Poppy Playtime Review (PlayStation 4 & PlayStation 5)

Mob Entertainment has struck the iron yet again, bringing its ever-popular plush-centric series, Poppy Playtime, to PlayStation and Switch. About time, too, what with fans of the franchise having spent the last two years urging for the creators to port its way over to consoles and what have you. Needless to say that it’s finally here, which means I, being something of a Huggy Wuggy fan myself, thought it would only be right to return to the core of Playtime Co. to relive its introductory memories — if only to get another shot with that GrabPack.

If you haven’t had the chance to slug through the plushie-based survival-horror yet, then be sure to read on for a few quick pointers. Is Poppy Playtime Chapter 1: A Tight Squeeze worth playing, more so now that it has shed its PC exclusivity, or is it hardly worth kicking up a fuss over? Huggy Wuggy, take the wheel!

Welcome to Playtime Co.

It goes like this: you are in ”invited” to return to the seemingly abandoned grounds of an old toy factory—a prominent location in which only the most popular of toys originated and delivered endless smiles to the world. Aside from the titular toy, Poppy—a rosy-cheeked doll who released with the power to speak with her consumers—a revolutionary concept that stormed the market prior to the factory’s foreclosure—Playtime Co. also made its mark with several poster children, including the ever-popular, slinky-armed Huggy Wuggy. Unfortunately for the toy manufacturer, however, such toys eventually became extinct, and with their demise, the day of reckoning for their creators. Cry.

The enormous question mark that drapes over Poppy Playtime Chapter 1: A Tight Squeeze is this: what happened to Playtime Co., and why did its staff make the sudden decision to uproot and depart when all was going so well? As luck would have it, you’ve access to the factory — and not to mention the tools that’ll take you way beyond the gift shop and into the core of the business itself. The only downside to this is that, well, the toys have all gone feral — and they don’t exactly take too kindly to strangers, either.

On paper, it’s all rather simple: there’s an abandoned factory, and a note that urges you to find the “floral door”—a location that, rather amusingly, sits roughly twenty minutes from the main entrance. And that brings us to the next point: Poppy Playtime is incredibly short, to the point that you’re able to sweep all there is to see and do under the rug in just under twenty-five minutes. It’s an introduction to the series, so we’ll let bygones be bygones, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been a little longer.

Give Me a Hug

When it comes to the gameplay side of things, Poppy Playtime utilizes a lot of the same blueprints that feature in games such as SOMA and Portal. For the most part, it’s merely the case of memorizing a color-coded lock, or creating daisy chain links to unlock powerless doorways. And that’s about it. Or at least, that’s the first fifteen minutes of the game, anyway, after which the story takes a turn for the worse and has you embarking on a good old-fashioned cat-and-mouse chase. However, for the sake of avoiding spoilers, we’ll go ahead and gloss over those final few moments of the campaign.

Your main tool in Poppy Playtime is the GrabPack—a two-piece exoskeleton that allows you to extend your arms and, with their added range, grasp objects to either power up doors, or hold things in place whilst you casually slide on through. It isn’t the most exciting bit of equipment to use out in the field, but then, I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t get a slight kick out of high-fiving Huggy Wuggy, too. Swings and roundabouts, you know how it is.

Mechanically, there isn’t a whole lot to learn in Poppy Playtime. In fact, other than learning how to operate the GrabPack, which consists of two buttons, there isn’t anything to learn at all. For this reason alone, it’s rather easy to recommend the series to anyone who has a soft spot for survival-horror with light puzzle-solving nodes. It won’t make you scratch your head in confusion, but it’ll certainly get your attention for a short while, if only whilst you figure out how to generate power or crisscross electricity streams to activate a certain generator. For the record, though, Poppy Playtime is not a difficult game.

The Beginning of a New Era

Although Poppy Playtime isn’t the longest game in the world, it is, from the outside looking in, a game that has the potential to spawn dozens, and perhaps even hundreds of episodes. It’s a franchise that knows what it’s doing, and it certainly helps that the folks over at Mob Entertainment have done their research on popular toys and the manufacturing process before setting out to chalk up the outlines for the saga. It’s a shame, really, that there isn’t more to the first chapter, but when you take all of the ideas and potential characters into account, it also makes a great deal of sense, too. There is clearly so much in store here, and A Tight Squeeze, really, is the studio’s way of introducing a small passage of a much larger and more ambitious verse.

Given the sheer volume of praise that Huggy Wuggy received in the aftermath of its global debut, I have every faith in the world that the following chapters and their respective antagonists will continue to uphold such an iconic legacy. It’s early days yet, and there are still several chapters (we hope) to grace the anthology, but if Mob Entertainment is able to remain consistent with its formula, then honestly, there’s no real reason to fret over the beginning, middle, or end of what could very well be a near-perfect season.

To answer the question, is Poppy Playtime worth picking up on consoles? Yes, it is. However, if you’ve already had the opportunity to run it as a PC user, then there’s no reason to return to the roots of something that, quite frankly, isn’t that much different than the source material. Sure enough, it is in fact mechanically sound, but in no way does it add anything special to the original code.

Verdict

It isn’t an easy feat, attaining global recognition — especially in a market that’s predominantly USP-oriented. However, like Scott Cawthon’s Five Nights at Freddy’s, Mob Entertainment was able to attract a cult following large enough to establish a foothold in the mainstream—a spectrum that, over the course of 2023, has condensed itself into an even tighter space. Needless to say that, from a fan’s perspective, Huggy Wuggy and pals are worthy of retaining the right to share the crown — even if that means knocking heads with Fazbear and friends.

The future is bright for Poppy Playtime, that much has been proven over the series’ first two chapters. And while its first segment isn’t the lengthiest, let alone the most fleshed out of the bunch, it does lay the groundwork for what’s to come — and those possibilities are far from finite. So again, while A Tight Squeeze could’ve been a couple of hours or more, if only to allow us to obtain a slightly better understanding of the backstory and its characters, what it does offer is anything but half-baked. To that I say, kudos, Mob Entertainment — you’ve successfully managed to pique our interest.

As for what comes next for Poppy Playtime is still anybody’s guess, though if there’s one thing we’ve come to learn from its groundbreaking success, it’s that its episodes, no matter how big or small, are evidently built to last. So, if you’re all for hopping on the bandwagon as the latest plush-centric incarnation departs the station, then be sure to check out A Tight Squeeze the next time you’re scrubbing the docket.