Poppy Playtime is one things of the best things mascot horror has to offer (and im tired of pretending that is not)

The impact of Fnaf cannot be understaded. An indie game that became one of the most famous franchises in recent memory.

9 year old me was completely horrified by Fnaf 2 when I watched the bigger kids playing the mobile version on recess, but after some years I grew fondness to the first 4 games, specially the 4 one since for me is the scariest one. At the end I ended up losing the interest in the franchise for a multidude of reasons by the way.

But if you ask me which of these mascot horror games was my biggest obsession when I was younger was Bendy and the ink machine. I love animated media and seeing an evil version of Bimbo the dog or Mickey Mouse was really novel. The story had me hooked until the end and was a really memorable ride.

When Poppy Playtime was released I was near the end of high school and I saw a lot of potential in it, it also helped that the game was pretty unnerving and Huggy's design sticked with me (Also I love that Huggy and Kissy instead of a roar they screech, for me far more scary than a generic RAAAAWR), but I admit that the controversies that the series got made me stray away from it for a while, specially the NFTs. However, at the current time I'm writing this I fell in love with this series.

For me the best part of this series is the story, the worldbuilding and the characters.

Objects having human souls inside is not revolutionary, I mean, Childs play did it long before Fnaf, but the execution of the Poppy Playtime experiments was great. The kids that were turned into toys aren't just a body count with no backstory, we actually know the hell that they went through and makes the impact of seeing these victims turned into monsters makes it have way more impact.

The worlbuilding is pretty good too, the way the factory facade disappears and turns into a cientific and industrial hellscape makes the world feel a lot more deep (no pun intended).

The characters are flat out iconic since day one. Huggy, the critters, the doctor, lily, the prototype, etc, all of them have excellent designs and even if some don't show up for too long they live an impact. They are well written and well executed characters that totally deserved theyre time in the spotlight.

The games itselfs I say they are solid, but the gameplay can lack in some areas. Chapter 4 for me was the worst, not only because it was broken on release, but some parts of it felt pretty boring, and being boring as a game is not good. I like chase scenes, but they should experiment more with other ways of facing these monsters like they did with Catnap's battle in chapter 3.

I feel like these issues with gameplay would have never happened if Poppy Playtime was a series of movies. Honestly this series can make for a great movie that can please the og fans while attracting new fans, but only if they are not handled like the Fnaf movies or the Mario Galaxy movie. The first fnaf movie wasnt all that bad but I would not say that it was good, fnaf 2 really sucked and the Mario Galaxy movie was really disappointing for me since it was just a bunch of references.

I think there are more Poppy Playtime fans than haters, but man, those haters sure are loud. Poppy Playtime is not a rippoff of Fnaf, is not the death of horror games and definitly is not at the level Garten of Banban. Garten of Banban is honestly everything wrong with Mascot horror: The puzzles suck, the story is nonsensical, the game is most of the time is really boring, is a never ending series of repetitive fetch quest, the voice acting is really unconvincing, is not scary in the slightest, and has character designs that are way worst than Concord (and Concord set the bar really high for bad character designs).

I brought Banban because is everything Poppy is not. Poppy Playtime is not a sloppy poorly made product that only wants to capitalize on the popularity of a subgenre of horror, Poppy Playtime has soul and care put into it and I really appreciate that.

If you don't like Poppy Playtime, thats fine, but if you say things like the game is just to take advantage of little kids or that is just food for Game theory then I will take those statements with a bit (a lot) of salt.