Chapter 4: "Safe Haven"

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Chapter 4: "Safe Haven"

Gallery

Transcript

Credits

CHAPTER 4: "SAFE HAVEN"
General Information
Developer	Mob Entertainment
Publisher	Mob Entertainment
Engine	Unreal Engine 5
Platform	Microsoft Windows
Release Date	January 30, 2025 (Steam; Epic Games)
Links	Steam Epic Games
Price	$19.99 USD $29.50 AUD $69.99 BRL €19,50 EUR ₽710 RUB ₪73.95 ILS ₺279 TRY (Epic Games) £16.75 GBP
Protagonist	The Player
Deuteragonists	Poppy Playtime Doey the Doughman (passive) Kissy Missy Ollie (secretly The Prototype) Boogie Bot
Tritagonists	Medic Odd Ed Izzy Scout Haven Critters
Main Antagonists	Harley Sawyer Doey the Doughman (revolted)
Antagonists	Mini Huggies Nightmare Critters Yarnaby Pianosaurus Baba Chops Simon Smoke Poe Touille The Doctor's Bodies The Prototype (legs; Ollie; voice)
Cameos	Huggy Wuggy (wounded) Ruined Critters
Chapter Chronology
Previous	Chapter 3: "Deep Sleep" (2024)
Next	Chapter 5 (TBA)
System requirements
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 / Radeon RX 470 Memory: 8 GB RAM OS: Windows 10 Processor: Intel Core i3 9100 / AMD Ryzen 5 3500 Storage: 15 GB available space

“	Survival isn’t guaranteed. Fear is.	”
— Tagline

Chapter 4: "Safe Haven" is the fourth installment of Poppy Playtime. It was released on January 30, 2025.

The plot of the chapter continues after the end of Chapter 3: "Deep Sleep", where Kissy is left behind as The Player and Poppy Playtime continue forward. With the help from a new ally, Doey, they can begin their plan to stop The Prototype.

Synopsis

"Further into a hell of Playtime's making, you enact Poppy's plan for revenge against the Prototype..."

Steam

"You are pushed deeper into the undiscovered depths of the Playtime Co. factory, far below anything the world knew. Here, you’ll encounter terrifying new threats and discover shocking revelations. Can you outwit the unnatural new creations lurking in the shadows? Can you survive here long enough to eventually unravel the mysteries behind the experiments? Every step will test your courage, every puzzle will challenge your mind, and every corner may be your last."

Description

"Brace yourself for the darkest chapter yet in the epic Poppy Playtime saga."

"You are pushed deeper into the undiscovered depths of the Playtime Co. factory, far below anything the world knew. Here, you’ll encounter terrifying new threats and discover shocking revelations. Can you outwit the unnatural new creations lurking in the shadows? Can you survive here long enough to eventually unravel the mysteries behind the experiments? Every step will test your courage, every puzzle will challenge your mind, and every corner may be your last."

Features:

• New Characters (and Allies): New extraordinary characters guide your way, and haunt your nightmares.
• Expanded Lore: Discover more about the dark secrets of Playtime Co. and its twisted past.
• Mind-Bending Puzzles: Solve intricate puzzles that could mean the difference between life and death.
• Heart-Pounding Atmosphere: With haunting visuals and immersive sound design, the terror never lets up.

Will you escape the horrors hidden within Playtime Co., or will you succumb to the terror?

Survival isn’t guaranteed. Fear is.

Plot

Spoilers are present in here. You can clear your local storage to view the spoiler warning again!

Sentenced To Incarceration

After hearing Kissy's screams, Poppy and The Player are still on the lift heading down to the Sub-basement looking for allies there. Poppy decides to go back up to help Kissy and warn The Player that the Prison is very dangerous even by the factory's standards, describing it as 'hell'. Once at the bottom, The Player looks for a way into the Prison, finding a place full of dead rotting toys outside an imposing building. Then an alarm sounds, spotlights turn on, stunning them briefly, and multiple Mini-Huggies show up and attack The Player. Using the flare gun hand, they scare them off. Eventually, The Player manages to find an empty cell on a train that takes them inside upon being started. While in the cell, The Player is discovered by The Doctor, who causes their train to crash. When they wake up, they arrive in the Prison. The Doctor takes an interest in their actions and chooses to observe, creating several obstacles as they move through the cell block. The Doctor tests out the Player, by summoning multiple Nightmare Critters and Mini-Huggies to attack The Player. After a while, The Doctor calls them off. During this process, The Player manages to re-acquire a Red GrabPack Hand from a corpse and uses it to get further into the Prison.

Eventually, The Player reaches an observation room, where The Doctor, after commenting on The Player's previous encounters of the other Bigger Bodies, unleashes his dedicated attack experiment, Yarnaby. Though the observation room is behind a layer of protective glass, the only way out requires traveling through a series of back rooms Yarnaby has escaped into, forcing The Player to navigate around the feral beast in cramped spaces. They aren't alone, however, as a strange, stretchy creature helps by unlocking doors and distracting the monster, allowing them to safely exit Yarnaby's territory after a short chase.

Oh, Have You Heard Of The Doughman?

The Player continues moving through the prison, eventually needing to navigate across a ledge in the observation room above Pianosaurus' Enclosure. While trying to cross it, the ledge gives way and drops The Player into the cell in front of Pianosaurus, who immediately goes to attack them. Before he can reach The Player, he is suddenly grabbed by a number of stretchy arms, which proceed to violently swing him against the walls of the room and pull him into the shadows. Emerging from the darkness alongside shattered pieces of Pianosaurus is The Player's mysterious helper: Doey the Doughman. Despite the violent display, Doey proves jovial and friendly, reassuring The Player that he won't eat them and Poppy told him to expect them. He tells them to follow him, as he knows a way to a safe place on this level: the Safe Haven.

Kissy pulling the Player into a corner to hide them from The Prototype.

Following Doey, The Player is led through The Prison Yard as Doey bridges across gaps by his ability to re-shape his body however he likes. As they approach the haven, Doey goes off ahead of The Player, who is soon pulled into a corner by Poppy and a badly damaged Kissy out of the way of The Prototype's legs. The trio rush the rest of the way to the Safe Haven, a heavily fortified section of the facility with its own separate power grid, where the last of the non-aggressive toys have holed up under Doey's protection. Doey and the other toys are surprised to actually see Poppy, as she disappeared years ago, leading them to not fully trust her. It also becomes clear, to Doey's horror, that The Prototype has followed Poppy and The Player down to the Safe Haven, a fact that visibly vexes him but he quickly calms himself down and resolves to make sure he can't get inside.

While Kissy is recuperating, Poppy reveals her plan. There are still some orphans from Playcare inside the building that haven't been made into experiments, but they're stuck in the Labs on the lowest level of the facility. Her goal is to rescue them and then use the Red Smoke and old mining charges to blow up The Foundation and destroy the factory once the orphans are safely outside, bringing The Prototype down with her and making sure that Playtime Co's research never hurts anyone else again, and then they all can finally leave. After telling them this, she sends the Player to talk with Doey at the Safe Haven's generator.

At the generator, Doey reveals that he doesn't like Poppy's plan, even though he understands where she's coming from. The other toys he's been protecting for years are like his family, and though he sees the importance in stopping The Prototype, he wants to find a solution that doesn't require killing all of his friends. He asks the Player to consider the possibility, before explaining the more urgent problem he needs their help to fix: Safe Haven's generator is starting to fail them after years of being one of the only things keeping their defenses working. In order to fix it, they need an Omni-Hand; Grabpack hands that serve as the master control to anything in the factory, and they believe The Doctor has one to control the Prison. Doey tasks the Player with defeating The Doctor and taking his Omni-Hand to fix Safe Haven's generator, but before sending them off, lets them know that if they need to rest, their Safe Haven is also The Player's.

Crawling Over No Man's Land

Before the Player can go after The Doctor, they need to get back inside the main Prison complex, and the easiest way to do so is to cross No Man's Land. While heading to the waste water treatment, The Player overhears a conversation between Doey and Poppy in a sewage pipe, Poppy deeply apologizes to Doey for leaving him and the survivors while Doey remarks on why she did this. A series of caves were then rigged with anti-Doey traps and now patrolled by Yarnaby. To progress, the Player needs to solve a series of power rerouting puzzles, but the noise attracts Yarnaby, who begins prowling the area. To avoid attracting him to their position, the Player is forced to use their Grabpack as little as possible and move slowly, ducking into narrow crevices to hide when they're spotted.

Yarnaby getting trapped in a chain and falling into a pit of lava.

Eventually the puzzles lead to a pump room that must be activated by holding the blue hand on three terminals for an extended period, all while Yarnaby continues the hunt. As the Player finally reaches the door out of the area and opens it, Yarnaby catches up and immediately gives chase one final time, though the chase ultimately doesn't last very long, ending when The Player uses a chain with a hook as a makeshift Grabpack handle to swing over a gap, causing it to swing down and catch on Yarnaby's mouth when he jumps to follow them across. Suspended above a flaming pit, Yarnaby's fur catches fire, causing him to flail wildly in pain, falling off the hook, failing to hold onto a ledge, and disappearing into the pit.

After the chase, the Player runs into Doey again, who's been out collecting parts to fix the Generator. He asks about The Doctor, but concludes he isn't dead yet. Before he can continue talking, a nearby gas pipe releases freezing gas directly onto Doey, solidifying him and causing intense pain even after The Player redirects the flow to thaw him out. He tries to recover as The Player reenters The Doctor's territory.

The Doctor Will See You Now

Once they're back inside his territory, The Doctor is able to observe and speak to the Player again. He notes that The Player is every bit what the Prototype is afraid of, and muses about Playtime never noticing they had someone of such rare quality on their payroll, someone he can't claim to recognize from his time working there. He also wonders aloud about their motivation to come back, noting that the vague letter received at the start of the game can't be their only reason. They continue moving deeper into the complex, but fall into a trap laid by The Doctor inside an operating room: A blue hand scanner that activates a freezing gas pipe when scanned, freezing the hand to the scanner and slowly cooling the room to the point of lethality. While The Player works to escape the trap by picking up a spare Blue Hand with their other hand and using it to activate the room's temperature control, The Doctor reveals there's more to the story than Poppy has told them: she knew about The Hour of Joy ahead of time. He probes further, trying to get The Player to consider how she's used them, only telling them what they needed to know to act on her orders, but they disable the trap, in the process destroying The Doctor's preserved lungs which were kept in the room.

The Player progresses into a maze flooded with the Red Smoke, needing to use a broken Gas Mask with replaceable oxygen cartridges to filter it out, though each cartridge only gives them a minute of air. They search the maze for clues to a keypad code, which opens the way to another of The Doctor's preserved organs, this time his liver, which they destroy to open the way forward. As they continue, they fall into another one of The Doctor's traps, disabling their Purple Hand (and the right hand of the GrabPack entirely), which forces them to swing across a gap via a GrabPack Handle The Doctor promptly electrifies, dropping The Player into a maze with one of his other pets: an enlarged Baba Chops. The Player navigates around her to solve a power redirection puzzle, occasionally impeded by other larger than usual Nightmare Critters in cages. Upon the completion of the puzzle, The Doctor traps The Player in a room with a container similar to the ones that stored his preserved organs, only this one contains a harmless Simon Smoke. The Doctor confronts them with a test of morality, trying to force them to take the life of an innocent for their own survival; the door to the room will not open to let them out unless they fry the trapped toy. He insists that Poppy and Doey would both do it, but is curious if The Player would do the same. There is a way for them to leave the room without frying the toy, by pulling themselves out through a hole in the ceiling, but either way The Player is left with only one place left to go: The Doctor's lair.

When the Player reaches him, The Doctor's true form is revealed: a massive tank in the center of a room of monitors that contains his brain, surrounded by remote controlled robot bodies. As The Player approaches, he opens a trapdoor under their feet, dropping them into the server rooms below him. In order to return to the monitor room and destroy The Doctor's brain, The Player must collect four batteries from around the server rooms, but the area proves to be a dark maze filled with his remote controlled bodies. Most of them stand frozen, but several do not, and several more threaten to activate, shining a yellow light from their monitors that will promptly activate them if The Player walks through it.

The Doctor‘s robots attempting to grab The Player before shutting down.

When all of the batteries are plugged into the central part of the server room, the way back to the top is opened, allowing The Player to reach The Doctor's brain and remove his Omni-Chip, causing a power surge that threatens to destroy him. In a last ditch effort, he sends all of his bodies at The Player, but the system implodes, disabling his robots, and thus, he perishes for all that he has ever done, putting an end to his cruelty and his totalitarian rule over not only the Prison, but all of Playtime Co. for good. As he dies, he spitefully proclaims that The Player has saved no one.

Effort and Effect

The Player uses the Omni-Chip they took from The Doctor to upgrade their Red Hand into an Omni-Hand, allowing them to open a path back to the Safe Haven. Upon their arrival with the Omni-Hand, Poppy and Doey prepare to help The Player fix the generator, while Doey tries to confront Poppy about her plan and plead for her to reconsider. This is interrupted by a phone call from a panicked Ollie, as he states that the Prototype is just outside Safe Haven. Poppy sends Doey out to distract the Prototype and lead him away, leaving the Player alone in the generator room to fix it with the help of Ollie's instructions. They succeeded by reinforcing the Safe Haven's defenses, but no signs of Doey coming back yet. Deciding there's no time to wait, Poppy prompts The Player to move forward with her plan. The Player, alone, heads to the Foundation, and collects a series of mining charges from the surrounding caverns, planting them in the central gas room and redirecting the gas to increase its pressure enough to flood the tunnels. While fleeing the buildup of Red Smoke, the Player encounters Doey, who's lost the Prototype in the caves. He realizes in horror, and way too late, that the Prototype was intentionally leading him away from the Safe Haven. A distant explosion rocks the cavern and he runs back to the Haven in horror, followed by The Player.

Doey’s peaceful personalities lose control before Doey transforms.

On returning, they find Safe Haven completely destroyed and all of the toys inside dead from the explosion. The Prototype had attacked Safe Haven, and then, Doey breaks down in grief at not being there to protect his friends and family. This tragedy is the final straw, causing him to snap completely and swing violently back and forth between the three personalities of the children that were used to make him, Matthew's influence trying to control his anger at Poppy and The Player and reasoning that they were trying to help, Jack's influence sobbing over his dead friends, and Kevin aggressively and violently lashes out at The Player, blaming them for the death of the survivors.

Doey gets crushed by a tunnel boring machine

Ultimately Kevin's personality wins out, causing Doey to rage on killing The Player and accidentally knocking a wall over on himself and emerging from it as a twisted reptilian monster with three heads in its mouth – the three boys used to make him, trying to claw their way out. He chases The Player through underground tunnels that lead to a underground construction site. Unable to turn him back to normal as Matthew and Jack have no control, The Player is forced to kill Doey in the underground construction zone, using liquid nitrogen canisters to freeze him solid so he can be damaged by industrial saws. As they leave, he turns out to have survived the fight and attacks one final time underneath a tunnel boring machine, which the player is forced to pull down to kill him for real. As Doey dies, he rages on about how he can't trust anyone, lamenting his failure to be better and to save the other toys, and finally apologizes twice for his actions.

Ollie?

After killing Doey, The Player searches for survivors and stumbles into the ventilation block on shelf B6, where they find Poppy and Kissy Missy. Poppy confronts The Player, assuming they must be why the plan went wrong and horrified by their killing of Doey. Poppy tries to contact Ollie for comfort, but Ollie reveals himself to have been the Prototype the entire time. He explains that the real Ollie has been dead since a long time ago, and the Prototype had manipulated everyone to get this exact outcome. Poppy then furiously lashes out at The Prototype for lying to her all this time, with The Prototype responding that she kept missing the point. He proceeds to taunt the group about their failures, and threatens Poppy with being put back in an improved case. Overwhelmed by the revelation, her failures, and her fear of going back in the case, Poppy decides to flee and abandons The Player with Kissy Missy in the ventilation. The Prototype gloats about this outcome and states that he will find her as well as detonating the explosive charges he stole from The Foundation, collapsing the floor. Kissy Missy grabs onto the edge of the hole and tries to save The Player, but her already weakened arm, unable to hold The Player's human weight, tears off, dropping them down a deep pit.

A Shocking Encounter

The Player sets off an alarm and Huggy appears and slams the locked door.

Recovering after a rough landing near Kissy's torn off arm, The Player find themselves outside the Labs at the bottom of Playtime's facility, surrounded in a garden of poppy flowers. After exploring for a bit, they find a tape, which subjects them to a lecture from Leith Pierre similar to the one heard at the front door where The Player revisits the factory. The tape triggers an alarm, alerting a battered and damaged Huggy Wuggy to their location, who is revealed to have survived the fall in Chapter 1, ending the fourth chapter as he furiously rushes and slams at the door The Player is trapped in while screeching at them, before they get engulfed by Red Smoke.

Characters

• The Player
• Poppy Playtime
• Kissy Missy
• Doey the Doughman
• Harley Sawyer
  • Harley Bodies
• The Prototype
  • Ollie
• Yarnaby
• Pianosaurus
• Nightmare Critters
  • Baba Chops
  • Icky Licky
  • Rabie Baby
  • Allister Gator
  • Simon Smoke
  • Poe
  • Touille
  • Maggie Mako
• Ruined Critters
• Mini Huggies
• Huggy Wuggy
• Boogie Bot
  • Scout
  • Medic
• Smiling Critters
  • Bubba Bubbaphant
  • DogDay
  • Bobby BearHug
  • Hoppy Hopscotch (Bigger Body, VHS, voice only)
  • KickinChicken
  • CraftyCorn
    • Odd Ed
  • PickyPiggy
  • CatNap
• Riley
• Barry
• Mommy Long Legs
• Candy Cat (blanket only)
• Swap-imals
  • PJ Pug-a-Pillar
  • Cat-Bee (blanket only)
• Boxy Boo
• Bron (sofa only)
• Bunzo Bunny
• Warden (VHS, voice only)
• Eddie M.N. Ritterman (VHS, voice only)
• Stella Greyber (VHS, voice only)
• Leith Pierre (VHS, voice only)
• Scientist (VHS, voice only)
• Jack Ayers (VHS only)
• Kevin Barnes (VHS only)
• Matthew Hallard (VHS only)
• Dr. White (VHS, voice only)
• Rich Lovitz (VHS, voice only)
• Susan Ayers (VHS, voice only)
• George Ayers (VHS, voice only)
• Specialists (VHS, voice only)
• Guards (VHS, voice only)

Walkthrough

POPPY PLAYTIME CHAPTER 4 FULL Game Walkthrough - NO DEATHS (4K60fps)

Soundtrack

Main article: Poppy Playtime Ch. 4 (soundtrack)

The official soundtrack was released on February 11 2025, twelve days after the chapter was released on January 30 2025

Trivia

• Chapter 4's Steam page has cycled through 4 different banners. The 1st being Baba Chops, the 2nd being Yarnaby, the 3rd being Harley Sawyer, and the 4th being Doey the Doughman.
• This is the first chapter to have more than one main antagonist, with The Doctor as the main threat of the chapter and Doey The Doughman being the final "enemy" of the chapter.
• The phone number shown in the Commercial Opening Cutscene at the start of Chapter 4 could be called. ("DOEY" translates to 3639.) At the time, players would get a pre-recorded message, though it was eventually taken down and re-uploaded to Mob's YouTube channel.
• Chapter 4 is the first chapter to have its opening cutscene not be uploaded before the game releases.
• Chapter 4 is the chapter that went the longest time without a gameplay trailer, due to the vast majority of the trailers being cinematic. The gameplay trailer only released 5 days before the launch of the chapter, releasing on January 25th, 2025.
• Chapter 4 is the first chapter to be released on the anniversary of another chapter (Chapter 3 in this case).
• Doey is on the cover for Chapter 4 and its soundtrack but the menu screen prominently displays The Doctor.
  • Doey is hinted at on the menu screen by bits of his dough that can be seen stuck to the TVs.
• Due to Chapter 4 being released on January 30, 2025, it was likely in development for almost exactly a year.
  • This could lead to a theory that all remaining chapters or last chapter will be set to a yearly schedule to release on a January 30th.
• This is the first chapter where the title does not reference the main antagonist and instead refers to a location within the chapter named Safe Haven, a bunker used by the toys living in the prison who want a safe place to hide in.
• Dutch players have pointed out that in Chapter 4, several small pools of blood were found in the shape of the Netherlands.
  • This is likely to pay homage to the fact that the voice actress of both Poppy Playtime and Stella Greyber is Dutch.
• Isaac Christopherson has stated that Chapter 4 had some differences in how certain story beats were executed from when he was working on it:
  • At one point, The Doctor would launch The Player and Yarnaby into an area resembling the Playtime Factory from Project Playtime. They would be stalked by Yarnaby throughout, and the chase would end when The Player reverses one of the assembly lines while Yarnaby is on it, resulting in Yarnaby being disassembled.
  • Instead of the Omni-Hand, The Player would be tasked with retrieving a power cell from the Doctor as the Safe Haven was nearly out of power. Ollie would have called The Player following the defeat of the Doctor to warn them that Doey wanted the power cell for a different, more nefarious purpose. He would then urge The Player to destroy it. The Player would then return to the Safe Haven to find Doey is absent, lending more credibility to Ollie's warning.
  • Doey was to confront The Player in the foundation following this betrayal, and would have appeared as a roaming AI during the foundation sequence.
  • Ollie's warning would have been revealed to be a lie, resulting in the generator losing the remainder of its power and allowing the Prototype to destroy the Safe Haven.
  • When the Player finds Poppy, she demands to know why the Player destroyed the power cell and allowed the Safe Haven to fall, at which point it would be revealed that Ollie had manipulated the Player into the situation, revealing himself as the Prototype.
• This chapter was the first to get a major series of updates following its release, due to criticism toward the massive amount of bugs and unpolished gameplay, making the game feel like it was rushed to meet deadlines.
  • These updates included new cutscenes, major bug fixes, and fixed gameplay.

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