Poppy Playtime is a horror puzzle game where you control an unnamed protagonist traversing the mysterious facility with your GrabPack, a hookshot-like device that allows you to interact with the environment. Filled with a mysterious sense of nostalgia, Poppy Playtime is a horror game packed with personality, making it a welcome addition to horror gaming.
What's more, MOB Games' indie gem is packed with so much detail that it's unlikely you digested all that information in one playthrough. Here's where we come in; we've scoured Poppy Playtime for the kind of trivia that will keep you up to date in the trendiest horror game circles.
Updated March 24, 2022, by Cameron Roy Hall: Poppy Playtime Chapter 2 is just around the corner, and the most recent trailers suggest that everything we know about the indie horror game is about to change. Since we clearly enjoy a little light mental torture, we've perused the first chapter again to see if there was anything we might've missed. As it turns out, there was more to see, so we've brought back this list and dumped all of our new, dark knowledge into it, just for you.
8 Poppy Might Be More Than A Name
-(1).jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=740&dpr=1.5)
The first chapter begins and ends with Poppy, an eerie, seemingly sentient doll. While she's clearly more than what she seems, perhaps the least discussed hint is in her name. For those that might not know, a poppy is a reddish flower, exactly like the one painted around the door to Poppy's room in the game, and poppies are often used to symbolize remembrance, death, or sleep.
When you stumble across Poppy, locked in her room, you quite literally wake her up. There's also the very real possibility that Poppy is the result of death, as she states, "I'm a real girl, just like you," at the end of the commercial that opens the chapter. More tangentially, it's probable that the name hints at you uncovering the truth (memories) buried in the desolate, evil factory.
7 Playtime Co. Has Horrible Working Conditions
Speaking of, throughout Poppy Playtime, the facility's dubious past is gradually revealed through fantastic environmental storytelling. Aside from the hidden tapes (we'll come back to those), there are several posters plastered to the rusting walls which outline rules for the employees, such as, "do not hide behind doors to scare Laith Pierre," and "don't enter the 'innovation wing' without authorization."
On the surface, these posters are innocuous enough. The more suspicious ones hidden among the mess say things like, "Playtime Co. recommends a daily intake of 4000 calories," and, "breaks longer than 10 minutes are not permitted." The one that takes this beyond a tongue-in-cheek jab at current stifling work conditions states, "fostering happiness (adopt an orphan TODAY)." Why would Playtime Co. want more children around? Well, we have a few guesses...
6 The Tapes Suggest A Horrifying Secret
Poppy Playtime's actual plot is completely shrouded in mystery. There's plenty of exposition, but that's not the same thing. If you take your time and explore the factory, however, you can stumble across a string of optional VHS tapes that shed a little light on the situation. The tapes can be viewed by locating an old television and VCR.
Each one covers a segment of Playtime Co.'s sordid history, from little things, like interest in staving off old age, to larger things, like a scientist disregarding the screams of his dying colleagues at the hands of a rogue experiment while he logs his plan for future attempts. Experiment 1-0-0-6 in the unlabeled tape is most likely Huggy, but as for the other experiments mentioned, there's no firm accounting. Not yet.
5 There Are Definitely Other Monsters Coming
Huggy Wuggy, the leggy, blue abomination, has cemented itself in the annals of indie horror history. It's tall and rail-thin like Slender Man (or Siren Head, if that's your thing), and based on a child's plaything like literally every other indie horror monster ever created. So, there's that going for Huggy, and by extension, for MOB Games.
But, even if we ignore the trailers for chapter 2, there are a plethora of hints to suggest that more spooks are on their way. Take those tapes we mentioned earlier. They describe Experiment 1-0-0-6 (who we suspect is Huggy) to be one of many, and there's Poppy herself, who's obviously got her own horrifying thing going on, and there's also posters depicting entities similar to Huggy, but not quite. There's Kissy Missy, a pink friend of Huggy Wuggys, and there's Bron the brontosaurus, Boogie Bot, and there's Candy Cat, to name a few.
4 Everything Is (Very Probably) Alive
Just before the first chapter cranks up the intensity by unleashing a fully feral Huggy Wuggy upon you, there's a puzzle room to piece together. We mean that quite literally because you are required to find and conjoin the parts for a pleasantly cute toy called Cat-Bee. To offset the comfort provided by a kitty cat with wings, the machine in which you place the spare parts is watching you. With eyes.
The Make A Friend machine, for that's what the Rolly Polly Olly reject is called, has a pair of massive, bulbous eyes with beady, little pupils that are practically glued to your every step. There's no overt jumpscare here (well, not from the Make A Friend machine, anyway), but the slow burn effect is almost worse. It also begs the question... why would this machine need a set of eyes? Is it for security, or is it another experiment?
3 Huggy Is Always Watching You
Huggy isn't just a mindless beast; it's a skilled hunter. From the moment you step into Playtime Co., Huggy Wuggy is keeping tabs on you. In the atrium at the start of your cursed quest, there's what appears to be a prominent statue of Huggy Wuggy that later vanishes from its pedestal. That one's obvious, but it's far from the only piece of evidence we have.
In various stages throughout the game, you might notice subtle audio and visual cues that imply that Huggy Wuggy is nearby. A slithering, fuzzy limb just at the edge of the frame, or a pair of eyes leering lidlessly through a gap in the wall. These predatorial glimpses only stop when the chase officially begins... when Huggy is ready to kill.
2 Huggy Can Bleed
.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=740&dpr=1.5)
When the bone-chilling chase through a maze of ventilation ducts and conveyor belts ends, Huggy falls off the catwalk, brutally bouncing off pipes and walkways until it's swallowed by the industrial abyss below. Although it's hard to spot, in each place where Huggy's lanky mass met metal, there are dark splotches of blood.
The implication is that Huggy Wuggy isn't just synthetic fur and a couple of cross stitches, but rather an organic being. Further proof can be found in the fail state sequences, where Huggy successfully caught up with you. Aside from rows of ungodly teeth and a slimy throat, Huggy has human-like eyes just below a plastic carapace. If you can figure out how to unlearn that, let us know.
1 The Hanging Toys Aren't Just "Toys"
.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=740&dpr=1.5)
By now, you might have noticed that Poppy Playtime is all about breathing life into things that, frankly, should've stayed lifeless. Besides, an argument could be made that the lifeblood they're dolling out already belonged to someone. The initial tape that triggers your going to Playtime Co. comes with a hastily scrawled, blood-splattered message, which says, "everyone thinks the staff disappeared 10 years ago. We're still here. Find the flower"
It's possible that the employees are in hiding, but it's likely that they were used as fodder for a series of Frankensteinian experiments. Why else would Playtime Co., a toy company that's secretly making organically composed monstrosities, insist on their employees having a daily intake of 4000 calories? Why would they push so heavily for adoption? They're expanding their testing material.
When you "find the flower" there are toys dangling from nooses, accompanied by scribbled caution signs decrying "danger" and "stop" and "run." Are these hanged toys rebellious employees? Poppy Playtime has yet to explicitly answer that... but no one executes a normal toy.