomb is how runs die. The manual page on this wiki covers the PDF question (there is no official one) and more relay patterns.

Communication systems and when to use each

Voice chat serves two of three monkeys — Blind and Deaf talk, Mute listens and answers with the emote wheel. That asymmetry is the design: the person with the answers is structurally silenced. Slapping is a physical attention-getter, and hazards (power outages, view blocks, loud interruptions) periodically attack whichever channel your trio leans on hardest, so a squad that only uses voice gets punished in outage modules.

The habit that survives hazards: pair every verbal instruction with an emote or a point, so Mute can confirm and Deaf can relay even when audio is gone. Short callouts beat sentences — three-word instructions leave room for the timer. The communication guide collects these patterns in depth.

Campaign, Endless, and Custom: what to play in which order

Campaign is 30 handcrafted levels and the intended teacher — early bombs introduce module types one at a time, so finish levels instead of skipping. Endless escalates with procedural waves for trios that have their circuit dialed and want pressure. Custom is the practice room: you set bomb difficulty, timer length, module types, hazards, and the number of allowed mistakes, which makes it the fastest place to drill one weak module without failing a real run.

A first-night order that works: five Custom bombs with a long timer to learn the roles, then Campaign 1–10 without restarting, then your first Endless attempt to feel the clock. Squad cohesion beats speed for the first several hours — the modes page breaks down every knob Custom exposes.

The mistakes that kill most new runs

The top trio-killers, in the order new squads hit them: inventing gestures mid-bomb instead of pre-agreeing them; letting Blind guess colors instead of waiting for a spoken conversion; Mute acting out whole sentences instead of pointing; and everybody talking at once so Deaf cannot isolate the one instruction that matters. All four are communication failures, not knowledge failures — the manual usually had the answer in time.

Fix them in this order: agree signals before the timer (30 seconds), make Deaf the only voice that addresses Blind, cap every instruction at three words, and let Mute hold a flat hand up for wait. If a bomb still explodes, name the broken link out loud in the lobby — that debrief habit is what separates trios that clear Campaign from trios that quit on level 8.

Where to go after this BOMBANANA guide

Role deep dives: the Mute Monkey guide, Blind Monkey guide, and Deaf Monkey guide each expand one seat. Systems: the manual explained, communication patterns, co-op and lobby codes, and levels and modules. Reference: modes, the FAQ, and system requirements (it is a Windows title — Mac players should read the Mac note). Assign tonight's seats with the squad setup tool, then take Campaign level one slowly on purpose.