Poppy is heading into Fortnite next week, though not through the usual corporate channels that typically bring pop stars into the platform. Beginning on Friday, October 23, players can load into Poppy Secret Run, an interactive musical environment built around her song Time Will Tell from the release Empty Hands. The installation is scheduled to remain active for a month, closing down on November 23. Instead of functioning as a passive broadcast or a simple promotional loop, the project treats the track as the foundation for a playable, branching obstacle course.
The space itself takes the form of a surreal landscape filled with clocks, where progression depends entirely on player decisions. As participants move through the setting, they must choose between two distinct routes, titled Light and Dark. These choices alter the immediate terrain, changing how the environment behaves and deciding where the run eventually concludes. Players do not have to navigate the course alone. Two separate incarnations of Poppy appear within the space to help guide visitors, joined by an avatar of Pi, her real sphynx cat. The layout accommodates solo runs or groups of four tackling the challenges together. For anyone who would rather bypass the puzzles and platforming, the creators have included a concert option that plays the track alongside the visuals without demanding any reflexes.
Capturing the singer's movements for the project involved a dedicated production trip to Paris, where Poppy worked on site with French creative studio SoWhen. Rather than wearing standard body tracking suits covered in physical sensors, she performed Time Will Tell using OptiTrack systems alongside markerless motion capture technology. That setup allowed the production team to log her physical gestures, lip synchronization, and facial expressions without cumbersome gear. Those recordings were then transferred directly into her digital models. On the sound side, the mechanics of the game were aligned to the tempo of Time Will Tell, so that every rise, flip, and physical collapse in the scenery lands directly on the beat.
The project stands apart from the typical Fortnite music event in its relationship to the game publisher. Poppy Secret Run is not an official collaboration managed, endorsed, or produced by Epic Games. Because it was created through open sandbox creative tools rather than a high level licensing agreement, players will not find Poppy character skins, branded costumes, or related avatar gear in the central Fortnite item shop. Any unlockable rewards tied to the project are contained strictly within the run itself. The release demonstrates how musicians can take advantage of existing gaming tools to stage independent creative work on their own terms.
This is not Poppy's first encounter with video game soundtracks this year. She recently teamed up with experimental group Son Lux to record In Death We’ve Just Begun, a track written as an anthem for the game Marathon. Speaking on their time together in the studio, composer Ryan Lott noted that Poppy approached the collaborative effort with genuine enthusiasm and proved remarkably open on a creative level.
The month long Fortnite installation offers an unusual digital showcase for Time Will Tell, but live audiences will see her back in physical venues before long. After the virtual clockwork landscape wraps up in late November, Poppy will shift her focus back to outdoor festival crowds next summer, having already confirmed appearances at both Rock Am Ring and Rock Im Park.
