Five Nights at Freddy's (video game)

A gameplay screenshot showing the inside of the protagonist's office, with Chica the Chicken standing in the right hallway

Five Nights at Freddy's is a survival horror video game with point-and-click elements.[1][2] The player acts as a night security guard for a fictional pizza restaurant, and must complete their shift that lasts from midnight to 6:00 a.m. (several minutes in real time) without being jumpscared by the four animatronic animals that inhabit the facility.[3]

The player, alone in an office, is given access to a network of security camera feeds that provides them with views of various parts of the restaurant.[4] These feeds are used to track the movement of the mobile animatronics throughout the night. Each animatronic character has distinct movement patterns, and most of this movement takes place off-screen.[5][6] The camera feeds are poorly lit and grainy, and one security camera, located in the kitchen, only provides an audio feed.[4] The cameras do not cover certain areas of the building, most notably the two hallways directly to the left and right of the player, which require checking by lights that the player can control by clicking a button located adjacent to each door in their office.[4] The player cannot leave the office, and must close the office doors for self-defense, also achieved by clicking buttons adjacent to each door.[3][7]

Use of these mechanics consume the player's limited electrical power; if all the power is exhausted, the cameras become inoperable, the doors open and the lights go out.[5][8] The restaurant’s main animatronic, Freddy Fazbear, will subsequently appear in the left doorway with flashing lights in his eyes while a music box rendition of "Toreador March" plays.[3] After a random amount of time, the office will go pitch black and Freddy will jumpscare the player, resulting in the game ending, unless the player makes it to 6 a.m. before this occurs. If the player is jumpscared by any of the animatronics, they must restart from the beginning of the night.[4] The game will crash if the player encounters “Golden Freddy”, an easter egg whereby a gold-coloured Freddy Fazbear appears in the office, subsequently jumpscaring the player.[9]

The game has five levels comprising five "nights" in the game, each increasing in difficulty.[3] Completion of the main game awards the player with a star that appears in the main menu and unlocks an even more difficult sixth "night".[3] Completion of this level awards another star and opens up a "Custom Night" during which the player can adjust the AI difficulty of each individual character except for Golden Freddy.[4] Completion of the game's most difficult challenge in which all robots are set to the highest level of 20 (often referred to as 20/20/20/20 mode or 4/20 mode) awards the player a third star.[10]

The player takes control of Mike Schmidt, who has accepted a position as a night security guard at a family pizza restaurant called Freddy Fazbear's Pizza.[11] A voicemail message from Mike’s predecessor plays each night, in which he explains different aspects of the history of the restaurant.[5] He explains that the restaurant's four animatronic characters: Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy, become mobile at night because their servomotors will lock up if they are left off for too long.[12] The employee warns Mike that if one of the animatronics encounters a human after hours, it will mistake them for an animatronic endoskeleton without a costume and will "forcefully stuff" them into a spare mechanical Freddy Fazbear costume, killing the person in the process.[13]

Throughout the game, newspaper clippings viewable in the camera feeds and stories mentioned in the voice messages imply that the restaurant's image and standing with the general public suffered dramatically throughout its history.[1] The voice message mentions "The Bite of '87", an incident which is implied to have led to the loss of a person’s frontal lobe and forced animatronic mobility during the day to be prohibited.[14] Newspaper clippings in the restaurant's east hallway corner reveal that a murder was reported to have occurred on-site, where a man wearing a suit of one of the animatronic characters allegedly lured five children into a back room before killing them. Later, the restaurant received complaints that the animatronics began to emit foul odors while blood and mucus leaked from their eyes and mouths, with one customer comparing them to "reanimated carcasses", implying that the children's dead bodies were stuffed inside the animatronics.[15]

After the fourth night, Mike no longer receives voice messages from his predecessor, after he is suggested to have been killed by one of the animatronics while recording the fourth message.[16] A voice message still plays on the fifth night, albeit only consisting of a garbling sound.[17] Upon completing the fifth and sixth nights, Mike receives a paycheck,[18][19] but he is fired once he completes the seventh customizable night with all the animatronics set to 20 in difficulty.[20]

Scott Cawthon created Five Nights at Freddy's after receiving negative reviews towards his previous game, the construction and management game Chipper & Sons Lumber Co.. Players commented that characters in the game were unsettling and animatronic-like in appearance, with reviewer Jim Sterling calling the game unintentionally "terrifying".[6][21] Although initially discouraged by this poor reception, Cawthon, who had previously mainly developed Christian-oriented games, eventually used it to inspire himself to make something intentionally scarier.[6] Cawthon developed the game in six months using the Clickteam Fusion 2.5 game engine and used Autodesk 3ds Max to model the 3D graphics.[22]

Five Nights at Freddy's was first released for PC via Desura on August 8, 2014.[21] On August 18, after it was approved by the service's crowdsourcing platform Greenlight, the game was also released via Steam.[23] A port for Android was released on August 25, 2014 on the Google Play Store,[24] and on September 11, 2014, an iOS port was released on the App store. A Windows Phone version was published on December 5, 2014,[25] but was quickly removed from the Microsoft store on December 10 due to the port's down-scaled graphical appearance.[26] In 2019, ports were released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.[27]

Five Nights at Freddy's was well received, with review aggregator website Metacritic assigning the PC version a score of 78 out of 100.[28] Indie Game Magazine praised the game for its simple take on the horror genre, labelling the game a "fantastic example of how cleverness in design and subtlety can be used to make an experience terrifying". They noted that its artistic direction and gameplay mechanics contributed to a feeling of "brutal tension". The game was, however, criticized for taking too long to load when launched.[4]

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 praising the overall atmosphere 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 was criticized for becoming repetitive once a player masters it, noting players have "not much more to expect beyond managing battery life and careful timing of slamming doors shut."[3] Ryan Bates of Game Revolution gave the game a 4.5 out of 5, commending the game's minimalistic presentation (particularly its audio design and lack of music) for contributing to the terror of the game, along with its repetitive gameplay that would "[reach] almost OCD-type levels, adding to the tense environment." He opined that the game was "horror done right", but felt it was too short.[29]

Eurogamer's Jeffrey Matulef called the game "wonderfully creative", and compared the animatronic animals in the game to Weeping Angels due to their ability to only move when they are not being observed.[31] 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", and that the "inability to move combined with the limited power available will make you feel quite helpless".[7] Yahtzee Croshaw of Zero Punctuation hailed the game as extremely effective, but expressed doubts about using jumpscares as a central game mechanic.[32]

A fan cosplaying as Freddy Fazbear at the MCM London Comic Con

Upon release, Five Nights at Freddy's became immensely popular and gained a cult-following.[36] This success led to the development of the Five Nights at Freddy's video game series and media franchise, beginning with the release of Five Nights at Freddy's 2 in November 2014.[37] Other than video games, the franchise has expanded to include several written works. The first novel adaptation, Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes, was published in 2015,[38] and two sequels, Five Nights at Freddy's: The Twisted Ones and Five Nights at Freddy's: The Fourth Closet, were published in 2017 and 2018, respectively.[39][40] A guide book, Five Nights at Freddy's: The Freddy Files, and an activity book, Five Nights at Freddy's: Survival Logbook, have also been published.[41][42] In 2017, Blumhouse Productions acquired the rights to make a film adaptation of the game,[43] and filming is planned to begin in 2021.[44] The game has also been subject to several imitations and fangames, many of which have become successful in their own right.[45] Merchandise for the game has been developed, primarily by the companies Sanshee, Funko and McFarlane Toys, and is available internationally.[46]

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