Friday Night Funkin'

Friday Night Funkin'
File:Friday Night Funkin'.png
Developer(s)	Cameron Taylor
Artist(s)	Phantom Arcade evilsk8r
Composer(s)	Kawai Sprite
Engine	OpenFL
Platform(s)	Browser Microsoft Windows macOS Linux
Release	November 1, 2020
Genre(s)	Rhythm
Mode(s)	Single-player

Friday Night Funkin' is a free-to-play and open-source rhythm game for PC developed by Canadian programmer Cameron Taylor, also known ninjamuffin99, in OpenFL via Haxe. The game has a play style reminiscent of Rock Band, Dance Dance Revolution, PaRappa the Rapper, and an aesthetic reminiscent of Flash games popular in the early-mid 2000s on platforms such as Newgrounds and Cool Math Games.

The game revolves around the player character, simply named "Boyfriend", who has to defeat an array of characters in singing and rapping contests for him to be able to date his love interest, "Girlfriend".

Gameplay

File:Friday Night Funkin' Game Screenshot 01.jpg

Gameplay of Friday Night Funkin'. The arrows on the right side of the screen move upwards and the player must press the respective key on their keyboard to hit the arrows.

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.

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.

For each week, the player has the option to select one of three difficulties: Easy, Medium, and Hard. As difficulty increases, the speed of incoming arrows increases and the patterns of arrows become more complicated. The player's high score for each week on each difficulty is tracked and shown in the top corner of the week selection screen.

Plot

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.

Week 1

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 known as "Daddy Dearest", disapproves of their relationship. He must convince her father to let him date her through musical talent.

Week 2

Skid and Pump (a cameo of characters created by YouTuber and animator Sr. Pelo) celebrate Spooky Month as they do always, they come across Girlfriend's parents' house and a monster (known as Lemon demon) 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. Week 2 is infamous for having one of the hardest songs in the game so early in the game even on normal setting, South.

Week 3

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.

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 also particularly infamous for having one of the hardest songs in the game, "M.I.L.F."

Week 5

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".

Week 6

Boyfriend and Girlfriend play "Hating Simulator", a fictional PS1 dating simulator, then they get sucked into the game 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 but leaving Spirit to be left in the game.

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, 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 several 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.

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 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 the 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

Tankman, who is also known as Sergeant John Captain but referred to as Captain or Cap and is the main protagonist in the web animation TANKMEN. He is the main mascot of and appears in the logo of Newgrounds before he debuted in TANKMEN. He is a soldier that wears a helmet, uniform, gloves, and pants in black while his skin, visor, and vest are white. John was accidentally revealed as the antagonist in Week 7 in Cameron Taylor's Twitch livestream He was teased in the first Friday Night Funkin' Trailer as a playable character.

Cassette Girl is a young, light-skinned girl with black hair wearing a dark grey-blue hoodie, short black shorts, 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 is currently the only character not made for Friday Night Funkin' to not have any games or animations featuring or associated with her. She has been teased in the first Friday Night Funkin' Trailer as a playable character.

Hank J. Wimbleton is a violent ninja who was teased in the first Friday Night Funkin' Trailer as a playable character and is the main protagonist of Madness Combat by user Krinkles.

Ritz is a grey-furred anthropomorphic rat and is the main protagonist of the game named Ritz, which Ninjamuffin99 developed 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 Cameron Taylor posted a GIF of Ritz in the art style of the game on his Twitter page with claiming that he's going to delete the tweet in 30 seconds (which he did).

Development

Cameron 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.

Cameron 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, Newgrounds, TikTok and Twitch. The game has an active modding community due to its open source release, allowing for the implementation of fan-made content.

Its soundtrack, whose composer goes by the nickname Kawai Sprite, has been made available for free on Bandcamp and Spotify. One of the songs of the soundtrack, M.I.L.F was ranked 20 over 50 in trending on Spotify on 6th March.

There is only two songs in Week 2, this is because there is a unused song simply titled “Monster”, which includes the character Monster in the song (who later “offically” appeared in the third song of week called Winter Horrorland in Week 5) actually singing with vocals unlike other songs in the game, the reason why the song wasn’t included in the game normally is because ninjamuffin99 had difficulties with mapping the notes of the song with arrows in the game, the song and Monster was discovered through the game’s debug menu. After seeing the unused assets for Monster, user ChaoticGamer fully mapped the notes for the song but left Monster’s neck clipping through his mouth and other questionable things. Cameron Taylor was impressed with how well ChaoticGamer mapped the song and now plans on adding the song back to the game properly into the game while fixing and changing some stuff in the original song and crediting ChaoticGamer for his work.

Cameron 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.

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.

A popular example of a mod of Friday Night Funkin is V.S. Whitty Full Week, which adds a fan-created stage to the game while not including new inputs, gameplay at 126 frames per second and customisable controls. The mod introduces a new character named Whitty who is a hot-headed ockstar , an artificial bomb who is part human 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. The mod was praised for being the first mod to add a brand new stage and accompanying lore to the game but criticized its third song, Ballistic, for being infamously difficult and causing players to damage their fingers to the point that the developer of the mod could not beat the song perfectly without a bot for their video showcasing the mod.

Another popular series of mods is the B-Side Remixes mod by Rozebud and JADS, which is a mod that includes remixes of the songs featured in the game's weeks and recolors of the characters in the game (though there is a version of this mod where the characters have their original colours). This mod was praised for it's remixes of the original songs of the game.

Yet another popular series of mods are the SiIvaGunner mods. Every Friday, SiIvaGunner uploads rips of Friday Night Funkin music, featuring mods of the game, including character changes and new music.

External links

• Newgrounds Page
• itch.io New Page
• itch.io Old Page
• Ludum Dare Page
• Github Page
• Spotify Page
• Bandcamp Page
• ninja_muffin99's Twitter Page
• Phantom Arcade's Twitter Page
• Evilsk8r's Twitter Page
• KawaiSprite's Twitter Page