Playgrounds can be so much fun, but Playtown isn’t for the faint of heart. A horror game set within an abandoned dinosaur-themed place, lovable Barney is nowhere to be found in this adventure, but there’s an evil twin of sorts roaming about. Stepping into the shoes of a caring father, you decide to return to this place in search of your daughter’s necklace, the one that she got from her deceased mother. The atmosphere is promising, but a notorious lack of direction and scares coupled with some very doubtful design decisions make this extremely short journey forgettable, and not as fun as a real playground can be.

Five Nights At Playtown

Featuring some very decent graphics for an indie horror game, Playtown does hint at its origins every once in a while, with some creaky mechanics and a visual quality that frequently dances between good and weak. But its biggest failing is the lack of direction it suffers from, with no quest logs or minimal pointers apart from the overall goal of collecting dino teeth or crystals. As a result, you will feel hopelessly lost and frustrated, frequently backtracking over some unnerving platforming areas and constantly dropping to your doom. It doesn’t help that the checkpoints are all over the place, often respawning you before the critical pipe puzzles.

Speaking of pipe puzzles, these are one of the most frustrating design choices in Playtown. Picture a large and long corridor with massive pipes left and right, and your goal is to reach the other side safely, without being sucked by any of them. However, there are no visible hints on which pipe is going to kill you, a game of trial and error that forces one to resort to notetaking, something that couldn’t be farther from the chills and fun that a horror game should provide. After some minutes you’ll discover that there’s some logic to this madness, and while the first jumpscare works – probably the only one in the entire game – this puzzle forces you to retrace your steps and cross it again, and when you think you’re finally done with it… it rears its ugly pipe face in another corridor.

If the platform sections that came before – and that will show up again later in a slightly varied format – weren’t kind on the player, this pipe dream is a true nightmare that is scary in all the wrong ways. It would have been acceptable to cross once, but anything more than that is pushing the patience of even the most serene player.

Playtown isn’t too keen on handholding either, something that could be seen as a blessing were it not for the need to explore the playground by again crossing the cursed pipe and platform areas, in case we missed a hint or an item. As it turns out, discovering a certain lighter may happen by a happy accident, and knowing where to use it and why is another action that not everyone is likely to guess. A little direction could go a long way, instead of leaving the player in the dark, but not literally.

Eventually I entered this pitch-black cave to figure out if this is the expected course of action – again, most of the exploration is a guessing game – and Playtown decided that it would be a good time as any to softlock. Returning to the main menu, the absence of a continue or load game option was probably the biggest scare of the game, forcing me to start all over.

The lack of direction and frustrating puzzles take their toll, which is a shame considering that Playtown looks nice at times, with sharp colors and a main antagonist that has its “less is more” moments. However, things such as the ball pit animations that try to pass as physics are inevitably telling of the humble origins of this game. Depending on where you are coming from, it’s either a nice shot from an indie developer or your umpteenth flawed attempt at a horror game.

Going Out of Business

Playtown balances a nice atmosphere with an odd lack of tension and weird design decisions. What could have been an engaging trip through an abandoned playground ends up being a testing and frustrating notetaking and guesswork experience that is neither fun nor scary. I was expecting this journey to deliver a whole lot more, but even if it can be finished in one hour, it’s clear that this place went out of business due to bad management.

Pros:

• Nice colorful graphics and feel to the playground
• The mascot looks good

Cons:

• Pipe puzzles are the true scary things here
• Wonky controls lead to many platform deaths
• Lacks guidance in some obscure moments
• Finished in about one hour

 Rating: 4/10