BOMBANANA! Roles — Blind, Deaf and Mute Monkey

There are exactly three roles and every game uses all three. You can randomise them from the lobby if nobody wants to choose.

🙈 Blind Monkey

Can: touch the bomb, feel its shape, press and flip things. Cannot: see colours, read screens.

This is the hands of the group. In the official screenshots the blind player's view is not a black screen — it is the bomb drawn as white outlines on black, with only the component currently being touched picked out in colour. So the blind player knows where things are and what shape they are, but not what any of it says.

That makes the blind player the one who gives positions ("top left, the four-switch panel") and the one who executes. It does not make them passive: they are usually the only person who can tell the others how many of something there are.

🙊 Mute Monkey

Can: read the bomb disposal manual. This player is the only one who can. Cannot: speak.

The mute player holds the answers and has no voice to deliver them with. Everything they know has to get out through gestures, the emote wheel, and whatever system your group invents.

Practical consequence: the mute player does not need a microphone. The official FAQ confirms two of the three roles need a mic and the mute role does not, which makes this the role to give someone with no headset.

🙉 Deaf Monkey

Can: see the bomb and see the other two gesturing. Cannot: hear anything.

The deaf player is the only one who can read what is actually printed on the bomb — the colours, the symbols, the numbers. They are also the only one who can see the mute player's gestures and the bomb at the same time, which usually makes them the translator in the middle.

Which role is hardest?

There is no official answer to this and we are not going to invent one. What players consistently report is that the mute role carries the most load, because they hold the manual and have the least bandwidth to share it.

Picking roles

If your group is new:

• Put your most patient player on mute — they will be gesturing a lot and being misread a lot.
• Put whoever describes things clearly on deaf — they are reading the bomb aloud.
• Put whoever stays calm under a timer on blind — they press the button that either works or ends the round.

You can hit the random role button in the lobby instead, and swapping roles between rounds is the fastest way to understand why your teammates keep failing to explain things.