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Description
Poppy Playtime Chapter 1 is an immersive, innovative indie horror game with a genuinely spooky atmosphere and great gameplay. While other horror games mostly involve walking around, Poppy Playtime Chapter 1 features well-crafted, simple puzzles that give you plenty of things to do as you explore a sinister abandoned toy factory.
Poppy Playtime Chapter 1 is a short, inexpensive survival horror game made by an independent developer. It's somewhat similar to games like Five Nights at Freddys. In Poppy Playtime, you get to explore an abandoned toy factory in first person. While you're there, you complete puzzles and begin to unravel the mystery of Playtime Co.
The developers of Poppy Playtime plan to release the game in short episodes. So far, only Chapter 1 is available. Chapter 2 is planned to be released sometime in early 2022.
Poppy Playtime Chapter 1 is a very well-made game, but it's worth restating that it's quite short. If you're experienced with this sort of game, it's very realistic to finish Poppy Playtime Chapter 1 in well under an hour. The game is quite inexpensive on Steam, so it's probably worth the cost, but if you're trying to fill a whole afternoon with one game you might be a bit disappointed.
One of the best parts about Poppy Playtime Chapter 1 is its spooky atmosphere. The game does a great job with visuals, sound design, and pacing. Exploring the spooky toy factory is great fun. You'll enjoy and appreciate all of the careful work that went into creating the detailed world at the same time as the game scares you.
The team that developed Poppy Playtime was inspired by other popular survival horror games like Five Nights at Freddys. According to them, other games often feel like 'walking simulators' in which you don't get to actually do anything. Instead, you amble about while things pop out at you and scare you. In Poppy Playtime, you have to solve a number of simple, intuitive puzzles while you explore the abandoned toy factory. This gives you plenty of tasks to concentrate on and gives you goals that you can achieve rather than just walking around.
The puzzles in Poppy Playtime Chapter 1 aren't super challenging. Instead, they serve to give you a bit of direction for your exploration. As you progress, you'll restore power to machinery, flip switches to unlock doors, collect stretchy hands to increase your reach, and solve puzzles that involve using your stretchy hands to trigger certain switches. The point of the game isn't to stretch your brain as you work through difficult challenges. Instead, the puzzles provide a perfect excuse for you to look for specific things as you explore the scary factory instead of wandering aimlessly.
It's not clear exactly when Chapter 2 will be released, how long Chapter 2 will be, or whether you'll need to own Chapter 1 to play Chapter 2. While we wait, however, Poppy Playtime Chapter 1 remains an immersive, innovative, and scary introduction to a great world of horror. Given how inexpensive it is, it's definitely worth checking out so you can learn what all the fuss is about!
How to play
The first puzzle of Poppy Playtime Chapter One involves matching colors. A door is locked, but a nearby keypad has a number of colored squares on it. If you want to figure out how to unlock the colored keypad in Poppy Playtime Chapter 1, you'll have to look in the room for a clue for the sequence of colors. It might take you a few circles around the room to train your spotting skills, but you'll find the solution quickly enough. The game is somewhat on rails, so if you're ever stuck, just take a moment to examine your surroundings and you'll usually find the solution or a hint straight away.
Once you're inside, there's a VHS tape and a VHS player that you can use to watch an in-game movie about your main tool, the Grab Pack. Watching the film unlocks a glass case with the grab pack inside. You can then equip it and enjoy using the stretchy, grabby hands to solve puzzles in the rest of the game.
The next puzzle involves opening a door. It's not a particularly challenging task: you just use your blue hand on the blue handprint to unlock the door and proceed. Many of the game's puzzles are like this. While they're not very difficult, they also allow you to progress quickly and ensure that you probably won't get stuck and have to look up a walkthrough.
When you proceed into the next room, you'll meet the big bad guy of Chapter 1: Huggy Wuggy. The next door will suffer a power malfunction, so you'll have to take the key from Huggy Wuggy and go through to the power room to restore the power. Inside the power room, you'll need to open a panel with your blue hand, then electrify your arm and stretch it to route power to a pole. When you get back to the main room, you'll be able to open the previously powered-down door with your blue hand.
In the next area, you'll want to collect colored batteries and put them in the matching slots on the crane's control panel. The crane will then give you a red hand to match your blue one, enabling you to grab with both hands. You'll have to open a door with two hands and then solve a power puzzle by grabbing a doohickey, touching a pole, then grabbing a doohickey with your other hand.
The next puzzle again involves power, stretchy arms, and poles. Restoring power will activate a conveyor belt that dispenses toys. Match the right toy with a display next to a door to proceed.
The last section of Chapter 1 speaks for itself. It's very scary, but there aren't any puzzles from here on out. Instead, you get to experience a bit of horror and then move on to the cliffhanger that ends Chapter 1!
Did you play Poppy Playtime Chapter 1? We'd love to hear about which parts of the game you enjoyed the most and how long it took you to finish the game. Are you excited about Chapter 2? Let us know in the comments below!
