Mob Entertainment has opened a free beta test for Escape from Playtime, the multiplayer prequel to Poppy Playtime, on Steam. PC Gamer reports that the open beta is live and runs until 6 pm PT on Sunday, October 4. It supports up to eight players, with groups of at least four recommended.
The Poppy Playtime games place players inside the Playtime Co. factory as a human intruder pursued through its halls and air vents by oversized toys, among them the towering blue plush Huggy Wuggy. The prequel inverts that arrangement: players take the role of the toys themselves, among them a plush bunny, a cartoon cat and a fluffy unicorn.
Teams move through the factory’s darkened corridors and rooms collecting supplies. Filling a cart with enough of them advances the group to the next shift, and clearing every shift completes the escape.
What stalks the factory
The threats escalate with each completed shift. Toy robots charge at players once they are detected and explode on contact, but shut down if another player strikes them in the back of the head with a thrown object. A Cat Bee — a cat dressed as a bee — latches onto players and poisons them until a teammate knocks it loose, again with a thrown object. Both counters depend on a second player being in range.
The beta also introduces Miss Delight, whose approach is signalled by the sound of her high heels echoing through the factory. She towers over the player-controlled toys and kills on contact, and is stopped by a flashlight shone into her face — a counter bounded by the flashlight’s battery life.
A feedback build
We want to emphasize that this is very much a playtest looking for your feedback. This build has many work-in-progress aspects, experimental features, experiments with balance, and locked away features.
The studio has said feedback from the test will aid development of the launch build, and players are offered a survey after a session.
