Poppy Playtime: Chapter 4 – Safe Haven

Sentenced To Incarceration

The chapter starts with the Doey the Doughman Commercial VHS before the gameplay begins. After hearing Kissy Missy's screams, Poppy brings The Player down to Loading Bay 1E before ascending alone to rescue Kissy. Following her departure, The Player makes their way through the depths of Playtime Co. Shortly later, The Player comes across a massive underground prison near a graveyard of hundreds of dead toys. Pressing on, they discover an unpowered train that once transported captive Bigger Bodies, conveniently leading right into the prison.

The Doctor reveals himself to The Player.

After being called by a nervous Oliver, they supply power to the locomotive and start to make their way inside the facility. However, the train's reactivation attracts unwanted attention: The Doctor, an uneasy ally to The Prototype, the controller of the prison, and the mastermind behind all the killer toys' existence along with their misfortune. The Doctor intercepts and incarcerates The Player, intent on using them as a play thing.

Waking up in an eastern cell block area, The Player continues their journey. At the same time, the Doctor closely monitors their progress through CCTV cameras while deploying obstacles to gauge their abilities and reactions. During this process, The Player acquires a new Red Hand for their GrabPack 2.0, this time from a guard's corpse and uses it to explore more of the prison. However, they're interrupted by one of The Doctor's tests, as he unleashes dozens of Nightmare Critters and Mini Huggies on The Player.

The Player being attacked by the toys.

Using their Flare Hand, The Player fends off the feral toys, with The Doctor using a roar from an experiment on the loudspeakers to scare the little ones into stopping the attack after he feels satisfied. The Player continues through the prison. After walking through a hallway full of employee's corpses and picking up a keycard, The Player enters another prison block which The Doctor fills with Red Smoke to try and sabotage them. Luckily for The Player, they manage to find a way out of the facility.

Eventually, The Player reaches an observation room in the Containment Zone, where The Doctor, after commenting on The Player's previous encounters of the other Bigger Bodies, unleashes his monstrous lapdog, Yarnaby. Though the observation room is behind a layer of protective glass, escaping requires traveling through a series of back rooms that Yarnaby has escaped into, forcing The Player to navigate around the feral beast in cramped spaces. They are not alone, however, as a strange, stretchy creature helps by unlocking doors and distracting the monster, allowing them to exit Yarnaby's territory after a short chase. The Player then makes their way through the Archives Room.

Oh, Have You Heard Of The Doughman?

Pianosaurus charging at The Player.

They eventually find themselves needing to navigate across a ledge in the observation room above Pianosaurus' Enclosure. While trying to cross it, however, the ledge gives way and drops The Player into the cell in front of Pianosaurus, who immediately charges at them. Before he can reach The Player, he is suddenly grabbed by five 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 the 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 will not eat them and that someone, presumably Poppy told him to expect them. He tells them to follow him, as he knows a way to a safe place on this level.

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

Following Doey, The Player is led through various hallways. Shortly later, they find themselves trapped in the Prison Utility Zone, but with the help of their new ally, they manage to make it through. As they approach their destination, Doey goes off ahead, leaving The Player by themselves, who is soon pulled into a corner by Poppy and a badly damaged Kissy out of the way of The Prototype.

The Player, along with Poppy and Kissy, 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 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 ensures that The Prototype cannot get inside.

While Kissy is recuperating, Poppy reveals her plan. She states that the orphans from Playcare are still alive and inside the building, but that they're stuck under The Prototype's watch in The Labs. 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 ever again. After telling them this, she sends The Player to talk with Doey at Auxiliary Power.

Doey talking to The Player.

At the generator, Doey reveals that he does not like Poppy's plan, even though he understands where she is coming from. The other toys he has 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 does not 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 keeping their defences working for some time. In order to fix it, they need an Omni-Hand, a GrabPack hand that serves as the master control to anything in the factory. Doey explains that one of them is in the possession of The Doctor and that he uses it to control the prison, so he tasks The Player with defeating The Doctor and taking his Omni-Hand to fix Safe Haven's generator. But before sending them off, he lets them know that they are welcome in Safe Haven.

Crawling Over No Man's Land

The Player begins their journey to The Doctor, encountering various injured and starving toys in the Infirmary. While making their way to an area named No Man's Land that they must cross, The Player overhears a brief argument between Doey and Poppy regarding the latter's plan. Trekking onward, The Player receives a call from Ollie, though he isn't able to help out much as his signal is poor.

The Player encounters Yarnaby in No Man's Land.

Regardless, The Player soon arrives at No Man's Land. However, their progress is immediately impeded by Yarnaby's arrival, which forces them away from The Doctor and deeper into No Man's Land. With the entryway sealed off, The Player begins searching for an exit, rerouting the area's power whilst avoiding detection from Yarnaby.

Eventually, The Player finds the exit, using the rerouted power to open the door via their GrabPack. However, the noise emitted from the door opening alerts Yarnaby to their location, forcing them to run yet again. Yarnaby's pursuit leads the two to an incineration chamber, directly above a vat of molten lava. The Player uses a chain with a hook as a makeshift GrabPack handle to swing over a gap, inadvertently causing the hook to swing down. In his haste to follow them across, Yarnaby accidentally lodges the chain's hook in his mouth, cancelling out his momentum and suspending him above the vat.

Yarnaby gets trapped in a chain and falls into a pit of lava.

Yarnaby's weight - combined with his wild, desperate flailing to free himself - proves too much for the chain to handle, breaking and dropping him into the lava below, instantly setting his yarn fur and mane ablaze. Though he attempts to pull himself out, Yarnaby ultimately succumbs to his wounds and falls back into the molten lava. After leaving No Man's Land, The Player runs into Doey again, who's been out collecting parts to fix the generator. He asks about The Doctor, but concludes he is not dead yet. Before he can continue talking, however, a nearby gas pipe releases freezing gas directly onto Doey, solidifying him and causing intense pain, which continues even after The Player redirects the flow to thaw him out. He tries to recover as The Player re-enters The Doctor's territory.

The Doctor Will See You Now

Once they are 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 cannot claim to recognize from his time working there. He also wonders aloud about their motivation to come back, noting that the vague letter they received at their home cannot be their only reason. The Player continues moving deeper into the complex, but falls into a trap laid by The Doctor inside an operating room: a blue hand scanner activating a freezing gas pipe when scanned, freezing the hand to the scanner and slowly cooling the room to the point of lethality.

The Player preparing to destroy The Doctor's lungs.

While The Player works to escape the trap by picking up and using a spare Blue Hand to activate the room's temperature control, The Doctor reveals there is 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 has used them, only telling them what they needed to know to act on her orders, but they disable the trap, destroying The Doctor's preserved lungs which were kept in the room in the process.

The Player progresses into a maze flooded with the Red Smoke, where they find instructions for a keypad code. Needing to use a broken Gas Mask with replaceable oxygen cartridges to search the maze, they search for deceased experiments which hide clues for the code. Upon cracking it, they make their 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 victim to 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 with the other still functioning hand. The Doctor promptly electrifies the Grab Handle, dropping The Player into an area full of cages with one of his other subordinates: an enlarged Baba Chops.

Baba Chops attacking The Player.

The Player attempts to navigate around him to solve a power redirection puzzle, as he attacks them. The Player is occasionally impeded by other Nightmare Critters in cages, but they eventually manage to get into another room, where they are trapped by The Doctor. Within the room is a container similar to the ones that stored some of his preserved organs, only this one contains a harmless, idle 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 as he claims that 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 regardless of their choice, The Player is left with only one place 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 commands one of his reserve bodies to seize then throw The Player down onto 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 attempt 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, Sawyer sends all of his bodies at The Player, but the system implodes, disabling his robots, and soon he perishes. With his last words, he spitefully proclaims that The Player has saved no one.

Effort and Effect

The Player arrives back at Safe Haven.

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. While travelling there on a cable car, Ollie makes contact yet again to congratulate The Player for defeating The Doctor, claiming that all that's left is The Prototype. Upon arriving, The Player crawls through a vent back to the haven.

Having returned 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, in which 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 'succeed' in this task much to Poppy's gratefulness, but Doey is nowhere to be seen. Deciding there is no time to wait, Poppy prompts The Player to move forward with her plan.

The Player carrying out Poppy's plan at the Foundation.

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 build-up of Red Smoke, The Player encounters Doey, who had lost The Prototype in the caves. He realizes in horror, and much too late, that The Prototype was intentionally leading him away from the Safe Haven. A distant explosion rocks the cavern and he moves through the pipes and runs back to the haven distraught, followed by The Player.

Doey grieves for the deaths of his friends.

On returning, they find Safe Haven completely destroyed and all of the toys inside dead from the explosion. The generator had been rigged to explode Safe Haven,[1] and Doey breaks down in grief at not being there to protect his friends. 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 lashing out at The Player, blaming them for the death of the toys. Ultimately, Doey loses control of himself, causing him to rage and threaten to kill The Player and accidentally causing the roof to fall upon himself. He emerges 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 Mining Pit. Unable to turn him back to normal, The Player is forced to fight Doey in the underground construction zone, using liquid nitrogen canisters to freeze him solid so he can be struck by industrial saws. Thinking Doey is defeated, The Player leaves, only to find out that he actually survived the fight.

Doey the Doughman is crushed by the tunnel boring machine.

Doey attacks one final time underneath a tunnel boring machine that's next to many liquid nitrogen canisters. Using these resources, The Player is forced to completely freeze him and pull down on the machine to finally kill him. As Doey dies, he rages on about how he cannot trust anyone, lamenting his failure to be better and to save the other toys, and finally apologizing twice for his actions.

New Revelations And Old Enemies

After killing Doey, The Player searches for survivors. They go down a slide and reunite with Poppy and Kissy Missy. Poppy confronts The Player, assuming they must be the reason as to why the plan went wrong and interrogating 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 gone for a long time, and that he had manipulated everyone using Ollie's voice 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 a new and improved case, one that would never be unlocked and one that she would never be free from.

The Player falls into the pit due to their human weight, as Kissy's arm rips off.

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, stating 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 weight, tears off, dropping them down a deep pit.

Recovering after a rough landing near Kissy's torn off arm, The Player finds themselves outside The Labs at the bottom of Playtime's facility. Inside is a walkway leading to the entrance surrounded in a garden of poppy flowers. In the small antechamber before the Labs, they find a tape, which subjects them to a lecture from Leith Pierre similar to the one heard at the front door when The Player first entered the factory.

The Player gets locked in the Labs before getting noticed by Huggy Wuggy, who has somehow survived.

The tape triggers an alarm, alerting a battered and damaged Huggy Wuggy to their location, who is revealed to have survived his plummet into the depths at the end of Chapter 1: A Tight Squeeze. Huggy furiously rushes and slams at the door that The Player is trapped behind while screeching at them, before they get engulfed by Red Smoke with their fate being left unknown...