Poppy has announced “Poppy Secret Run”, an interactive and immersive in-game experience created with Paris studio SoWhen? and hosted exclusively inside Fortnite. The experience goes live on 23 October and stays available in gameplay for one month, until 23 November. Fortnite itself is free on consoles, PC and mobile, and the experience is playable solo or in groups of up to four. A teaser video has been released ahead of the launch.
A world of clocks and choices
“Poppy Secret Run” is described as an interactive musical journey that puts players inside Poppy’s world, letting them experience a performance of her song “Time Will Tell” in a new way. The world centers on a surreal universe of clocks, with two versions of Poppy guiding players through the experience alongside her real-life sphynx cat, Pi. Players move through and interact with the world and choose between two paths, the Light or the Dark, with every decision helping determine where they end up.
Beyond the main run, players can uncover exclusive content. A performance-only mode offers her show without the game, and locked doors hide stories Poppy has never shared before, rewarding those who return and explore deeper. More surprises will be revealed as the month unfolds.
Captured in Paris
The project is rooted in a full motion-capture session Poppy recorded with SoWhen? in Paris in March 2026. She performed “Time Will Tell” live in studio, and her personalized game world was crafted around that performance. Her stage presence was kept intact and infused into her in-game character. Her movements, face and lips were captured without suits or trackers, using markerless motion capture and OptiTrack technology, and the song’s audio was then linked to the gameplay so that every rise, flip and collapse lands on the beat.
SoWhen?, described as a CreaTech company, has blended entertainment, art and technology into immersive experiences since 2010. It was founded by Freddy Koné and Mohamed Marouene, who met on the production of “Logorama”, winner of the 2010 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. The studio has collaborated with Jean-Michel Jarre on three live virtual concerts, with The Walt Disney Company on immersive experiences, and co-produced two Fortnite experiences with ARTE, including the Turbo Killer Experience with Carpenter Brut. It is an Epic Games Unreal Engine Gold Service Partner.
From Fortnite to the stage
Alongside the new Fortnite experience, Poppy will bring the songs of her 2026 album “Empty Hands” to the stage during support dates for Evanescence and a handful of international music festivals.
Moriah Rose Pereira, the woman behind Poppy
Poppy is the solo project of Moriah Rose Pereira, born in 1995, who handles vocals. She first gained recognition for her performance art videos on YouTube from 2014, in which she played an uncanny android character satirizing internet culture. She shifted from pop to heavy metal and industrial rock with her third album “I Disagree” in 2020, which became her first entry on the Billboard 200, and its single “Bloodmoney” made her the first solo female artist nominated for the Grammy for Best Metal Performance. A feature on Knocked Loose’s “Suffocate” earned her a second nomination in the same category, and her seventh album “Empty Hands” became her second Billboard 200 entry.
