BOMBANANA Deaf Monkey

Deaf Monkey is the bottleneck of BOMBANANA. You can see the briefcase. You can see Mute Monkey flailing a number or an emote. You can speak. You cannot hear Blind Monkey repeat an instruction, and you cannot hear Mute groan when you relayed the wrong row. Every sentence you send into the van is one-way. If the sentence is sloppy, Blind still has hands on a live module.

Lefto Studio shipped this role on Steam as exactly-three-player online co-op (app 4656000, publisher TARK, Windows and macOS, released September 2, 2026). The store blurb jokes that you would not want to hear the others anyway. In play, you desperately want to. You just cannot. Build around that, or the triangle snaps at the Deaf-to-Blind leg every round.

Pair this page with the roles hub and the Blind Monkey write-up so you know what the operator can actually perceive. Then steal the sentence order from the communication guide.

What you see, what you say, what you never get back

You are the eyes on the bomb and the eyes on Mute. That is a lot of vision and zero audio from the team. In-game voice still leaves your mouth; it does not put their voices in your ears. Watch mouths if you must, but do not trust lip-reading under a timer. Watch hands.

Your spoken job is to turn two inputs into one packet Blind can execute:

1. The bomb state you can see: module name, position on the case, wire colors, LED, printed digits, switch lights.
2. The manual answer Mute just encoded: which wire, which arrow, which digit, which up/down pattern.

Those two things are not the same sentence. First you may need to feed Mute enough visible state that the manual page can be found. Mute can hear Blind’s tactile reports, and Mute can see some of the room, but you are the one staring at the module while Mute is in the book. Call the visible details clearly, then shut up and watch Mute’s hands. When the answer appears, speak it to Blind in the full callout shape: module name, position, the details that module needs, the manual answer, then wait for Blind’s body language on the repeat-back you cannot hear, then confirm with a distinct yes gesture or a held emote so Mute also sees you are done talking, then tell Blind to input.

You will not hear the repeat-back. That is the design. Confirm by sight: Blind’s hands freeze, Blind nods or uses the emote wheel (every role has one in the full game), then the input happens. If Blind’s hands move while you are still naming a color, that is not a confirm. That is a mistake you are about to own.

Why Deaf is the bottleneck

Mute can take ten seconds in the manual without killing anyone. Blind can wait with hands on the panel. You are the only player whose delay is public speech, and the only player who cannot audit the other two with their ears. Power outages, loud interruptions, and obstructions — the hazards listed for Campaign, Endless, and the airplane stage — hit you first. You already lack team audio. A van full of noise does not make that worse in the same way it wrecks a hearing player; an obstruction that blocks Mute’s hands does, because your entire Mute channel is visual.

Stand where you can see both the module face and Mute’s emote wheel. If the airplane aisle or a van seat puts Mute behind you, move. Do not ask Mute to shout; they cannot. Do not ask Blind to tap you; they should not take a hand off the case. Your feet are part of the role.

Colorblind modes (two types) exist because your job is full of LEDs and wire palettes. Turn the matching mode on before the lobby readies. Blind does not need it. You do. Random role button is fine for a first bomb; if you land Deaf, announce that you need the sightline and the colorblind toggle before anyone starts lobby setup.

Module by module, what you actually call

Keep one convention for the whole night. Details live in the module guide; load order lives on module rankings. Your mouth should sound boring.

Wires. Count first. Then colors left to right from Blind’s left, which you must translate if you are facing the opposite way. Then LED color. Stop. Watch Mute. Speak the cut as color and position. Wait for Blind to freeze on that wire. Then “cut.”

Direction / D-pad. You call the LED. Blind calls the braille. You do not invent the dots. When Mute points an arrow, speak that arrow from Blind’s left/right, not from your camera.

Numpad / Calculator. Read the full expression. Speak the raw result, odd/even, and any greater/less flag the manual cares about, plus the LED. The raw result is not always the key. Mute decides the branch. You speak Mute’s number. Blind presses that digit wherever it sits on the jumbled pad.

Switches. Call the full light order and the full digit string before anyone flips. Then one switch at a time, up or down, confirmed by watching Blind’s fingers. Enter is a separate sentence. The most common Deaf-caused death is saying “enter” while one toggle is still a 50/50.

New launch modules, including CHAOS. Fourteen new puzzles shipped with the full game (eleven standard, three CHAOS). CHAOS is built to keep Blind’s hands occupied. Your job does not change: name the family, feed Mute the visible half, speak the answer, watch the input. Do not narrate two modules at once because CHAOS looks busy. Parallel talk is how Blind cuts the wrong panel.

Working with Mute without hearing them

Agree a dictionary before the first bomb, even though every monkey can emote now. Mute still cannot speak, so you still need signs for wait, yes, no, repeat, go-back, and digits 0-9. Put them on the callout sheet. If a sign is unclear, do not guess the manual cell. Ask for a repeat with the wait sign, then look again. Guessing is how you launder a Mute error into a confident spoken order Blind will obey.

Mute can hear you. That means you can describe bomb state out loud for Mute even though Mute cannot answer in words. Keep those descriptions short enough that Mute can still find a page. “Wires, top right, four, green blue red yellow, red LED” is a page. A story about how stressed you are is not a page.

When a hazard blacks out the cabin, stop talking about colors you can no longer see. Tell Blind to hold. Clear the obstruction or wait out the outage. Then re-read the module from scratch; lights may have changed. Campaign’s 30 levels teach this slowly. Endless will not. Custom can add so many hazards that Deaf becomes a traffic cop. Rank that pressure on the mode rankings, and do not enable every knob on a night you are learning the role.

First-night setup for Deaf

Sit Deaf if you can talk in complete packets and you can shut up. The role rankings put this seat at the top of communication load for a reason. You are not the smartest player in the room. You are the clearest.

Before ready:

• Colorblind mode if you need it.
• Sightline to Mute and to the bomb.
• Left/right = Blind’s left/right, said out loud once.
• Full-stop: a word you will say, plus a Mute sign, that means nobody inputs.
• Server browser or room code so you are not still joining when the timer starts — how to play with friends and Getting Started.

After a wipe, ask which leg broke. If Blind cut while you were still listing colors, that is a Deaf-to-Blind failure. If you spoke a number Mute was not showing, that is a Mute-to-Deaf failure. Fix the leg. Do not rotate roles mid-module. Swap after the bomb if the controls or the airplane layout is fighting your camera. Launch extras sit in launch notes. Return to the roles hub when you are ready to hand the microphone to someone else.