Five Nights at Freddy's (video game)

Five Nights at Freddy's
File:Five nights at freddys cover art.jpg
Developer(s)	Scott Cawthon
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows Android
Release	August 8, 2014 (2014-08-08)
Genre(s)	Survival horror Point-and-click
Mode(s)	Single-player

Five Nights at Freddy's is an indie point-and-click survival horror video game developed by Scott Cawthon. The game centers on the titular pizza restaurant Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, where the player must act as a night watch, defending themselves from possessed, animatronic animal characters by tracking their movement through the facility using security cameras.

Five Nights at Freddy's was first released via Desura on August 8, 2014. On August 20, 2014, after it was approved by the service's crowdsourcing platform Greenlight, Five Nights at Freddy's was also released via Steam. A port for Android was released on August 27, 2014 via Google Play Store.

The game was praised by critics for being a unique take on the survival horror genre, with a particular emphasis on its simplistic design, along with how its gameplay mechanics and aesthetics contributed to an overall feeling of fear and paranoia. Five Nights at Freddy's was the top-selling game on Desura for the week ending August 18, 2014, and the game became the subject of a number of popular "Let's Play" videos on YouTube—including one by Markiplier, who labelled it the "scariest game in years".

Plot

The main character, whose name is later revealed to be Mike Schmidt, has started a job working as a night watch security guard at the restaurant Freddy Fazbear's Pizza (a pastiche of restaurants like Chuck E. Cheese's). A voice mail message left by a previous employee explains that the animatronic animal characters used at the restaurant—including the titular Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie the Bunny, Chica the Chicken, and Foxy the Pirate Fox—are able to roam freely around it at night, because if they were left off for too long, their servo motors would lock up. He also adds that the characters were no longer allowed to roam freely during the day following an incident referred to as the "bite of '87", which apparently involved the loss of someone's frontal lobe. The employee warns the player that if one of the robots encounters a human, they will automatically assume that it is a robot that is not in costume yet, and "forcefully stuff [them]" into a spare mechanical Freddy Fazbear costume, killing them in the process.

Newspaper clippings in the background of one of the scenes reveal that the restaurant was site to the disappearances of five children whose bodies were never found, after a man dressed as Freddy lured them into a back room, and was said to have murdered them. Later, the restaurant received complaints that the animatronics began to smell foul and became stained with blood and mucus around the eyes and mouth, as if they were "reanimated carcasses". This game has also been released for between $3 and $5 on Android devices, where the player has to play the same game with his or her fingers.

Gameplay

The player must survive their shift, lasting from midnight to 6:00 a.m. (approximately 8 to 9 minutes of real time), without being attacked by one of the animatronic animal robots roaming the facility. The player is given access to a network of security cameras throughout the facility to track the movement of the animatronic robots. Each of the four characters have distinct movement patterns; however, most of the characters' movements take place off-screen. The camera feeds are dimly lit and distorted, one of the rooms only contains an audio feed, and the cameras do not cover certain areas of the building, most notably the two hallways directly to the left and right of the player. The player cannot leave the guard room, but can close the doors to defend themselves, and briefly turn on lights in the hallways to check for animatronics. Use of these actions consume the player's limited electrical power; if the power runs out, the cameras become inoperable, the doors open, and the lights go out, leaving the player with no defenses against an attack.

As the title suggests, the game has five levels comprising five "nights" in the game, which increase in difficulty. Completion of the game unlocks an even more difficult 6th Night level, and completion of this level opens up a "Custom Night" level editor where the player can adjust the AI difficulty of the individual characters.

Reception

Five Nights at Freddy's received positive reviews from critics. Indie Game Magazine praised Five Nights at Freddy's for its simple take on the horror genre, noting that its artistic direction and gameplay mechanics contributed to a feeling of "brutal tension"—worsened by how a player may be familiar with similar restaurants such as Chuck E. Cheese's, and that "it's an incredibly terrifying experience to try to save yourself from the single jump scare that ends the game". In conclusion, Five Nights at Freddy's was considered a "fantastic example of how cleverness in design and subtlety can be used to make an experience terrifying". However, the game was criticized for taking too long to load when launched.

Omri Petitte for PC Gamer gave Five Nights at Freddy's a score of 80 out of 100, commenting that the game took a "less-is-more" approach to its design, and that while "the AI isn't some masterwork of procedural unpredictability", it would "[still] head straight to you and eat your face off, or it'll play around like an innocent child before closing in for the kill. Your mind will fill in the rest." The game's overall atmosphere was praised for emphasizing the fear and suspense of an approaching threat, rather than the arrival of the threat itself as in other horror-oriented games. However, the gameplay of Five Nights at Freddy's was criticized for becoming repetitive once a player masters it, as there is "not much more to expect beyond managing battery life and careful timing of slamming doors shut, so those with steely willpower won't find anything else past the atmosphere of it all." Ryan Bates of Game Revolution gave the game a 4.5 out of 5; comparing its camera-oriented gameplay to the 1992 game Night Trap, he praised the game's minimalistic presentation (with particular emphasis on its audio design and lack of music) for contributing to the terror of the game, along with the fact that the "nervous impulses" of its repetitive gameplay would "[reach] almost OCD-type levels, adding to the tense environment." In conclusion, he felt that the game was "horror done right", but that it was too short.

Eurogamer's Jeffrey Matulef compared the animatronic animals in the game to Weeping Angels — predatory creatures from the universe of Doctor Who — due to their ability to only move when they are not being observed. Softpedia gave the game 4 out of 5 stars, with reviewer Cosmin Anton noting that it "drifts away from the classic first-person horror survival titles", but that the "inability to move combined with the limited power available will make you feel quite helpless in front of those relentless robots that just want to share a bit of their 'love' with you".

External links

• Official website
• Five Nights at Freddy'son Desura
• Five Nights at Freddy's on IndieDB
• Five Nights at Freddy's on Steam
• Five Nights at Freddy's on Google Play