Poppy Playtime Chapter 5: What Should’ve Been One Last Trip to Playtime Co.

What’s not scary, has garbage puzzles, and feels like one great big filler episode?

Poppy Playtime Chapter 5 - Broken Things…

A game that is completely broken itself and doesn’t even deserve zero out of five Cyclones. 

Staying with Poppy Playtime tradition, Chapter 5 is single-player and currently only available on Steam. It’s likely developer Mob Entertainment will release Chapter 5 to other platforms like PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, and Mobile before the end of the year. Released in February 2026, Chapter 5 takes three to five hours to complete—too long if you ask me. 

If you can’t already tell, I have a strong hatred for this game. I tried to like it, I really did; but, after the torture of Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, and then Chapter 5 being somehow even worse, I’m officially sick of The Poppy Playtime franchise. 

I—like many others—was under the impression that Chapter 5 would be the last of Poppy Playtime; it appears we were all misled. So strap in and get ready for what was supposed to be one last chapter…

Broken Dolls

Poppy Playtime Chapter 5 - Broken Things focuses on the big build-up towards the boss fight against the Prototype. In this chapter, the Prototype kidnaps Poppy, and you learn more about his treatment of the test subjects. Throughout the runtime, it’s your job to save Poppy, fight the Prototype, and survive. Along the way, you gain new allies and lose old ones. 

That all sounds like it would be somewhat interesting if it weren’t for the rushed and unnecessary feeling the whole game has. It feels like Mob Entertainment is trying to squeeze every last penny out of the Poppy Playtime franchise.

Chapter 5 fails to do the one thing that Poppy Playtime is notable for. Poppy Playtime is a horror game. I went in expecting to be terrified or at least uneasy. Chapter 5 didn’t have a moment that scared me. It went from something truly horrifying to cheesy, then to downright bad. It’s like Poppy Playtime is becoming the Friday the 13th of the video game world.

Assembly Line Confusion

My biggest issue with Chapter 5 is that nothing adds to the story of Poppy Playtime. I feel you could completely skip Chapter 5 and not miss a thing besides a few details that may become important in Chapter 6. 

Chapter 5 is three to five hours long, with only roughly 30 minutes of important story building or useful information. The rest of the runtime is full of puzzles that hardly work and chase sequences that lead to many, many needless deaths. 

The puzzles pad the runtime and ruin the iconicness of Poppy Playtime’s puzzles. The ratio of puzzles to important parts of the game (like character interactions, a chase scene, etc) is horrific. For every 10 puzzles you complete, you get one important scene. 

Back in The Toy Box

I have two characters I want to mention: Lilly Love Braids and The Prototype. Let's start with the one I prefer.

Lilly Love Braids. As a character, she's almost useless to the plot and story. She’s an underwhelming antagonist who isn’t scary and more annoying than anything, and her design is simple and disappointing. But her home and environment are easily the most interesting in the entire game, giving the player a few moments to enjoy the environment around them. 

Now onto The Prototype…

What a great big disappointment.

Poppy Playtime does one thing right. It builds up its main antagonist to be a force to be reckoned with. The Prototype remains a shadow in the background and doesn’t join the plot until the end of the game. 

Let's talk about that reveal. A reveal that was so incredibly boring and disappointing. The character design is nothing special—something Poppy Playtime used to be known for. There is one interesting aspect: The Prototype consists of multiple characters pierced together and also fragments of their different voices in its own voice. 

But as the main antagonist of the entire franchise, The Prototype is a giant let-down. You hardly get to interact with The Prototype. In fact, you only get one interaction that does, I'll admit, subvert expectations, catching you off guard. Even with that twist, it’s immediately undone and left to mean nothing.

Playtime’s Over

Chapter 4 is a masterpiece in my mind compared to the disaster that is Chapter 5. There wasn’t a single moment in this game that I could genuinely say I had fun or was scared. Will I come back to the franchise for a Chapter 6 review?

Highly unlikely, unless the sixth game is suddenly way better than these three previous strikeouts. 

Poppy Playtime Chapter 5 - Broken Things is a broken chapter itself and not worth a moment of your time. You’d be better off playing the first game over again. 

My Rating