While Poppy Playtime is filled with scares and intrigue for fans, it still has a short runtime even with the newly released second chapter. For fans who aren’t sure where to turn for more of the same kinds of jump scares, the survival horror genre has fleshed out a great deal in the last few years and there are a lot of games like Poppy Playtimeout there.
Updated January 4, 2023, by Ritwik Mitra: Poppy Playtime is a pretty eerie and disturbing game that people need to check out, with the third chapter of this game expected at some point in 2023. The sheer horror induced by this doll makes Poppy Playtime a pretty spooky game for many players, and people who want to check out more games in the same vein are spoiled for choice. Of course, given the disturbing nature of Poppy Playtime, it goes without saying that many of the games similar to it are also going to be quite hard to stomach.
11 Slender: The Eight Pages
Slender: The Eight Pages is a classic horror game that many people are familiar with. The game took off in popularity after garnering a sizeable audience through YouTube gaming channels, with the simple gameplay loop of collecting eight pages and avoiding the Slenderman being quite fun indeed.
The impending dread brought about by Slenderman’s arrival never ceases to be unnerving. Fans of Poppy Playtime will have a great time with Slender: The Eight Pages, with the latter defining a generation of horror gaming for better or for worse.
10 Layers Of Fear
Layers of Fear uses its psychological horror setting to great effect, allowing players to experience a great tale about an artist spiraling into madness. The horror present in Layers of Fear is simple yet quite effective.
Fans of unique horror games should definitely check Layers of Fear out. It might seem like a walking simulator, but the true allure of Layers of Fear is how it slowly terrifies the player through its short yet rewarding runtime. The psychological horror present in this title is so effective that every single sound will cause the player to jump out of their seat.
9 Outlast
Outlast is another classic horror title in which players must avoid heinous enemies as a journalist who gets caught in a sinister plot. The game is definitely not for the faint of heart, with its horror elements being deeply unnerving in every way.
Outlast uses the simple concept of chases and hide-and-seek gameplay to create a terrifying atmosphere that will chill players to their very bones. It might not be the most thought-provoking horror game around, but it sure gets the job done if the player’s aim was to get completely scared out of their wits with every step they take.
8 Five Nights At Freddy’s
Five Nights At Freddy’s was the game that helped propel the survival horror genre to the very top of the Let’s Play tree when it was initially released in 2014. Since then, there have been nine main installments and thirteen overall games in the franchise, most of them focusing on static survival horror.
In the original, players take on the role of a security guard trying to hold back evil animatronics that are attempting to hunt him down. While the lore of the games and the style have evolved over time, fans have never grown tired of going back to the original to relive some of the scariest dolls in gaming.
7 Bendy And The Ink Machine
Utilizing the same episodic release style as Poppy Playtime, Bendy And The Ink Machine initially came out in 2017 but was fully released with all five chapters in 2018. It features a retired animator coming back to his old workplace after being invited by a mysterious letter.
Once there, he finds paranormal occurrences have been going on, supposedly spurred by an ink machine. Similar to Poppy Playtime, the player works in first-person perspective, solving puzzles and battling to move onwards. Filled with atmosphere despite a bit of a strange ending, the game also has a lot of lore hidden within. There’s even a sequel for those who just can’t get enough.
6 Boogeyman
If playing as an adult isn’t scary enough, Boogeyman gives a similar style of point-and-click horror as Five Nights At Freddy’s. However, it adds the extra terror of the player being a child trapped in their bedroom trying to use a flashlight to ward off a monstrous creature that wants to get inside.
The Boogeyman is terrifying, the setting of the childhood bedroom and the speed of the creature in later nights, building up to the seventh night which coincides with Halloween, is excellently paced. The danger feels incredibly real, and the gameplay is an interesting challenge for fans of the jump-scare-focused style of Poppy Playtime.
5 Phasmophobia
While a little different, the eerie fear of the Poppy Playtime setting is reminiscent of starting out on a new adventure in a large-scale Phasmophobia map. The goal is that the player, either alone or with three friends, has to enter a location and hunt down the spirit inside to identify it without getting killed in the process.
Phasmophobia might not be the same as Poppy Playtime, but for fans that have been concerned about the latter’s short runtime, the former is an excellent solution. Phasmophobia has great co-op features and a decent replay value that leads many to spend hundreds of hours on it, and experts like this can help get new players started.
4 Among The Sleep
Returning to survival horror, if even playing as a young child isn’t bad enough how about playing as a toddler? Players of Among The Sleep take on the challenge of waddling or crawling their way through a series of puzzles guided by a teddy bear while being chased by a troll-like monster named Hyda.
Among The Sleep has a unique message for a survival horror game, focusing on a mother that won’t let her child see his father. This drives the story and helps make this a truly great game, if not the scariest of the many great games like Poppy Playtime.
3 Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Amnesia is from 2010 and is an earlier example of the survival horror genre than many of the games recommended here. A young man awakens in a Prussian castle with no memories and only the knowledge that he is being chased by a shadow. That villain is a clear example of how this game uses darkness in an amazing way.
With no way to fight any of the monsters, Daniel must run through the castle and uncover the mysteries before he is caught by the shadow. A terrifying experience all the way through, Amnesia: The Dark Descent inspired many others in the genre with the gameplay style and timeless feel to the quality.
2 At Dead Of Night
A mixture of a horror film and a horror game, the live-action style of At Dead Of Night adds to the terror as the player knows that the character could run into the killer hunting her around any corner. Just like Poppy Playtime, the character has come to an abandoned place and finds one being there that chases them down while they uncover mysteries and solve puzzles.
At Dead Of Night is an intense, terrifying experience with a lot more runtime to it than Poppy Playtime and a unique vision with the live-action filming that stunned many fans on release. Jimmy may be one of the worst horror game killers but he does know how to deliver a jump scare.
1 Hello Neighbor
A well-known stealthy horror game, Hello Neighbor is another unique experience known and praised for its difficult puzzle style and the fact the neighbor villain that tracks the young character down is a learning AI. The game is also relatively long, at least when compared to Poppy Playtime.
While it is a challenging experience to play through blind, Hello Neighbor is highly rewarding and requires a lot more puzzle-solving than most games, and provides plenty for fans of Poppy Playtime. As does the sequel coming out officially this year.
Poppy Playtime is currently available on Mobile and PC.
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