Poppy Playtime | The Best and Worst of Indie Horror

[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] i feel a certain level of responsibility in making this video land i tend to stay away from what is popular and in the mainstream especially with these kinds of momentary spikes involving indie hits the closest thing i've gotten is deltarune which really was just made due to my excitement for the game it's arguably one of my least important videos but still it's something i wanted to make many of you may be scratching at your heads that i have yet to bring up my hello neighbor video and while yes the argument could be made that i covered a popular trendy indie horror hello neighbor was well dead at that point with helen neighbor 2 coming out the is slightly less dead but when the video first came out the original and the franchise in general was very much dead this then leads us to poppy playtime now why i made this video may not be satisfying to you all i felt a lot of pushback when announcing this topic and i can understand why what is there left to talk about and heck with only two chapters why even bother talking about a 40 completed game while i can't answer all those questions i at the very least want to provide a straightforward analysis of the game because at least in my opinion from a gameplay perspective this game completely slipped under the rug anytime i had heard anything about the game it might have been a cheap rampage explaining some of the controversy involving one of its developers and then i'm watching just staring at these two hands on the side of the screen now this sounds dumb but a lot of you might be in the same camp was it just me huh so today let us dive into the inky dips wrong game let us dive into this abandoned factory and see what mob games has in store for us chapter one [Music] we start off puppy playtime with a vhs intro which i know this may not be the most original or even gripping of starts but they did a fantastic job the vhs look is so overdone and i have been seeing the same kinds of tricks being applied i.e something that was super impressive five years ago well to me it's just a basic vhs effect however mob games really spent the time to perfect the look and i think it looks quite convincing now i'm not gonna beat around the bush here guys this game has so many things going for it and against it let's start off with the setting visually the game looks great that's been a pretty defining characteristic it seems with most popular indie hits having a distinct art style is definitely something that seems to attract a crowd the lighting and general composition of the rooms feels great for now we're only talking about chapter one and while they couldn't really get too creative especially with the short length still the general presentation looks nice like look at this shot how the glass panes of the building are letting light seep in drawing emphasis to the middle with mr large and in charge over here speaking of great in the same scene you might have noticed the little blue monstrosity well this my friend is poppy despite being on the face of all the marketing and being the freaking antagonist of this chapter and likely one of the main baddies in this game he is not the titular character of the game no my friends this cookie monster reject is named huggy woogie which is just such a fun name to say multiple times i'm calling him herbert so hubert is a fine name oh wait i mean huggy woogie but more importantly the design is actually quite good the blue fur like material paired up with the balloon-like mouth and wide eyes is a unique combination works quite well some of the best character designs have some of the simplest design choices and seeing such a lovable fluffy thing paired with the head biting beast we see him as later creates some nice juxtaposition which i was not expecting to piggyback off of talking about the presentation a bit mob games uses both huber and the setting of the game expertly to present an atmospheric experience take hubert right here in the center now look very closely and while it might seem hard to tell through the compression of youtube and the natural slight camera shake the game employs hubert right there is moving ever so slightly and at first when i looked at it again i thought it might have been the wind brushing up against his fur but it's an enclosed building please just trust me on this one this is further aided by when hubert is seen to go missing and the addition of the toy blocks kicks in when first walking into this room most players including myself will have been so taken aback by hubert and when he leaves the player immediately knows who's on the move hubert this is undeniably what surprised me the most when playing this game not hubert slightly moving when he is still but the small design decisions that go a long way in guiding players in the right direction alright this is where my praises come to a screeching halt the rest of the chapter kind of sucks the general gameplay of puppy playtime revolves around puzzles which sure puzzles and horror have gone hand in hand quite well in the past but all these games security breach hello neighbor bending the ink machine they all fall under that cam i would have really liked to have maybe seen a different direction to distinguish itself from the crowd most of the puzzles revolve around this thing the grab pack reserve which consists of two hands that can extend out to grab and interact with objects this is a really cool idea just in the wrong game the entire gameplay of chapter one revolves around these puzzles requiring players to wrap wires around certain poles to divert power to certain parts of the map i wouldn't mind this but it just doesn't fit in the game something about how they implemented these puzzles in the game has me thinking these were just two ideas made for two different games they feel boring the general composition of these puzzles just doesn't interest me now i would like to preface something that when someone says gameplay is supreme i don't actually think that's the case after playing the new stanley parable remake i realized that what we should really be looking toward is the fun of a game i know this may seem obvious and while the gameplay is supreme saying is a good rule of thumb here's what i mean by that the stanley parable at its simplest is a walking simulator however people like myself derive fun from the game through its witty dialogue and quirky character moments for a more controversial example slender is extremely dull from a gameplay perspective but the horror is what drives it whether it's good horror is up for you to decide but games like slender fnaf on the topic of fnaf here's a really good example take bonnie's guitar mini game and help wanted all you are doing is pressing a couple of buttons and playing a game of finding the off note oh no we music here or something but the towering bonnie instills fear into the player the simplicity is what keeps players attention it's a simple point a to point b but getting to that point is spooky for some smaller horror flicks work because fear and horror are what drive the gameplay and tension it becomes part of the fun now i mention all of this because puppy potentially has the opportunity to use some other aspect in the base gameplay to enhance the experience but they don't do any of that really chapter one and still some really cheap scares with a pipe valve going off here or just a loud unidentifiable noise there this is the bare minimum and it's such a lazy design decision the best part of this game is the last five minutes okay so after pissing around for a bit right before you're going to enter a spooky dark hallway hubert shows up the fact that hubert is so towering over you is once again some nice juxtaposition in how usually toys are smaller and the humans are the ones that struggle then the next bit involves a scripted chase sequence which there is nothing wrong with this having variability especially with a budget indie game like this can create some programming challenges the actual animation here had impressed me especially regarding hubert crawling through the vent they made it look pretty natural those long lanky limbs are extending far out towards you and the jump scare was a lot better than i was expecting so please incorporate some smoothing onto those teeth they look straight out of a ps1 game so then you run and you die because you didn't go down the right path and you do it again and again and uh oh oh oh oh now you can call me bad but this chase sequence and his trial and error format is a no-go this chase scene is way too dependent on you knowing the correct route and because of its decent length repeat playthroughs just feel like i am pecking away at it though the ending is quite satisfying with hubert suffering a gruesome death well at least that is until he comes back in a future chapter probably i don't know so then we go back to the boring gameplay where we kind of just walked for an excessively long amount of time and through a well that was a lot more literal than i thought and then we opened a glass case spooky lights kick in and yep that's chapter one well now free originally priced at five dollars no the game has quite a bit of polish in some areas but chapter one was basically a tech demo and thankfully it's free now as even for five dollars it wasn't worth it for five dollars you got a boring mediocre walking game with a spooky 2-minute chase sequence at the end nice now this was apparently a promising enough concept as it blew up into popularity and here we go with another chapter based horror game so overall chapter 2 has a lot of shoes to fill in it's going to have to compel me enough to see this game till the very end it needs to prove to me that this concept can be further expanded upon it's out chapter two well chapter two is uh it's kind of better so we pick right back up from the end of chapter one and we go through some hallways again always nice to see then we enter the office of the like the main crater dude this is fine already there's a big leap from chapter one the chapter two i found a golden flowey statue you may have also noticed that sometimes there are these vhs tapes with crt tv scattered around this is where you'll get your unhealthy dose of lore and yep it's uh it's a spooky not really my cup of tea maybe it's burnt out from all the other franchises with heavy lore such as fanath and bendy but i could literally care less it also just doesn't seem that original and oh boy we'll get back to that in a bit then finally we use the grab pack for an actual interesting mechanic that being to swing across giant holes or cracks within the floor this is pretty fun and while it's not an element that can carry itself it's still a nice evolutionary use of the grab pack also poppy gets taken away more electric puzzles later then we meet mommy longlegs who is the main antagonist of this chapter we'll call her kyle again i must compliment the animation with such a stretchy and bendy character they must have really been in a loop on animating this one she begins to say some threatening things about eating me while i'm alive i just don't care never in this game in any of the chapters that i ever feel truly intimidated i know horror is subjective but i feel as though this genre just hasn't had justice in recent years jumping ship a little bit the main gameplay lies in the three mini-games we have to complete in order to turn on the train which will well i guess it's gonna help us get out of here the structure is simply way too repetitive you start a game you enter through the stairs you need to solve some basic puzzles to get into the game you play the game and then you solve another puzzle to get out of the game and repeat the lack of variation makes me feel like i'm playing the same thing over and over again and the minigames themselves i mean they're the most basic of basic mechanically and don't give me the argument that they are children's games so having them being ungodly simple would fit within the universe well it's boring so boo hoo i don't know why developers keep implementing this hate breaking to you steel wool and mop games but simon says is not engaging they took the monkey from toy story 3 and made it kind of a threat basically if you take too long then you die too bad i don't have any footage of the jump scare animation because you know it was easy i appreciated and chuckled slightly at the more outrageous attempts to make the game harder you know by adding in different colors and symbols but other than that it was tiresome whack-a-mole but huber edition is next and yep same general concept not too awfully interesting well i like the idea of kyle watching over you especially since you can only really see her silhouette it doesn't really matter in the end because i'm so concentrated on whacking the little mini hubert's back look it's not that these games aren't necessarily bad but being presented as the main gameplay loop and scare factor they severely under deliver in that regard if they were maybe part of an optional quest or something you know acting as literal mini games in addition to the larger story i would be fine with that but no alright so squid game red light green light is the final game just replace the giant doll with this here plug a pillar it's probably the best game out of the three especially since the grab pack has a more traversal used to it you can cling onto the monkey bars and swing around or you can just be like me and go on the ground the whole time and you'll still win seeing the ever approaching pug pillar as you are completely still is an awesome sight to see if only i could feel more threatened because this thing moves slower than your mom also minor nitpick there isn't like any direction that the game gives you on where to go so i kept going and uh oh and excuse me mr dana raid you were actually supposed to cling on to this glowy orange pole and crash through the glass how the hell was i supposed to know that markiplier made the same mistake if that validates my claim these three games are the bulk of the experience it's the main objective and jiminy cricket's why you have so many possibilities i just i just feel like they blew it to put into context how much fun i think these sections are take the amount that rafael trevzkovsky lost by in poland's 2020 election then divide that by ten thousand then divide it again by 20. then end a percentage symbol at the end of the number perfect and i know what you are saying while there are still three chapters left and things could go for the upswing well by chapter 2 i should already be getting a good idea on the direction of your game the main gameplay going forward is going to revolve around more puzzles in the grab pack and there will be some kind of main objective that will require players to walk through lots and lots of hallways i mean do you know what chapter two ends with did you say a cinematic chase sequence sounds pretty similar to chapter one if i do say so myself i do like the fact it's a little more involved with there being more stages to the sequence and the actual build-up is very natural with kyle getting mad at the player for cheating on her game during the pug-a-pillar section so it's not like chapter one where huber is like boo run away now still though this time the multiple stages of the frantic running involve players having to hide from kyle which wouldn't be so bad but most of the time you aren't going to realize you should have looked up to escape with the grab pack and you'll die and die and die uh oh we've run into the same problems as before the last chase sequence isn't so much you trying to find a way to avoid her instead it's you going down a specific path to eventually kill her oh my god it's the same as chapter one made worse by the fact that the corridors and avenues players have to take are more elaborate which means there is a lot more room for error so you kill kyle and the prototype takes her away what is the prototype well i think it is quite obvious daner 8. the prototype is simply another version of woodrow wilson this would further explain why he disappeared in all of your videos because he then became the main antagonist of a much more successful and popular pro party buddy at least it makes more sense than the now floor also dana ray gets absolutely zero apparently the people at playtime co were experimenting on kids and somehow when kids get attached to a specific toy they had their souls fused with that toy and wait wait isn't this just like fnaf i can't be the only one to question the similarity and uncanniness between the two and i don't even state that as a joke while that might be the cliche root you know what isn't immediately when playing this game you know what immediately stuck out to me it's striking similarities to bendy and the ink machine and look i know i'm not the first one to point this out but it bears mentioning so without going any further i dug deep and just for this video decided to play bendy in the ink machine for the first time why'd i add it wasn't that great there save you 20 minutes of a hypothetical future generate video i will not be making a bendy video please don't ask well you may be able to tell the surface similarities both are set in abandoned locations all the employees are missing and the monsters in each game are reincarnated versions of other people however this is just scratching the surface scattered around and bendy are these little cassette tapes that provide a little more detail into how this wacky world works similar to the vhs tapes found in poppy chats are one of both games end with a chase sequence now this part really bothers me because not only does poppy seem to be using similar elements from a story perspective but structurally both games have their first chapters have players aimlessly walk around completing a couple of puzzles and then end with a chase sequence it just seems a little too formulaic you know but what really surprised me was when i played chapter 2 of bendy where as you guessed it players basically play an elevated version of chapter 1 with more in-depth puzzles and it even ends with another chase sequence now on the surface that doesn't sound so bad well of course the next chapter should be better than the last each game's first chapter is acted as little tech demos in a preview a proof of concept per se and while yes that is true let me tell you the bigger picture here is chapter one of either of these games bad well i would say no not necessarily their purpose was to show off a gameplay concept that could be elevated into a full-fledged experience what falls short though is the potential these games haven't been meeting our expectations and see that's the key here the gaming audience likes these sorts of games because they present new fresh ideas take bendy similar to poppy it brings some juxtaposition to a horror setting taking the nice friendly natured image of someone like the walt disney company and instead flipping the script by creating a world with lies and deception this idea is so compelling but then benny just had to get a little too greedy i won't go into the whole history of kindly beasts and their little shenanigans but it isn't very good but what is most insulting about these two games and i guess will divert the attention back to poppy is the company's outlook on the game the beauty about indie developers is that they aren't tied down to any marketing budgets for creative sacrifices none of that they get to make the product they want to make despite this i see developers like mob games and joey juice studios who put such a heavy emphasis on toy cells and movie deals nfts these indie devs are feeling more like full-on game studios when really they should be honing in and bringing back what makes indies great the little and inventive experiences they bring us instead they presented us with that buggy mess and yes i know i haven't mentioned it but i am well aware that puppy playtime chapters one and two release in pretty horrific states though to give them credit at least for chapter two they clean themselves up pretty quickly they present us with basic experiences all covered by a good-looking coat of paint they present us with news of upcoming merch and tie-ins with other media companies the reason i bring up bendy and the ink machine despite it being a general talking point is that i've seen it already happen they push toy sales when they sure nav and now their one shining star is stuck in a wasteland full of bugs their new upcoming game is just in limbo on its development progress and to cap it all off they're being sued for half a billion dollars now am i saying this is all going to happen to mob games no or at least i hope not but with the formulaic nature the game is headed down the countless apologies they have had to send out it's not looking good in any way in all aspects poppy playtime left me feeling underwhelmed and i didn't necessarily hate the experience but it's something i wouldn't really want to play again is there hope for poppy playtime time will tell but so far by what i've seen it's looking a tad bleak hebert's animation makes up for everything 10 out of 10 games [Music]

Channel: Danerade

Views: 422,379

Keywords: poppy playtime, poppy playtime chapter 2, poppy playtime chapter 1, poppy playtime chapter 3, poppy playtime all secrets, poppy playtime lore, poppy playtime gameplay, markiplier poppy playtime, poppy playtime chapter 3 trailer, game theory poppy playtime, danerade poppy playtime, danerade, poppy playtime huggy wuggy, kissy missy, pugapillar, poppy playtime ending, gaming, review, poppy playime jumpscares, poppy playtime review, poppy playtime trailer, poppy playtime song

Id: BL5RUzbpM2I

Length: 19min 8sec (1148 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 07 2022