Project Playtime – Ultimate Boxy Boo Monster Guide

This is an informative guide meant to teach players how to best utilize the monster Boxy Boo. He is commonly written off as underpowered, but with this guide, you’ll have the knowledge you need in order to turn him into an unstoppable menace and see that there’s more to this box than meets the eye.

How to Play Boxy Boo Monster

All credit goes to Samswize!

Introduction

Hello there! My name is Samswize, and welcome to my guide for Boxy Boo in Project: Playtime. Boxy is a very interesting character with a skillset that requires you to play him differently than the other two monsters, leading many to believe that he’s weak when they don’t play to his strengths. I believe that Boxy Boo has the potential to be the strongest of the three monsters and that, with enough practice, he can be almost unstoppable.

Let’s begin, shall we?

The Kit – Passives

First things first, let’s break down Boxy Boo’s kit and what each of his abilities do. Understanding these will be critical to getting as much use out of Boxy as possible. This section will cover Boxy Boo’s passive abilities – the ones that are always in play without your input.

Passive – Coil Springs

Boxy Boo passively jumps higher and falls slower than a normal monster. This high jump lets him scale over most small obstacles, namely the railings on Toy Factory, the stage ledge on Theater, and other typically difficult areas to access. This passive alone gives Boxy a lot of freedom when maneuvering around the map, and survivors can easily be caught off guard by how limitless his movement is.

In addition to this, Boxy’s attack functions differently from the other monsters. His attack does the least amount of damage of the three monsters, but he attacks very quickly. This makes it very effective against survivors who you catch off guard, as by the time they react to the fact that you’re behind them, they’re likely only a hit away from death’s door. It’s also very good for busting open lockers, which take 4 hits from any monster to open, but Boxy’s faster attack speed lets him search lockers with record speed.

But that’s not all…

The Other Passive – Music Box

Being a music box, Boxy constantly plays music that only he can hear. This music gets progressively louder and faster the closer that he gets to a survivor, acting as a proximity meter. If Boxy ever goes completely silent, you need to go literally anywhere else, because the area that you’re in is totally empty of puzzle-doing nerds.

A second, less obvious component of Boxy’s body is that he retreats completely into his box when crouching, making him very hard to notice. Combined with the music, this makes Boxy an absolutely devastating camper – tuck yourself away into an inconspicuous corner, wait patiently, and listen for the music getting closer as an unaware survivor comes closer to collect the toy part or rescue the survivor you’re guarding. Your fast attacks mean that by the time you’re on them, they’re already dead, and that’s another body to add to your collection.

The Kit – Active Abilities

In this section, we’ll cover Boxy Boo’s two active abilities and how they function. Mastery of these two abilities is critical to performing well with Boxy, so take notes.

Leap

This ability is bound to Shift by default. After a brief wind-up, Boxy leaps forward in the direction that you aim in, going faster and further the longer you charge, up to a maximum.

This ability has no cooldown whatsoever, so use it often to take advantage of its amazing mobility.

Grab

This ability is bound to your right mouse button (RMB) by default. Boxy extends out his right claw to a maximum distance, grabbing the first survivor it hits and pulling them towards him.

The grab will not hit survivors when they are rolling and stops if the survivor is pulled into an obstacle.

This ability has a very short cooldown, so use it constantly in chase to down survivors as fast as possibly. You can normally hit a survivor a few times before they run out of range after a grab.

Tips and Tricks

For Boxy Boo, the name of the game is speed and strategy. His biggest strength is his mobility, so taking advantage of it will make it a lot harder for the survivors to deal with you. You can’t be everywhere at once, but you can certainly come close to it.

Leap Tips

Boxy’s Leap has a very distinct audio cue when it goes off, so survivors will often run if they hear it nearby. As such, it’s best to charge up your leap from out of a survivor’s hearing range, and use the distance you make from a good leap to get the drop on your completely unaware enemies.

This is especially effective on Theater – Leap once from the stage to get onto the garbage pile, and leap again to get up to the balcony seats. From there, you can charge up your Leap at the top of the stairs and ambush survivors working on the puzzle pillar to the immediate left of the train. You can also attack from the map’s many openings to catch survivors by surprise.

On Toy Factory, the key lies within height. Survivors rarely look up unless they hear you nearby, and many of the roofs can be leapt onto to get a vantage point and survey the map for potential targets. This is especially effective on the puzzle pillars out in the open on the right and left sides of the map, and the rooftop in between can be used to jump survivors and down them before they can even register the behemoth that seemingly materialized next to them.

Grab Tips

The biggest strength of Boxy’s Grab lies within the ability to completely deny survivors from making use of the map’s crash doors. A careless survivor can be pulled as the door slams down, putting them back on your side and cutting off their only escape route, leaving them to helplessly flail as you smack them to death. Survivors will have to be extremely cautious and time their roll so that it simultaneously allows them to get under the door and deny your grab, which is easier said than done depending on how close you are already.

This also works with grapple pits, but the timing is much trickier. If you grab the survivor too early as they’re swinging across the pit, they’ll hold onto the grappling point and just be able to swing across a second time. Although grapple pits aren’t a massive issue for Boxy with his high jump and his leap being able to scale them quickly, it is a waste of time to grab them for no reason. Wait until they let go of the grapple and then fire, yoinking them back into your embrace and very likely stranding them in the pit they were trying to swing over, trapping them and letting you attack freely.

Try to have a clear path whenever you attempt to grab a survivor. Boxy will stop pulling a survivor he grabbed the second his claw collides with any obstacle, no matter how small, so avoid wasting your grab in enclosed areas where he or his catch can get snagged on something.

Sabotages

There are eight different Sabotages available for the monsters, and some are better than others on our box-shaped friend. I’m going to rank each Sabotage, from best to worst, based on how much value Boxy Boo gets out of it. Disclaimer: This is entirely based on my opinion.

1. Boobytrap

This is, in my opinion, Boxy Boo’s best Sabotage option. Not only is it incredibly easy to use, due to the effect lasting until triggered (meaning you should always use it as soon as you can), it helps Boxy in two specific areas: Damage and long-range information. Boxy’s damage is certainly lacking unless he can get the drop on an enemy, so Boobytrap helps soften them up, usually resulting in Boxy needing to hit them one less time before they’re down on the ground. Additionally, the exploding puzzle pillars give you a way to find survivors from a long range, which Boxy sorely lacks compared to Huggy’s mini-Huggies and Mommy’s wallhacks. Combined with his supreme mobility and close-range tracking prowess, Boobytrap fills in for Boxy’s weaknesses and rounds him out into a terrifying force.

2. Shutdown

Shutdown is an all-around great Sabotage for all three monsters, so it’s no surprise that I’m putting it up here. It’s free slowdown and buys you valuable time to stop the survivors from completing puzzles, and you can also set up some nasty plays by camping a breaker while in your box form to surprise attack an unsuspecting survivor. Not the best, but still very annoying to deal with.

3. No Pack

Quite plainly, No Pack is a worse version of Shutdown. Although it does prevent them from utilizing crash doors and grapple points, it can be repaired prematurely, on the spot, and has a limited duration compared to Shutdown’s breaker-based withdrawal. Not the worst, but Shutdown is still better.

4. Living Nightmare

Although it may sound odd for this Sabotage to be ranked this high up, it helps a great deal in one specific situation: Although Boxy’s mobility lets him get the drop on survivors who aren’t looking at him, thanks to the lack of footstep sounds that come from being a box flying through the air, survivors can still see him approaching and run away accordingly. Living Nightmare solves this problem, and ensures that every survivor will be oblivious to your approach as you charge up your leap.

5. Feeding Frenzy

Despite being an incredibly valuable Sabotage on our monster brother Huggy, Boxy lacks the lethality and snowball potential needed to get serious value out of Feeding Frenzy. Although his mobility is unchallenged, the time it takes to down each survivor makes Feeding Frenzy too inefficient to use over the higher ranked options. Generally not worth it, but better than nothing.

6. No Escape

No Escape is generally very redundant on Boxy Boo due to how easily he can invalidate crash doors and grapple points without it. Combined with the fact that he can already search lockers incredibly quickly, all aspects of this Sabotage don’t really match Boxy’s kit, but it can still be nice to fix a mistimed grab by immediately opening a crash door back up.

7. Total Lockdown

This Sabotage can be either a blessing or a curse, depending on the map and the exact location. Although some areas are heavily reliant on the crash doors staying open for escape routes, this Sabotage can directly work against you by trapping you outside of a vital area, forcing you to take a non-optimal route to get to a survivor working on a puzzle. This is especially devastating on Toy Factory, creating a bunch of tiny boxes with only one or two entrances that make a map that’s already difficult to maneuver even worse. Do not use unless you have a specific, gimmicky strategy in mind.

8. Directionless

Directionless is a very poorly designed Sabotage in that it does literally nothing to survivors who’ve played the game for longer than 10 hours. Map knowledge will have survivors carry on without worry, as the Sabotage only obscures the train, puzzle pillars, and toy parts, none of which are particularly unpredictable when it comes to location. You’ll crush the kids who installed this game just because they like Poppy Playtime, but it’s not like you really need the extra help there. By far the worst of the bunch.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, I believe that Boxy Boo has a lot of untapped power that simply hasn’t been unlocked or exploited by a majority of people. I hope that this guide encourages you to try Boxy Boo in your next monster game, and with my advice in mind, I know you’ll do great.