Poppy Playtime is a story-focused Horror game, where you take the role of an ex-employee of the Playtime Company. 10 years after leaving the job, the factory you worked at is completely abandoned, with all of the employees seemingly vanishing in thin air. Now there’s nothing left, but broken down toys and outdated electrical equipment standing between you and the truth – oh, and murderous toys that clearly watched too many Child’s Play movies.
The game was developed and produced by MOB Games, with Chapter 1 being released on the 12th of October 2021, and Chapter 2 being released on the 5th of May, 2022.
How to Download Poppy Playtime
You can download the game from Steam. Click on the Download button at the end of this review.,
The Game Review
Gameplay
Poppy Playtime does a really good job of setting up the story within the first few minutes of the game, both through in-game visuals and old-timey commercials for the Playtime Company. Even from the very start, the story is really interesting and grips you as the player, as you’re never too sure which direction it’s going to go in. At all times, the mysterious disappearance of everyone is kept secret, and you’re kind of just left to deduce what exactly did happen in this nightmarishly colorful factory.
In terms of what you’ll actually be doing in Poppy Playtime, you’ll be exploring the factory from a first-person perspective, examining objects, solving puzzles, and using the innovative ‘GrabPack’. The GrabPack is essentially two, long-reaching arms that are used for grabbing items and pulling them towards you, as well as activating switches or conducting electricity to restore power to certain sections of the game world.
Their use is fairly simple, but their execution is really well done and it matches the child-like aesthetic the game is going for while implementing a new and interesting way of solving puzzles that not many horror games manage successfully.
Unfortunately, each chapter isn’t particularly long. The first chapter, which is free, is only about an hour long and the second chapter is about 2 hours long, but comes equipped with new ways of playing over the first one. It would be nice if the game was a bit longer, as the world the developer has crafted is honestly really intriguing and generally disturbing, despite it having a child-like aesthetic.
Now, that is something you really don’t see in horror very often, as it can be really difficult to make something like that work and still be scary, but MOB Games have accomplished it really well.
Graphics
Graphically speaking, Poppy Playtime is an impressive-looking game for the most part. Yeah, some of the textures look a bit off at times, but that’s easy to ignore when you take into consideration how well all of the world’s design is.
The setting of an abandoned factory for children’s toys is so well designed, with plenty of color and toys strewn about the place. Despite the child-like attention to detail, it doesn’t detract from the horror at all. The only real negative that comes to mind on this one is the game could benefit from having a flashlight, as there are areas in the game where it is just far too dark to see anything.
Audio
Unsurprisingly, Poppy Playtime does a great job with its audio. Most of the time, all you’re going to be hearing are your own footsteps until you trigger a loud machine or trip over some leftover toys that are strewn all about the place. At no point does the silence the game provides become comfortable, so whenever something loud does happen – like the whirring of a machine – it genuinely makes you jump out of your skin.
There was clearly a lot of love and attention for this aspect of the game and it shows.
Conclusion
Overall, Poppy Playtime is one of the more interesting horror games to have come out in reason years. The mystery the game sets up is enticing right from the beginning of the game, the world design matches the game’s aesthetic perfectly, and it somehow does the near-impossible of making toys a scary horror entity to encounter again.
By no means is the game perfect, but considering that you can play the first chapter completely for free, you’d be hard-pressed to find another horror game quite like this one.
