The Granny Detective Society already caught the public's eye at May's AG French Direct. You play as Madeleine, a retired mouse recruited by a sisterhood of spy grannies tasked with watching over a neighborhood and uncovering its residents' secrets. To learn more about this project — as offbeat as it is touching — we spoke with Jaximul and Vidu, the two founders of Team Empreintes, the indie studio from Angoulême behind the game.
A sisterhood of granny detectives, inspired by the genre's biggest names
The concept starts from a universal image: those grandmothers who always seem to know everything happening in their building. Team Empreintes turned that into a full-fledged spy organization, with art direction that stays true to the soft, stylized continuity of their first game, Fireside Feelings — a deliberate contrast with the depth of the cases you have to solve.
On the gameplay-inspiration side, the studio doesn't hesitate to cite Return of the Obra Dinn, The Case of the Golden Idol, and Duck Detective as direct references for the deduction genre.
A shifting perspective with every new recruit
Every granny detective you unlock doesn't just add a new face — she opens up a new way of observing the same scene: overhearing a conversation, spotting a detail that was invisible until now, and so on. The stated goal is to make players feel, through gameplay rather than explanatory dialogue, that a single point of view is never enough to understand a situation. A case journal and mini crosswords also act as a safety net for players who get stuck, without ever handing them the solution outright.
"Giving the game that feeling of constant renewal."
Team Empreintes, on the granny-detective mechanic — interview given to ActuGamingTargeting a Q1 2027 release, on PC
The studio expects a playtime of roughly 6 to 8 hours, in line with the games that inspired it. A PC release is being targeted for the first quarter of 2027; a Switch port is under consideration but not yet confirmed, as the studio prefers to wait for initial sales feedback before taking on that investment.
