Help Grandma Out

Demands

1 min read

What Grandma asks for, how grumpy each one is, and all of them in one list.

A demand is Grandma telling you how to build, never what to build. "Make a game" is not a demand. "Make it so one button does everything" is.

How they work

  • You get at least 1 demand and at most 3.
  • Each demand has a grumpiness level: mild ("Just a thought, dear"), medium ("I'm just saying") or spicy ("Back in my day"). Spicier demands are harder, and they make your cookies worth more. See payouts.
  • Demands fit your kind of project: web, software, games or other. Nobody gets "No JavaScript" for a command line tool. The list below says what fits what.

Dealing again and changing demands

Got demands you cannot do? Ask Grandma to deal again. The free deals are counted for the whole project: the first few are free, whichever way you got them, and after that each deal costs cookies. Dealing again takes away the demands you had kept so you choose again from the new hand.

If you like the hand you were dealt but want to pick different notes, you can change which demands you keep from your project page using "Change my demands" while building. Once you hand a project in, nothing about it can be changed.

Tip

A spicy demand is not a punishment. It is the quickest way to a bigger payout, if you can pull it off.

All the demands

Every demand, with what it means in plain words and what it fits.

Mild "Just a thought, dear"

  • Two Colors "I only own two crayons. Use them wisely."

    Only two colors in the whole visual output.

    Any project
  • Offline "The internet is broken again, so it had better work without it."

    Works with the network unplugged: no APIs, no CDNs.

    Web, Software, Gamedev
  • Big Print "I can't read that tiny writing, dear. Make it big."

    All text and indicators are huge and high contrast.

    Web, Software, Gamedev
  • No Jargon "Explain it to me like I'm your grandmother. I am your grandmother."

    The README is readable by a non-programmer.

    Any project
  • Plain Text "If I can't open it in Notepad, I don't want it."

    All saved data is human-readable text.

    Web, Software, Gamedev
  • One Screen "One room, one game, no wandering off."

    One fixed screen: no scrolling, menus or level loads.

    Gamedev
  • Sixty Seconds "Dinner's in a minute. Make it quick."

    A full playthrough takes under a minute.

    Gamedev

Medium "I'm just saying"

  • Tiny "Everything I own fits in one cookie tin. So should this."

    A hard size cap for your category: about 500 lines of code or 10 components.

    Any project
  • One Button "I only ever press the +30 seconds button on the microwave."

    One input controls everything: one key or one tap zone.

    Web, Software, Gamedev
  • Homemade "I don't trust anything I didn't bake myself."

    No third-party libraries or engines.

    Web, Software, Gamedev
  • Single File "I keep everything in one drawer, and I know exactly where."

    One source file, no build step.

    Web, Software, Gamedev
  • Undo Everything "Everybody makes mistakes, dear. Let me take that back."

    Every action can be undone, all the way back to the start.

    Web, Software, Gamedev
  • URL State "Everything you need is on the note. Don't lose the note."

    No server or database: all state lives in the URL or the browser.

    Web
  • No Images "Pictures cost money. Draw it with what you've got."

    No image files: CSS, SVG, canvas or text only.

    Web, Gamedev

Spicy "Back in my day"

  • Audio Only "Turn that screen off and tell me what's happening, dear."

    Fully usable with the screen off.

    Web, Software, Gamedev
  • No Ifs "In my day we didn't say 'if'. We just did it right."

    No if statements, switches or ternaries.

    Web, Software, Gamedev
  • Homegrown Brain "I don't trust a brain I didn't raise myself."

    Any AI model is trained from scratch: no pretrained models, no hosted AI APIs.

    Software
  • No JavaScript "Back in my day a website was words and a picture, and we liked it."

    HTML and CSS only.

    Web

Note

This list will keep growing, and Grandma will keep building on it.