Escape From Playtime is a co-op survival horror where you play itsy-bitsy toy animals, and its playtest is taking signups now
Escape From Playtime playtest trailer - PC Gaming Show 2026 - YouTube
There is, you must admit, something a bit disconcerting about children's toys. The sightless eyes, the static expressions—it all combines into a hollow unpersonhood that triggers some ancient, primeval fear in the low regions of your brain. Something that also doesn't help: the unslakeable lust for murder.
Alright, that last part maybe does not apply to my childhood teddy bear, but it does apply to the nightmarish denizens of Escape From Playtime, which just announced it's accepting playtest sign-ups at the PC Gaming Show Tokyo Direct.
Wishlist Escape From Playtime on Steam
Release date: October 21, 2026
Fancy being scared? Fancy being scared and very, very small? Fancy being scared, very small, and accompanied by up to three of your pals? Escape From Playtime has just the thing for your very specific desires, friend: play as a tiny Smiling Critter navigating a haunted factory in a co-op survival horror whose playtest is taking signups now. Launching October 21 on Steam. You can also sign up for the playtest at EscapeFromPlaytime.com.
Set in the Poppy Playtime universe—one of those things which is quietly wildly popular—Escape From Playtime bills itself as a 1-4 player co-op survival horror that puts you in the shoes of the setting's Smiling Critters. These are A) haunting and B) probably relatively benign, as inhabitants of this world go. Your goal is to explore an abandoned toy factory at the behest of an ominous voice, who tasks you with finding building materials and other resources with which to do… something really benevolent, probably.
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We get a glimpse of the game's creepy puzzle-solving, traversal, and hiding-from-dread-beasts-beyond-comprehension action in the trailer. The Smiling Critters are very small, which means you are even more defenceless than you might have thought possible, and also navigating a lot of environments designed for full-size people as not-full-size animal facsimiles.
It's a whole lot to process, really. You're gonna be making a lot of regrettable decisions about when to split up with your friends, when to hide, when to run, and when to greedily run back to that one room to gather up a resource you missed. This will not end well for you, I think, but I suspect it will be rather enjoyable, if you're the kind of person who enjoys holding their breath in a closet while a murderous beast passes by mere inches away. Who isn't? Find out more on Steam.