The Best Poppy Playtime Chapter 1 Tips and Tricks For Staying Alive and Solving Puzzles

As a game with tons of exploration elements, it’s understandable that Poppy Playtime  might be more tense and frightening than the game it’s inspired by, Five Nights at Freddy’s. There’s just something very stressful about being in an abandoned factory, with only the vague humming of distant generators and the spooky scratching of someone (or something) scurrying through the ventilation shafts, to break the silence. And this is without mentioning the encroaching darkness in which anything could be lying in hiding, waiting for the right moment to pounce.

The best way to combat the stress of games like these is, first and foremost, to know what you’re doing and where you’re going. After all, much of the fear and suspense can be immediately dispelled if you know what to expect from your journey. For this reason, we prepared a comprehensive Poppy Playtime Chapter 1 guide where we explained exactly everything you need to do in order to beat the first chapter of this horror game.

However, even though a Poppy Playtime walkthrough can work wonders for helping you progress and beat the chapters with relative ease, we believe these games are meant to be experienced by going into them completely blind so that you can figure out the solutions to the puzzles by yourself. For this reason, we decided to create, on this occasion, the next best thing: In the following paragraphs, you’ll find some of the best Poppy Playtime tips and tricks to help you stay alive and solve puzzles, while keeping spoilers to a minimum.

Poppy Playtime Tip #1 – Explore Thoroughly Your Surroundings

While many gamers consider Poppy Playtime to be just about cheap scares and creepy dolls, probably owing to its resemblance to FNAF, it’s actually much more than that. Since the game gives players tons of freedom to explore the factory floor as they work their way through the puzzles and challenges within, Poppy Playtime is actually much more atmospheric, keeping the tension high with its ambiance and its visual design. 

Nevertheless this added freedom to explore comes with a tradeoff, in that the game will often hide the solutions to its puzzles far within the furthest reaches of their rooms. Not only that, but exploring is often the only way to discover optional bits and pieces of lore, which shed more light on the fate of the missing staff, and how Playtime Co. ended up in its abandoned state.

With how important the exploration is, we strongly suggest taking your time looking through the rooms to uncover every single hidden element. Don’t worry too much about getting ambushed since the first few rooms of the game are completely safe. In fact, for how tense the atmosphere is in the factory, you’re only really at real risk at one specific point of the chapter, and trust us when we say you’ll definitely know it when the time comes.

Poppy Playtime Tip #2 – The GrabPack Is Your Best Friend

If it weren’t for the GrabPack, your character in Poppy Playtime would practically be rendered completely helpless against the threats that are lurking within the factory. This backpack is essentially the only way in which your character can meaningfully interact with the environment, giving him the ability to push and pull objects, and even conduct electricity by using the wires of the pack’s hands.

Initially, your pack starts off with a single hand, though you can quickly upgrade it with an additional hand that will let you interact with two elements at the same time. This ability to multitask is essential to progressing in Poppy Playtime, as some puzzles may even require you to interact with two elements to solve them.

A good tip here would be to always keep in mind that your pack can conduct electricity, which will be very handy for the energy-based puzzles in this chapter, of which there are a few. Specifically, keep in mind that if you attach one of your hands to the active power line, you can then use your other hand to connect it to an inactive terminal and energize it. This connectivity will be vital for these specific puzzles.

Poppy Playtime Tip #3 –  Don’t Be Afraid Of Huggy Wuggy

Listen, we get it: giant, 18-foot tall stuffed toys with creepy smiles and gaping maws are horrifying, especially when they’re lumbering at you at surprisingly high speeds. And while the chapter’s main antagonist, Huggy Wuggy, definitely fits the bill for spookiness, you really don’t have to worry much about him. Even after he disappears from his pedestal after you solve the Power Room puzzle, you’re not really at any real risk, as he’s not a real threat until the final parts of the chapter.

Exploring in Poppy Playtime can seem like a ghastly endeavor, but we feel much better knowing that, for the most part, we’re not at any real risk. Still, this doesn’t make the noises and ambiance any less spooky, so you’ll still need to gather your courage if you wish to solve the puzzles and crack open the mystery at hand.

Poppy Playtime Tip #4 – Keep An Eye Out For The VHS Tapes and VCR Players

While Poppy Playtime offers solid gameplay in the form of exploration and puzzle solving, the vast majority of its lore and backstory will come from the hidden bits and pieces that you will find lying around the world. This design goes hand in hand with the game’s core premise, which is the exploration that we’ve been mentioning so far. 

In the case of Poppy Playtime Chapter 1, most of its lore comes from the hidden VHS tapes that you can find around the factory. These tapes are color-coded and can only be viewed in their respective VCR players of the same color, which are frequently near where you can find the tapes themselves. And while these tapes are mostly optional, the Blue Tape that you can find in the Security Room is the only obligatory tape that you need to watch in this chapter, as you will get the GrabPack right after it finishes playing.

We’ve prepared a list of all the Poppy Playtime Chapter 1 tape and VCR locations, along with other important bits and pieces of information, in our beginner’s guide for this game. If it’s your first time playing, we recommend stopping by and giving it a read so you know exactly how to get started on the right track.

Poppy Playtime Tip #5 – The Control Panel Puzzle Is Randomized

While we said we’d keep this guide relatively spoiler free, this is the one puzzle where explaining the solution wouldn’t actually spoil it, particularly because it’s randomized in every single run, and the solution will vary every time.

In a nutshell, after you fix the Power Room and bring back power to the main factory Lobby (after Huggy Wuggy goes missing), you’ll need to proceed to the next room where you’ll find another puzzle. This puzzle consists of finding the fuses to power up a control panel that will give you a great reward upon completion, while also opening up the way to the next room. However, it’s important to know that the locations of these fuses are randomized every single run, which definitely makes it more difficult for speedrunners to solve this puzzle promptly. 

Whenever you’re playing Poppy Playtime Chapter 1, whether it’s your first or any other time, keep in mind that the locations of these fuses will always be different. But don’t worry, they’ll always be, at the very least in the same room as the control panel.

Poppy Playtime is as much about exploring as it is about homicidal sentient stuffed animals. As such, don’t be afraid to get out there and start venturing into the farthest reaches of the Playtime Co. factory; or at least into the places the game will let you explore!

And that’s it for the most important Poppy Playtime tips and tricks to keep in mind to make your explorations and adventure go as smoothly as possible. And while we were referring mostly to Chapter 1 in this guide, it’s important to note that most of these tips are also valid for Chapter 2, and most likely for any other chapters that are released in this ongoing saga.