Project: Playtime has the building blocks of a fun hit game beneath bugs, more bugs and stale gameplay.
Project: Playtime is the new asymmetrical horror game from developers Mob Games, behind the hit game Poppy Playtime. It is a 6-vs-1 multiplayer game in which 6 players try to survive against a player-controlled monster who is hunting them. Survivors have to complete memory-based puzzles to earn toy parts, and once they have collected 6 they can escape.
The monsters currently consist of Huggy Wuggy, Mommy Long Legs and Boxy Boo. Boxy Boo is a new addition to the Poppy Playtime universe. They all have special abilities that they can use, such as Boxy Boo’s leap to quickly traverse the environment. Their aim is to hunt survivors and down them. Once downed, they can carry them to hatches (similar to Dead by Daylight hooks). The monster wins by killing all 6 players. For the survivors, the win condition is the exit train, which is powered only after collecting 6 toy parts.
The Good
In around 3 hours of playtime, the game was very fun to play especially with friends. Hunting down your friend as Huggy Wuggy as they scream helplessly in Discord is amazing. Playing as the monster definitely was the most enjoyable part of the game for me, as the survivor mini games become repetitive after a few matches.
A very unique mechanic in the game is when you are downed. The monster will carry you into hatches where you must fend off little Huggy Wuggies clambering from the pipes all around you. It is certainly more entertaining than just sitting on the hook in Dead by Daylight for example. The more survivors in the hatch with you, the more Huggy Wuggies are trying to kill you. This puts pressure on the alive survivors to hurry to your rescue.
The cosmetics in the ‘Toy Box’, Project: Playtime’s battlepass, are admittedly very well designed and the free rewards weren’t as limited as some other battlepasses. However, they should consider adding a free section of the store to use your tickets on. Currently you can only use tickets earnt in game in the perk screen.
The Bad
Aside from the glitches, the game just needs a bit more content to feel fully fledged. But considering that the game just came out, we can give it some leniency content-wise as hopefully they will add more soon. The puzzle minigames can get boring after the 30th time you hit the musical notes in a certain order. Let’s hope they add a couple more in the future!
The perk system was a welcome inclusion, but lots of the perks were just direct buffs to movement speed or to completing puzzles. A more engaging system would grant unique abilities to give to survivors, or change the gameplay based on your perks. I was impressed with the monster’s sabotage perks however, which gave unique abilities such as stopping survivors from using their grab-packs or booby-trapping the puzzles to explode when survivors try to do them.
The Glitches
Right now the main thing holding Project: Playtime back is the glitches. One match I was playing as Huggy Wuggy and downed a survivor, and then got stuck inside of both the survivor’s model and the floor. I was unable to move for minutes as the others completed their minigames, and eventually with a plethora of button-mashing I escaped. Sometimes the minigames don’t properly light up when playing them, mostly the musical notes, and the reflex test can be a guessing game whether it will register your input or not. Whilst playing the monster, the hit detection on survivors is glitchy at best, and it is infuriating when 5 or so hits just do not register. An improvement in the hitting / attack mechanic feels necessary since it’s hard to tell if you are actually hitting them or not.
Conclusion
Project: Playtime isn’t shy about owning up to its early access nature, and the groundwork of a fantastically fun multiplayer horror is there. The game just needs a few more quality of life and content updates to fully realise its potential.
Horror Game News rates Project: Playtime: Awful / Bad / Playable / Good / Amazing / Perfect
Make sure to keep your eyes out on Project: Playtime, as they are already putting out bug fixes. Project: Playtime is available on PC now.
