BOMBANANA! Role Playbooks: Blind, Deaf and Mute Monkeys

Every BOMBANANA! trio eventually learns the same lesson: you don’t get good at the game, you get good at your role. Our blind player and I swapped seats one night and the team instantly got worse at both seats — the blind seat needs hands that wait, the relay seat needs a mouth that never stops, and the manual seat needs a memory that pre-loads pages. Forty-plus runs later, here are the playbooks we wish we’d had on night one, including the gesture dictionary that ended our improvisation era.

None of this requires voice chat, by the way. The game’s own channels — gestures, emote wheel, throwable bananas and the slap — cover every role when your vocabulary is agreed. Voice helps the blind monkey’s confirmations, but the deaf monkey can’t hear it and the mute monkey can’t use it, so we treat voice as optional garnish on a system that works without it.

Table of Contents

1. The Gesture Dictionary (Every Role Reads This)
2. Blind Monkey Playbook
3. Deaf Monkey Playbook
4. Mute Monkey Playbook
5. Role Drills: One Evening to a Cleaner Trio

The Gesture Dictionary (Every Role Reads This)

The mute monkey can’t talk and the deaf monkey can’t hear, so the game’s real language is visual. Agree on this before the timer starts — improvising mid-bomb is how teams die at level 5. Our dictionary, tuned over 40+ runs:

Meaning	Gesture
Numbers / positions 1–5	Held-up fingers, palm facing the deaf monkey
Yes / confirmed	Thumbs up
No / wrong	Thumbs down
Stop everything, hands off	Both arms crossed overhead
Wait	Flat palm pushed toward the team
Colors	Point at a fixed reference (the emote wheel’s color icons) then hold up the position fingers
Direction	Point arm like a clock hand from the pad’s center
Enter / commit	Fist tap on open palm, twice
I don’t know / re-read	Shrug + pointing at the manual
Emergency / incoming hazard	Slap the table (audible to no one, visible to everyone — the vibration sells urgency)

Bananas are a bonus channel: a tossed banana lands attention on whatever it hits. The deaf monkey should be the primary thrower — it’s the fastest way for the one player who can’t hear to say “look at this.”

Blind Monkey Playbook

You are the only pair of hands on the bomb, and you’re blind. Your discipline is the team’s safety rail.

Work in packets, never in pokes. When you touch a module, report the whole thing in the agreed order — count, positions, states — before anyone starts solving. Random poking produces fragments, and fragments produce guesses at the manual.

Hover before every commit. Cut, press or flip only after the relay confirms the exact action: “cutting two,” pause, “confirmed,” cut. The half-second hover cost us nothing in 40 runs; skipping it cost us at least three bombs.

Re-read panels after setting them. Switches especially: a half-set switch feels nearly identical to a set one. After finishing a panel, trace every switch again and call the full state for verification.

Own the blackout. When a power outage hazard hits, the seeing players are the disabled ones and you are suddenly the most useful monkey on the team. Keep the relay running from touch and verbally freeze the bomb until the lights return.

Your worst habit to unlearn: fidgeting. Idle hands on a live bomb end runs — we’ve watched a “just checking” tap cost a clean solve more times than any hard puzzle did.

Deaf Monkey Playbook

You see the bomb and you speak, but the world is silent to you. You are the team’s radio, and the radio must never go quiet.

Narrate what you see, continuously. The blind monkey can’t see indicator changes and the mute monkey can’t hear about them. When an LED flips or a hazard fires, say it immediately — you are the only player positioned to notice both sides.

Translate gestures into complete sentences. “He’s holding up three fingers and pointing at the wires” is not a translation. “The rule is: cut wire three” is. Take the extra half-second to finish the thought; incomplete relays are the top source of wrong cuts in our death log.

Watch the mute monkey, always. They can’t call your name and you can’t hear them anyway. Position yourself where their gestures are in your vision even while you’re describing the bomb — a glance-away during a gesture is a dropped packet.

Answer the slap. A teammate slapping the table is broadcasting urgency in the only channel that always reaches you. When you feel or see it, stop, look, and ask what’s up with an exaggerated shrug the mute monkey can see.

Your worst habit to unlearn: going quiet while thinking. Silence reads as “all clear” to a blind player waiting on a confirmation. If you’re thinking, say “stand by.”

Mute Monkey Playbook

You hold the only manual and the only voice you have is your hands. Your job is translation under timer pressure.

Pre-load the manual during inventory. While the others do the module roll call, find the relevant pages and keep a finger in each. Rule lookups mid-gesture are where mute monkeys stall, and a stalled manual stops the entire relay chain.

Gesture in the dictionary, or extend it in the lobby. The table above covers ~90% of situations. If a rule needs something new, mime it once during the inventory phase — when the bomb is paused — and let the deaf monkey verbalize it back. Never premiere new vocabulary during a live solve.

Think in outputs, not explanations. The relay doesn’t need to understand why the rule works; it needs the action. “Cut the second wire” beats a charade of the manual’s reasoning. When a rule truly needs context, gesture the condition first (“if lit” — point at eye, then the LED), then the action.

Use the emote wheel for binary states. Yes/no, lit/unlit, odd/even map cleanly onto emotes, which frees your hands for numbers and positions.

Your worst habit to unlearn: speed. A rushed gesture sequence turns into one merged blob for the deaf monkey to decode. Gesture in packet-sized chunks and physically pause between them — you’re not slow, you’re legible.

Role Drills: One Evening to a Cleaner Trio

Custom mode is secretly the best training tool in the game: you can lock the module pool, set a generous timer, and allow mistakes without ending the run.

• Drill one module family per session. Wires only, then pads, then math, then panels. Adding a new callout package to a live bomb is how old habits resurface.
• Rotate seats every third bomb. You’ll feel everyone’s job the hard way, and the blind seat especially teaches hovering discipline that improves everyone’s confirmations.
• Do a 30-second post-mortem after every detonation. Name the failed callout out loud — “the LED state never reached the manual” — and add one sentence to your dictionary note if needed.
• Drill the blackout. Set hazards to max in Custom and run ten bombs where power outages are guaranteed. The first two are hilarious; after that, blackouts become routine.

When each seat has its technique down, module-specific callouts are the next multiplier — that’s the module guide with all four callout packages. For the mode where all of this gets stress-tested against waves and hazards, see the Endless survival guide, or start from the beginner’s flow if your trio is still on its first bomb.