Why Poppy Playtime's Toys Make It Scarier Than Other Horror Games

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In a modern time of horror gaming, Poppy Playtime manages to stand out among other popular titles such as Dying Light 2 or Ghostwire: Tokyo. The game's main antagonists come in the form of toys and dolls with malicious intent against the player. That singular difference is what makes it more terrifying than many other horror games, and this is due to taking away the comfort of security people typically associate with childhood toys. The dolls that were once cherished are now the enemies that want to hunt down and kill the player.

Other popular horror series will typically define an enemy as such due to its monstrous capabilities or appearance. In Resident Evil, for example, the monsters are zombies that the player fights through. Poppy Playtime does not immediately define the entities attacking players as monstrous or something that would automatically be defined as evil. The game is set in a toy factory where the player is shown that the toys in Poppy Playtime were made for kids to love and keep by their sides. The toys are initially painted in a good light that makes it hard to automatically associate them with monsters. This makes the reveal of Huggy Wuggy chasing the player through the vents of the factory that much more shocking.

Related: Why Police Are Warning Parents About Poppy Playtime

The appearance of Huggy Wuggy is initially innocent. A large blue fluffy entity with spindly limbs and comically red lips does not scream «scary» at first sight. Only when its mouth is open to reveal the rows of sharp teeth looking to devour the player does the atmosphere change. Compare Poppy Playtime's toys to Child's Play's Chucky, for instance, and the natural response to both aren't entirely dissimilar. Both are dolls that