Poppy Playtime: A good game that could’ve been great
Poppy Playtime, developed and produced by MOB Games, is a game built on clever ideas, primal horror, and buggy puzzles. It’s a survival horror game that’s easy on the survival, making it more of a puzzle horror title. But while some of those puzzles are inventive and require a level of critical thinking absent in most games these days, many other puzzles are glitchy, poorly designed, or just plain broken. And it doesn’t matter how smooth the rest of the gaming journey is; when you encounter a straight broken mechanic, it sours the entire experience.
That said, Poppy Playtime centers around a unique and genuinely terrifying narrative. They did something similar to the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise: they took something that should be innocent and harmless–children’s animatronic toys–and made them demonic, murderous, and hungry for flesh. Poppy Playtime and Playtime Co. turn innocuous games like hide-and-seek or whack-a-mole into adrenaline-filled Squid Games, where you fight for your life and your sanity.
What time is it?
Playtime!
Story & concept
The story of Poppy Playtime follows a mysterious protagonist, referred to as Experiment 1006, the Prototype. The game starts by showing us a VHS tape with a creepy TV advertisement for Poppy, a realistic doll made by Playtime Co. The ad is done with live-action actors, which gives the horror a more grounded quality. At the end of the ad, we see a hidden section of the Playtime Co. Factory and find a note included with the old VHS tape.
The note reads, “Everyone thinks the staff all died 10 years ago. WE’RE STILL HERE. Find the Flower…”
And just like that, we find ourselves in the lobby of the old, abandoned, condemned, haunted, sentient factory of Playtime Co.
As we progress through the factory, avoiding its security safeguards, we find more VHS tapes. Like files in Resident Evil or audio logs in Dead Space, these VHS tapes are how we learn what happened in the factory all those years ago. Where exactly did the staff go? Why do parts of the factory still run ten years after they shut their doors? How many children went missing here?
The game’s story is divided into multiple chapters and takes its sweet time unraveling any explanation. However, once you’ve played as many survival horror titles as we have, you learn to predict where a story is going. We’re excited to see each chapter’s twists and turns play out, but the pacing could be much better.
Graphics
The graphics of Poppy Playtime are what you’d expect from a polished survival horror title looking to wow fans. There aren’t many places to admire the details or graphics of the experience, and even when the game presents an ample opportunity, we were usually too busy running for our lives to stop and take any pictures.
There were no complaints about Poppy Playtime’s graphics or visual presentation. Yes, their motion blur seems egregious compared to other games, but that subtracted little from our gameplay. And yes, the lighting is piss poor throughout the game, making the details hard to pick out.
But when it matters, when the cinematics are intense and the cutscenes dramatic, the graphics deliver top quality.
Sound & atmosphere
Poppy Playtime was clearly made by 90s kids. 90s kids who’ve spent their fair share of time in ball pits, bounce houses, and arcades. The atmosphere of Playtime Co. feels like every cheap children’s attraction we’ve ever been to. The dirty laminate floors, the fluorescent ceiling lights, and the long, empty hallways all take us back to our times in Chuck-E-Cheese and its like. Even the cold, dead stares from the lifeless characters who are supposed to be child-friendly are hauntingly accurate.
The sound design of Poppy Playtime won’t give you intense paranoia like Dead Space will, but it will certainly make you look over your shoulder a few times. And every VHS tape you find has a live-action actor bringing the story to life. The poor quality of every video you see and the static bars on the TV all work to build a forgotten 90s atmosphere which gives us chills, and we don’t know why.
Gameplay
We were impressed by some aspects of gameplay in Poppy Playtime; the electrical conductivity puzzles made us smile for some reason.
We were enraged by other aspects of gameplay, like how most of it boils down to little more than running away from whichever toy is currently chasing you.
You don’t have any weapons in Poppy Playtime. Instead, you’re equipped with the Grab-Pack. This utility device allows you to manipulate your environment and interact with controls. But that means there’s no way to fight back against enemies you’ll encounter. Your only hope is to run. And since there are no hiding elements–like hiding in lockers or cabinets in The Evil Within–your only option is running.
By the middle of Chapter 2, we understood everything Poppy Playtime had in store for us: Run from an evil toy, solve a puzzle, run some more.
Rinse and repeat.
Replay value
The replay value for Poppy Playtime sits at a large and impressive zero. The first time we went through many of its puzzles, obstacles, and tunnels, we felt the fear and loved the experience. But once we encountered a few bugs and broken mechanics–issues that caused us to die repeatedly–we lost our enamor quickly.
Are there VHS tapes we missed? Absolutely. Did we ignore just about every collectible in Chapter 2? You bet. And we feel no need to go back looking for them. It’s a one-and-done kind of experience for Poppy Playtime.
In summation
All the building blocks for a worldwide phenomenon were well within grasp for Poppy Playtime. They had a brilliantly scary idea, created a one-of-a-kind atmosphere, and their gameplay was wildly unique. But the poor management by MOB Games and the disappointing way they handled every speedbump before them turned their game into an utter letdown. Huggy Wuggy, Poppy, and Mommy Long-Legs could all be gaming horror icons the same way Freddy, Slenderman, and Nemesis are. But instead, they act as the only spotless parts of Poppy Playtime, brightening up an otherwise frustrating, lackluster experience.
Poppy Playtime still has at least one more chapter to release, and there are rumors the developers won’t stop there. Poppy Playtime has partnered with YouTooz to create figurines of their toys, and MOB Games is supposedly in talks with an animation studio to create a feature-length movie.
So it seems we’ll have lots more Playtime Co. content to critique soon.
