Friday Night Funkin'
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| Friday Night Funkin' | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Cameron Taylor |
| Artist(s) |
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| Composer(s) | Kawai Sprite |
| Engine | OpenFL |
| Platform(s) | |
| Release | November 1, 2020 |
| Genre(s) | Rhythm game |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Friday Night Funkin' is a 2020 free-to-play and open-source[1] rhythm game for PC developed by Canadian programmer Cameron Taylor in OpenFL via Haxe. The game has a playstyle reminiscent of Rock Band, Dance Dance Revolution, and PaRappa the Rapper, and an aesthetic reminiscent of Flash games popular in the early-mid 2000s on platforms such as Newgrounds.[2][3]
The game revolves around The Boyfriend, who wants to date The Girlfriend but must defeat an array of strange and often surreal characters in rap battles to do so.
Gameplay
Friday Night Funkin' is a rhythm game in which the player must pass multiple "weeks", each containing three songs. Each week, the player faces a different opponent.[note 1]
During gameplay, the opponent will sing a pattern of notes which the player must mirror by pressing the arrow keys or WASD. At the bottom of the screen is a bar indicating how well the player is doing. The left side of the bar is red, representing the opponent. The right side is green, representing the player. Successfully hitting notes will increase the size of the player's bar, while missing notes causes the opponent's bar to expand. The player fails if the opponent's bar fills up the entire bar.
Plot
The player takes the role of a blue-haired boy referred to as "Boyfriend" (often shortened to "BF") who wants to date his girlfriend (similarly shortened to "GF"), but her father, an ex-rockstar, disapproves of their relationship. He must convince her father to let him date her through musical talent.
As of version 0.2.7.1 of Friday Night Funkin', there are 6 weeks the player must play through, as well as an upcoming 7th week leaked by the developer of the game.
In Week 2, Skid and Pump (a cameo of Youtuber Sr. Pelo's characters) celebrate Spooky Month as they do always, they come across Girlfriend's parents' house and a monster (known as Monster) wants Skid and Pump to bring the Girlfriend over to be his "special treat" and to challenge Boyfriend to win the Girlfriend. However, the monster was actually tricking Skid and Pump in order to eat Girlfriend and rap battles Boyfriend on an unused track for the week titled "Monster", leaving Week 2 to be the only week with 2 songs instead of 3, however the track is planned to be re-added to the game at some point.
In Week 3 and after the events of Pico's School, Daddy Dearest hires Pico as a hitman in order to kill Boyfriend after getting humiliated by Boyfriend in Week 1. When Pico finds Boyfriend, he recognizes him and rap battles with him instead.
In Week 4, the Boyfriend must face-off against the Girlfriend's mother, known simply as "The Mom". Week 4 takes place on the rooftop of a couple of limos with dancing devils on the back. Week 4 is particularly infamous for having one of the hardest songs in the game, "M.I.L.F."
Week 5 takes place on a shopping mall, seemingly during Christmas, where Boyfriend must battle against both of Girlfriend's parents who have taken a mall Santa's chair by holding him at gunpoint. The week stands out for the cameo of several well-known Newgrounds characters making a cameo in the background, including Pico who returns as an spectator, Henry Stickmin, Super Meat Boy, Zone-tan, aside from the appearances of Hatsune Miku (who the fanbase jokingly refer to as "Boyfriend's sister") and The Monster. After the second song, "Eggnog", the lights go out, and come back to reveal everyone has disappeared, the scenario has a red tint and the Christmas tree is decorated with a frightening decoration resembling Girlfriend's head, this being done by The Monster who has now taken over the mall and makes his first "official" debut in the game with the song "Winter Horrorland".
In Week 6, Boyfriend and Girlfriend play "Hating Simulator", a fictional PS1 dating simulator, and battle against "Senpai". Initially appearing as a gentleman, he loses his composure during the second song and threatens The Boyfriend. After the second song, "Spirit" kills Senpai, revealing himself to be a soul Daddy Dearest locked in the game, intending to use The Boyfriend's body to escape and take revenge on Daddy Dearest for trapping him and other people in the game. The Boyfriend defeats Spirit and escapes the game along with his Girlfriend.
Cast
Rather than focusing on a fixed cast of characters, Friday Night Funkin' features a rotating cast of opponents, many of whom originate from or parody other Newgrounds mascots, creations or users.
The only consistently recurring characters within the game are Boyfriend is a blue-haired young rapper college dropout sporting a backward baseball cap, and Girlfriend, a young brunette girl sporting a red dress who Boyfriend must serenade to complete the game's levels, which are divided among different "weeks."
"Daddy Dearest" is the girlfriend's father, a former rock star. He seeks to test whether or not the boyfriend is skillful enough to win his approval to woo his daughter.
The Mom is the girlfriend's mother and wife of Daddy Dearest. She is a pop singer who tests the boyfriend as well and performs with a crew of backup dancers.
Skid and Pump are a pair of Halloween costume-wearing children. They are a cameo from the Spooky Month series of web animations by YouTube animator Sr. Pelo.
Pico, who is one of the mascots of Newgrounds, is a cameo from the game "Pico's School" and serveal other Pico spinoffs like "Pico vs. Uber Kids" and "Pico vs. Bear" by Tom Fulp, the creator of Newgrounds, and was teased in the first Friday Night Funkin' Trailer as a playable character but currently isn't.[4]
Monster is a mysterious creature with a lemon for a head who appears at night. He was an unused character to be featured in the third song of week two called Monster. The monster later debuted in Week 5 in the song "Winter Horrorland," where he torments the two main characters and wants to "eat your girlfriend." He, along with the Girlfriend, are the only characters in the game who actually speak and sing in the game.
Senpai is a character that appears in a dating game spoof called Hating Simulator, which plays on a console which in turn is a spoof of a PlayStation. In the course of his battle with the Boyfriend, he later manifests as an evil spirit (vaguely named "Spirit" in the game files) during the song Thorns.
Upcoming Characters
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Tankman who is also known as Sergean John Captain but refered as Captain or Cap in the web cartoon is the main protagonist in TANKMEN, he was teased in the first Friday Night Funkin' Trailer as a playable character,[4] he is the main mascot and appears in the logo of Newgrounds before he was even a developed character and debuted in TANKMEN, he is a soldier that wears a helmet, uniform, gloves, pants that's in black while his skin, visor, and vest are white. John was accidently revealed as the antagonist in Week 7 in Cameron Taylor's (Ninja Muffin 99) Twitch livestream[5]
Cassette Girl is a young, light-skinned girl with black hair, she has been teased in the first Friday Night Funkin' Trailer as a playable character,[4] she wears a dark grey-blue hoodie, short black shorts, and a slightly torn-up dark gray-blue hat that resembles a cassette player and untied white sneakers. She was made by user SoftDon in 2018 and was going to be a music-related mascot. she's currently the only character to not have any games or animations featuring or associated with her, that wasn't made for Friday Night Funkin'.
Hank J. Wimbleton is a violent ninja who was teased in the first Friday Night Funkin' Trailer as a playable character[4] and is the main protagonist of Madness Combat by user Krinkles who doesn't care about causing bloodshed to whoever he hates and is shown to use anything in order to kill his enemies.
Ritz is a grey-furred anthropomorphic rat and is the main protagonist of the game named Ritz, which Ninjamuffin99 made & coded and Kawaisprite composed the music for, he wears an orange beanie with a white arrow pointing downwards, red fingerless gloves, orange sneakers, and triangle-shaped sunglasses. Ritz was teased when Ninjamuffin posted a GIF of Ritz in the art style of the game with claiming that he's going to delete the tweet in 30 seconds (which he did).
Development
Taylor and three of his friends from Newgrounds (artists Phantom Arcade & evilsk8r, and composer Kawai Sprite) initially developed the game as a submission to the Ludum Dare, posting a demo online which received unexpected success, leading to many requests for a full game, Taylor said that on the Ludum Dare prototype build's page that he was already planning to expand the game from the start and said to think of the Ludum Dare build as more of a prototype than a demo or anything else for the game.
Taylor posted a new build on Newgrounds in November 2020 that includes Spooky Month (Week 2) The interest in the game grew to it becoming the highest-rated game in Newgrounds' 25-year history. The game has also received significant attention via trends on platforms such as Youtube, Twitter TikTok and Twitch. The game has an active modding community due to its open source release, allowing for the implementation of fan-made content.[2][3][6][7][8]
Its soundtrack, whose composer goes by the nickname Kawai Sprite, has been made available for free on Bandcamp and Spotify.[9] One of the songs of the soundtrack, M.I.L.F was ranked 20 over 50 in trending on Spotify on 6th March.[10]
Taylor has expressed plans to release Friday Night Funkin' on Steam, Epic Games Store, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The full game would have about 10 weeks worth of songs with different character designs.[3]
Modding
The game is well known for being open source, meaning that anyone can mod the game very easily as long as they have artistic, animation, music and coding experience.
The most popular example of a mod in Friday Night Funkin is V.S Whitty Full Week, which is a fan-created stage of the game. Whitty is a hothead rockstar, an artificial bomb who is 20 percent human and 80 percent unknown (possibly robot or doomsday object) with a dark blue jacket and orange pants and has a long history with Girlfriend's parents. The mod was coded by Kade and the composer and artist was sock.clip.[11] The mod was praised for being the first mod to be a brand new stage in the game, lore in a mod but criticized its third song, Ballistic for being too hard to the point that even the coder of the mod couldn't have been bothered to beat the song perfectly without a bot for their video showcasing the mod.[12][13]
Another popular series of mods are the SiIvaGunner mods, every friday, SiIvaGunner uploads rips of Friday Night Funkin music, which are mods of the game. The mods include character changes and new music.[14]
Notes
- ^ One exception being the second week, titled Spooky Month, which only contains two songs.
References
- ^ Friday Night Funkin is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see here
- ^ a b Wery, Jackson (29 January 2021). "Friday Night Funkin' Fondly Recalls Flash Games". TechRaptor. Retrieved 28 February 2021.
- ^ a b c Davies, Patrick (21 November 2020). "South Cariboo game designer reaps success". 100 Mile House Free Press. Black Press. Retrieved 28 February 2021.
- ^ a b c d "Friday Night Funkin' Teaser". Youtube.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "ninja_muffin99 - fonkin stream". Twitch. Retrieved 2021-03-14.
- ^ Holland, Naquan (26 February 2021). "Iconic PaRappa the Rapper Level Modded Into Friday Night Funkin'". Game Rant. Retrieved 28 February 2021.
- ^ Lee, Julia (8 January 2021). "TikTok's algorithm led me to an amazing rhythm game". Polygon. Retrieved 28 February 2021.
- ^ Costa, Thomas Schulze (26 February 2021). "Conheça Friday Night Funkin', jogo de música que virou febre!". TecMundo (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 28 February 2021.
- ^ Castillo, Alejandro (4 March 2021). "Friday Night Funkin: cómo jugar y descargar gratis en PC el juego musical de moda". MeriStation (in Spanish). Retrieved 4 March 2021.
- ^ "A song from a Newgrounds game is 4 spots below Cardi B on the Spotify top 50 for US". Twitter. Retrieved 2021-03-14.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "V.S. Whitty Full Week [Friday Night Funkin'] [Mods]". GameBanana. Retrieved 2021-03-14.
- ^ What's up with Whitty? Friday Night Funkin, retrieved 2021-03-14
- ^ Friday Night Funkin Mod - VS Whitty Full Week (Cutscenes,Human/Bot), retrieved 2021-03-14
- ^ Tutorial - Friday Night Funkin', retrieved 2021-03-14
External links
