Playtime

Playtime is one of the students in the Schoolhouse or Super Schoolhouse in the Baldi's Basics series. She mainly serves as an obstacle for the player while they are being chased by Baldi.

Description

Playtime's appearance is a 2D drawing of a small girl with a jump rope. Her art style resembles a child's scribble, making her look both hilarious and unsettling at the same time. She wears a red shirt and blue jeans, and she is always seen holding a jump rope. She has a smile on her face at all times, until someone cuts her jump rope with Safety Scissors. Her eyes are also made from scribbles, which may be to stylize her “poor eyesight” from the official description. Her hair is a mixture of black and brown scribbles. While skipping rope, only the black part of her hair flutters with each jump.

Despite being a little girl, Playtime's voice can sound quite masculine, even under heavy distortion. She speaks in monotone, regardless of whether she is happy or not. She is not the one to hold grudges, as seen in-game when the player decides to cut her jump rope in order to get away from her minigame. When that happens, she will be upset for a short while and later reappears cheerfully again. All she wants is to have fun with the player; unfortunately, she doesn't realize that her action may harm them by accident.

Gameplay

General

Playtime can be found inside the school as she roams around the hallways in random directions. Her running speed is slightly faster than the player's; thus, she will chase them down if she sees them while not on cooldown. Fortunately, a jingle can be heard when she is nearby, and she will stop chasing the player as soon as they get into a different corner. This can be explained by the fact that Playtime is rather forgetful and has terrible eyesight.

However, once she manages to catch up with the player, she will force them into playing a rope-skipping game. They will have to find the right timing to jump past the rope five times in a row—one wrong jump, and they will have to start from the beginning. Based on their performance, the player will receive from 0 to 25 You Thought Points (YTPs). Each time they miss the rope, 5 YTPs will be deducted, meaning that the player will receive no YTP if they miss it five or more times.

If the player has the Safety Scissors, they can use them to cup the rope and stop the minigame immediately. Seeing this, Playtime will frown, saying, “Oh! That makes me sad!" before going somewhere else. In addition, even when the player is stopped by her, other characters can still affect them:

• Baldi: Catches the player and ends the game immediately, unless they have An Apple for Baldi.
• Arts and Crafters: If triggered, he will teleport the player right away.
• Principal of the Thing: Brings the player to the Principal's office for detention if they break a rule.
• 1st Prize, Gotta Sweep, and Cloudy Copter: All can push the player away from Playtime.

There are other elements that can end the minigame immediately in the same way as Playtime's rope being cut:

• The player is moved away by the conveyor belt.
• Playtime gets sucked into the whirlpool while the flood event is happening.
• The player used the Dangerous Teleporter or the Grappling Hook.
• The player escapes into a blue locker.

Despite this, using a BSODA in this situation will push Playtime away, but the minigame will not be interrupted.

Other Appearances

• Baldi's Basics Classic: Playtime always appears in the left hall from the west wing of the school. During the minigame, the player cannot go forward or backward.
• Baldi's Basics Birthday Bash: Playtime acts the same as the Classic version, except that she wears a party hat, but it falls off if her jump rope is cut. She also joins others to surprise the player later in the game. In the glitched school, eight Playtime sprites can be seen.
• Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered: If the Hard Mode in the Fun Setting is activated, the player will have to jump the rope 10 times instead of 5. In addition, the jumping height of the player will be shorter, making it harder to complete the minigame.
• Baldi's Basics Kickstarter Exclusive Demo: In this version, Playtime is very glitchy and doesn't appear very often.

Trivia

General

• While Playtime and It's a Bully may be similar in their roles, they are actually polar opposites: the latter only stands in one place, while the former loves to roam around the school (and catch up with the players for a forced rope-skipping game).
• The creepy-looking appearance of Playtime seems to be based on the art style of PilotRedSun, especially his “nesquik rabbit” video.
• Playtime is the only character to have her own theme.
• The colors used on Playtime are all the default colors of Microsoft Paint.
• According to the creator of the game, Playtime's voice was his own while he was trying to imitate a clown.
• Her voice line, “Let's play!" was originally reserved for Arts and Crafters.
• Although extremely rare, if both Playtime and Principal of the Thing encounter the player at the same time, they will receive both the detention and the minigame.

Baldi's Basics Plus

• If the player escapes into a blue locker while being chased by Playtime, her position resets whenever they exit the locker.
• Playtime originally did not become sad when her rope was cut before V0.1.2.

Baldi's Basics Classic

• In the game's manual, titled Baldi's Tips'n'Tricks'n'Lessons, Playtime is referred to as “Get-away” time by Baldi.
• There are unused lines of Playtime counting to 10, suggesting that the original design of the game was to make the player jump 10 times.
• The voice line when she counts to five is never used, since she says “Wow! That's great!” instead.
• Before V1.4.1, the movement speed of Playtime was much faster than the running speed of the player. This has been changed to her speed being faster than the player's walking speed but slower than their running speed.

Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered

• In previous versions, the player couldn't move or look back during the minigame with Playtime.