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The Living Playground series of freeware RPG Maker games is about the adventures of Tony, Octavio and Pablo, three living toys themselves, playground equipment which can take human form. It was created by Meaka.

The first game, Living Playground was released on PC in June 2014, with the English version available here The three siblings are exploring outside of an abandoned factory in a snail hunt game. Until they became trapped inside the factory. Now they must find a way to get out....finding the truth about their origins in the process.

A Sequel, Living Playground: The Witch's Puppets, was released on November 12th, 2018. Tony, Pablo, and Octavio are trapped in another dimension after a snail hunt goes wrong. While finding their way out, they meet two mysterious witches that might be behind the origins of this strange world.

Living Playground contains examples of:

  • Ambiguous Gender: Haze and Seal from “The Witch's Puppets” look very androgynous and use neutral pronouns. The flashbacks to their childhood imply they are biologically female though.
  • Animate Inanimate Object: Tony is a slide; Octavio is monkey bars while Pablo is a swing. They can also switch between human forms at will, making them something more like tsukumogamis.
  • Ax-Crazy: The Owner.
  • Bears Are Bad News: The advancing toy bears at the factory.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: The Owner originally wanted a family and made a wish to a witch so her dream would come true. What she got in return were the playground children. She rejected them since they were not truly human and her negative feelings transformed the factory and herself into monsters.
  • Berserk Button: In “The Witch's Puppets” the playground children are quite still affected by the incident with the Owner in the first game, to the point they react badly if someone asks if they have parents.
    • Don't befriend Haze unless you want to be on the receiving end of Seal's lies and gossips.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Seal epitomises this to a truly despicable degree, they act bubbly and friendly but still laughed every time the playground children got into trouble. When Haze befriended more people than them in the witch school, Seal lied to Haze that said friends spoke bad things about them and framed said friends for what they did. However, everyone eventually find out the truth, and when Seal's charade fails to work on them again, they quickly drop the "sheep's clothing" part and just tries to kill the playground children and guilt-trip Haze again.
  • Book Ends: The game ends with the playground children going on another snail-hunt once again. Averted in the 2018 remake, when Pablo calls out Octavio for this, saying that they're not in the mood to play after finding about their origins.
  • Bratty Half-Pint: Pablo, possibly because he’s the youngest of the playground children.
  • Cloud Cuckoolander: Octavio. He tries to be a reasonable Cool Big Bro to his siblings, but he’s not respected at all and his immaturity doesn’t help.
  • Feathered Fiend: The evil geese in “The Witch's Puppets”.
  • Foreshadowing: The story of “The Willful Child”, in which a girl dies of illness and neglect because she didn’t live to her mother’s expectations. After she died, the corpse’s arms rose up out of her grave so her mother cut them up out of annoyance. That's because the Owner wants to kill the playground children, rejecting them as offsprings.
    • In “The Witch's Puppets” there's the story of “Vasilisa the Selfish”, a tale about a girl with no empathy for her deceased mother who cares only about herself. At the end of the game it's revealed Seal is a Manipulative Bitch and their parents are divorced.
  • Heroic BSoD: The playground children after they find out that they’re the result of the Owner’s wish. Especially Pablo, who almost goes catatonic with despair.
  • Hidden Depths: Pablo comes across as a brat with a big ego. But he's also the most affected by the Owner's rejection. Also, Octavio is more observant than it seems, quickly noticing Haze and Seal are no normal humans and that the latter is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
  • Hypercompetent Sidekick: Bunbun, the stuffed bunny who acts as a savepoint. Also, the four faeries can help you take down the Owner if you finish their quests.
  • Green-Eyed Monster: Seal wants to have Haze all for themself, so much that they're willing to lie and gossip so that Haze won't have more friends.
  • Insane Troll Logic: When Octavio tries to come up with an idea of who took them inside the factory, he concludes they were abducted by another snail-hunting-enthusiast. Tony is not amused.
  • It's All My Fault: In “The Witch's Puppets”, Haze constantly apologizes to the playground children for them being trapped in the witches's mindscape.
  • Jackass Genie: The witch, who apparently tricked the Owner. She wanted to have children, but what she got in the end was the playground children. Tony is quick to call her out on this, stating that it’s not the witch’s fault that things didn’t go how she wanted.
  • Multiple Endings: It has three bad endings and a good ending. The 2018 remake has only the true ending, with the other three being scrapped.
    • Bad Ending 1 - Punishment: If the kids don’t find out the truth about their origins, they encounter the Owner. She tells them about how her toy factory went to the ruin because some three monsters ruined her life. When Tony agrees to help her in any way, the Owner responders that they are said monsters before crushing them.
    • Bad Ending 2 - A Patient Mother: If Tony doesn’t reunite with Octavio and Pablo, she goes to see the Owner alone, only for her to toss the mangled corpse of Octavio and revealing that Pablo died offscreen. The Owner then proceeds to destroy her.
    • Bad Ending 3 - Mommy’s Little Monsters: If the kids are caught by the toy bycicle monster, it attacks Tony. Of course, since she’s a slide, she doesn’t immediately die. They’re immediately caught by the bears and sent to the owner, who proceeds to mock them about how they’re not human before destroying them.
    • True Ending - The Miracle: The kids stand up to the Owner, calling her out for abandoning them simply for being humanoid toys and not the normal family she wanted. In her anger, she proceeds to knock down Pablo and Octavio, leaving Tony on her own. With the help of the faeries, Tony throws the Owner into a furnace, killing her. While at first devastated upon killing their mother, the kids escape the factory with the help of Bunbun and the faeries. The story ends on a hopeful note by Tony, hoping that she and her brothers would be accepted and find a family someday.
  • Nice Girl: Tony is the kindest of the playground children.
  • Not Blood Siblings: ...in as much as this trope can apply to inanimate objects. The playground children are not really connected beyond being created at the same time, but they decided to be siblings anyway.
  • Offing the Offspring: What the Owner wants to do with the playground children. In the bad endings “Punishment” and “A Patient Mother” she succeeds.
    • The 2018 remake makes it so much worse. After the Owner realized the children she wished for were just playground equipment in human form, she tried to dispose of them in the furnace. Fortunately they were saved by the factory workers.
  • Only Sane Woman: Tony usually fills this role, compared to Bratty Half-Pint Pablo and Cloud Cuckoolander Octavio.
  • Self-Made Orphan: In the True Ending, the playground children are forced to push the Owner into a furnace, killing her. Even though she rejected them, the kids are absolutely devastated about killing their mother, but they all agree that they did what they had to do.
    • It's much worse in the 2018 remake. the kids defeat the Owner and they decide to spare her and give her a second chance. She replies that she would rather be dead than having inhuman toys as children and commits suicide by throwing herself in the furnace.
  • Shrinking Violet: Haze is this towards Seal, to the point they go along with whatever Seal wants, on the excuse that they're childhood friends. It's only after Haze realizes how much of a toxic friend Seal is that Haze learns to stand up for themself.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Pablo.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Octavio accidentally sets the events of the game because he wanted to go snail hunting. It happens again in “The Witch's Puppets”.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The playground children can transform into humans at will and are just as sentient as a human being, but they struggle to find their place in the world due to the fact that they're not human.

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