Escape from Playtime Plush toys, deadly shifts

Most things you scavenge count toward your quota. That is the trap. A glowstick pack is worth handing in, but it also lights a path home when the corridors all look the same. A sewing kit could patch up a friend lying in pieces on the floor, or it could be a fat chunk of the quota you are short on. Every deposit is a small sacrifice, and every moment you wish you had kept something is the consequence. The factory hands you tools, hiding spots, distractions and alternate routes; deciding what to use and what to sell is where the tension lives. You drop a smoke, it rolls across the doorway, and you slip past the thing hunting you.

Each run drops you into a different slice of the Playtime Co. facility: classrooms, warehouses, testing labs, and the dark corridors between them, rearranged by the Voice into procedurally generated layouts. You crawl, jump and climb through the nooks and crannies as a toy small enough to scale walls and ropes, seeing iconic locations from a much lower point of view. Somewhere in the halls, the rejected creations of the factory stalk the same rooms you are scavenging. Between runs, the Perm-A-Lounge computer tracks your progress and rewards, and holds company secrets that are better left half-read.

This is a game that wants your friends in it. Two to eight players share one run, and proximity voice chat does a lot of the work: you hear each other's panic from across the room, and you hear who just got caught. More Critters means more ground covered and more quota gathered, and it also means more chances for something to go horribly wrong, which is half the fun. You split up to cover the map, call out where the parts are, and coordinate distractions when a monster gets between you and the exit. The chaos is the point, and it lands best with a full crew.