Five Nights at Freddy's

***Five Nights at Freddy's*** is an indie point-and-click survival horror video game developed by Scott Cawthon. The goal is for the player to try to survive the night atFreddy Fazbear's Pizza while avoiding getting caught and killed by the animatronic characters, and tracking their movements via the restaurant's security cameras. On November 11, 2014, the second game was released onto Steam. On March 2, 2015, the third game was released onto Steam. A fourth game is slated for release on October 31, 2015 and will be the final installment in the *Five Nights at Freddy's* series.

## Summary

Welcome to your new summer job at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, where kids and parents alike come for entertainment and food as far as the eye can see!

The main attraction is Freddy Fazbear, of course, and histwo friends. They are animatronic robots, programmed to please the crowds!

The robots' behavior has become somewhat unpredictable at night however, and it was much cheaper to hire you as a security guard than to find a repairman. From your small office you must watch the security cameras carefully. You have a very limited amount of electricity that you're allowed to use per night (corporate budget cuts, you know). That means when you run out of power for the night — no more security doors and no more lights! If something isn't right — namely, if Freddy Fazbear or his friends aren't in their proper places, you must find them on the monitors and protect yourself if needed!

Can you survive Five Nights at Freddy's?

## Gameplay

The player sits in an office and monitors security cameras positioned throughout the restaurant to observe the animatronic mascots. The player has a limited amount of power to view camera feeds, light hallways, and close the doors on either side of them.

The player must use the camera feed locations in the building and hold the animatronics off using the doors. If the player fails to do this, they will be jumpscared and receive a *Game Over*. To advance to the next night, the player must survive from 12:00 AM until 6:00 AM (8 minutes and 37 seconds in real-time, 4 minutes 30 seconds on mobile edition).

The four animatronics that the player must avoid are the titular Freddy Fazbear and his three friends: Bonniethe Bunny, Chica the chicken, and Foxy the Pirate (a broken-down animatronic which is no longer in use, but becomes active during the night). There is an additional animatronic known as Golden Freddy, who only appears when the player experiences a paranoid hallucination.

## Audio

The music that plays on the main menu screen.[1]The static that occurs for a short while when the player first opens the main menu screen.
[2]

## 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 executed 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."

## Mobile Version

*Main article: Five Nights at Freddy's (Mobile)*
On August 25 and September 11 of 2014, ports of *Five Nights at Freddy's* were released for Android and iOS devices respectively. While the premise of the game remained the same, gameplay is slightly different, due to the use of a touch screen rather than a mouse. The behavior of the animatronics is also altered in order to balance the time reduction within the mobile version of the game.

## Updates

### v1.13

[3]

Scott Cawthon confirming the third star for beating 20/20/20/20 mode.

**Version 1.13**was an update for the game that was released on August 19th. The update fixed minor bug issues and added a few new small things.

* On the Custom Night, inputting the A.I.'s levels to 1-9-8-7 will cause Golden Freddy's death scene to happen instantly, closing the game. This was added by Scott, the developer, to halt rumors about entering 1/9/8/7 into the A.I. settings to get an alternate ending.
* Beating the Custom Night with the A.I. levels set to 20/20/20/20 will now give the player the third and final star on the title screen.

## History

### 2014

* On June 13, *Five Nights at Freddy's* was submitted to the Steam Greenlight.
* On July 14, a trailer for *Five Nights at Freddy's* was uploaded to YouTube.
* On July 24, a demo of the game was released on the indie games website IndieDB by user animdude.
* On August 9, the full game was released on the gaming website Desura.
* On August 18, *Five Nights at Freddy's*was accepted on Steam Greenlight and then was officially released to Steam platform for PC.
* An Android port was released on August 25 on the Android Google Play Store, by Scott himself.
* An iOS Port was released on September 11 on the iPhone App Store by Scott himself.
* A Windows Phone version was released on December 2, together with the second game.
* The game was released on the Clickteam Clickstore on an unknown date by Scott Cawthon.

### 2015

* On January 16, 2015, *Five Nights at Freddy's* won three FEAR awards by user choice.
* On April 2015, Warner Bros. purchased the rights to adapt the game into a feature film.

## Trivia

* Strangely, all that is in the game files is the exe for the game, although it is possible to access the game files with Clickteam Fusion 2.5., the program *Five Night's at Freddy's* was made with.
* The game itself was inspired by the game *Chipper & Sons Lumber Co.*, also made by Scott Cawthon. Many players of the game criticized it because of the graphics, which, according to them, looked like 'animatronics'. Scott possibly used that criticism to make *Five Nights at Freddy's*.
* When Scott released the first gameplay video of *Five Nights at Freddy's* on his channel, the game seemed to be much more pixelated. On the starting screen, the video also showed a graphic of a man with the number 1 next to it, which shows that Scott added lives at one point, but has removed it.
* Even though there is no specified year in which the game takes place, many have assumed that it takes place around 1993, as the paycheck matches the minimum wage of the time.
* In the first game, the newspaper article shown in the intro sequence misspells "pizzeria" as "pizzaria".
* The concept of *Five Nights at Freddy's* is similar to that of the 2006 comedy film, *Night at the Museum*. In both stories, the attractions act as expected during the day (the animatronics entertaining the guests, and the museum exhibits staying still), come to life during the night, and both protagonists are night guards who work for security at the establishments.