Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location

## Summary

*"FEAR. PANIC. DREAD. TERROR. DEEP BELOW GROUND, WHERE MEMORIES SLEEP, ANGER IS RESTLESS, AND SECRETS DON'T KEEP. "* **-Trailer Tagline**

## Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location

### Platform

Windows, Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Playstation 4

### Release date

October 7th, 2016 (Windows) December 22nd, 2016 (Android) January 3rd, 2017 (iOS) June 18th, 2020 (Nintendo Switch (NA)) July 10th, 2020 (Nintendo Switch (EU)) July 10th, 2020 (Xbox One) July 21st, 2020 (Playstation 4 (EU)) July 22nd, 2020 (Playstation 4 (NA))

### Rating

910 (Steam)4.5/5 (Google Play)

Welcome to Circus Baby's Pizza World, where family fun and interactivity go beyond anything you've seen at those \*other\* pizza places! With cutting-edge animatronic entertainers that will knock your kids' socks off, as well as customized pizza catering, no party is complete without Circus Baby and the gang!

Now hiring: Late night technician. Must enjoy cramped spaces and be comfortable around active machinery. Not responsible for death or dismemberment.

The first trailer  was released May 21st, 2016. The demo was released October 5th, 2016 on Indie DB. The full game was then released October 7th, 2016.

## Gameplay

Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location is a survival horror video game where the player takes the role of a late night technician who must survive against murderous animatronics each shift. Unlike previous Five Nights at Freddy's games, the player can crawl between different rooms and the objective changes between each of the five nights.

The occasional post-death minigames return from Five Nights at Freddy's 2; when a game ends, the player may be given a chance to play an 8-bit mini-game where they control Circus Baby and must deliver cupcakes to children. At the end of the minigame, the player has to deliver an ice cream cone to a little girl, ending in the girl's death. Completing this minigame grants access to the Night 5 secret level; a near-recreation of the gameplay in the original Five Nights at Freddy's, bringing back survival gameplay.

Completing all five nights unlocks extra features: pictures and blueprints of the game's animatronics, their making-of, a map of the facility, and menu access to Circus Baby's cupcake minigame. As of the December 1, 2016 update, clearing all nights also unlocks the non-canon Custom Night mode, which is set in a modified version of the Night 5 secret room. The player can choose from several modes and difficulty settings, facing new animatronics, and must conserve both power and oxygen supplies in order to survive. Completing these modes allows the player to view a series of cutscenes that have been declared as part of the series canon; all except the last scene are in 8-bit resolution.

An achievement system exists in the form of four stars, obtained by unlocking both of the game's endings, completing the Circus Baby minigame, and completing the hardest difficulty on each custom night preset. Completing each custom night preset on each mode grants its own star in the specific custom night mode.

Like in all Five Nights at Freddy's games, failure to defend oneself from the hostile animatronic characters will result in a jumpscare.

## Plot

The game begins with an interviewer questioning William Afton, co-founder of Fazbear Entertainment Inc. and founder of Afton Robotics, LLC — the company responsible for creating the game's animatronic characters — on unspecified design choices he made while building the animatronics. Afton proceeds to list several features of the animatronic Circus Baby such as dispensing ice cream, inflating balloons, taking song requests, and dancing to them. The interviewer is dissatisfied with Afton’s answer, as the features Afton mentioned were not what were being referred to.

The perspective then switches to Michael, a new employee of Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rental, an underground facility where various animatronics are stored, to be rented out to children's birthday parties during the day. These animatronics originated from Circus Baby's Pizza World, a sister location of the Freddy Fazbear's Pizza restaurant from the first game which was shut down shortly before its planned opening due to supposed gas leaks. Every night, Michael is assigned maintenance tasks by the facility's partially malfunctioning artificial intelligence HandUnit. These tasks must be finished before the morning.

On the second night, the power goes out and the animatronics come to life. Circus Baby begins to communicate with Michael, warning that the other animatronics will kill him if they catch him, and gives instructions to help Michael survive as he goes to reset the circuit breakers. The following night, Michael is ambushed by the animatronic Funtime Foxy and hidden in a springlock suit overnight by Circus Baby. Michael is left to repel the tiny Minireenas from crawling into the suit before freeing himself. On the fifth night, Mike finds two hanged technicians where the animatronics should be, which prevents HandUnit from noticing they are missing. Circus Baby instructs Michael to destroy her empty body by going to the Scooping Room, where endoskeletons are violently "scooped" out of the animatronics' exterior shells, to "save what is good so the rest can be destroyed". She soon tells him that he is being followed by the animatronic Ballora, who intends to kill him.
Between nights, Michael watches an animated sitcom at home and Elizabeth, William’s daughter, is heard begging him to play with Circus Baby, despite her father's insistence that she must stay away.

### Endings

If the player follows Circus Baby's instructions, they will find that all of the animatronics, including Ballora, had actually already been "scooped". Circus Baby's voice is revealed to be Ennard, an amalgamation of the animatronics, who uses the Scooper to eviscerate him and disguise itself in Michael’s skin to live among people.

An alternate ending can be unlocked by playing an 8-bit minigame which occasionally appears after a game over, where the player controls Circus Baby. If the minigame is completed in a certain way, Circus Baby is shown extending a claw from her stomach and pulling a little girl into it. This girl is implied to be Elizabeth, whose soul now possesses the animatronic. The player is then able to disobey Circus Baby's instructions and enter a private room, where they must fend off Ennard until 6 AM, similar to the first game in the series. An easter egg accessible in this area shows camera footage of the house featured in Five Nights at Freddy's 4, which belonged to William Afton and his family. After successfully surviving the night, Michael returns home, where Ennard is revealed to have followed him.

A series of 8-bit cutscenes plays if the player completes each mode of Custom Night on the hardest difficulty. Ennard eventually abandons Michael's decomposed body, but as Circus Baby's voice repeatedly says "You won't die", Michael somehow reanimates. In a final cutscene, Michael is revealed to be the son of William Afton, the mysterious murderer mentioned in the first game and represented by a purple figure in the last three games. He mentioned that he is now "living in shadows" due to his disfigurement. He reveals that William had instructed him to head to the underground facility to find and free "her", which he did, and that the animatronics mistook him for William, which is why they attacked him. With nowhere else to go, Michael resolves to find his father. The camera then pans over to the burned remains of Fazbear's Fright, from which Springtrap emerges.

## Reception

The game received mostly positive reviews. Metacritic gave it an 8.1/10, with TechRaptor rating it the highest at a 9. Destructoid appeared to have the lowest, a 6, citing pacing and continued reliance on the tropes that made the original a success.

## Development History

### 2016

* April: The game was first teased with a single image of the title and the animatronic, Circus Baby, on Scott's site; several more teaser images would eventually follow.
* A later trailer revealed the release date of October 7, 2016. As part of the ongoing hype, Scott developed several "hoaxes" that kept conversations going. The first was dropped in August on his site, suggesting the game had been canceled due to leaks. However, fans soon discovered that the cancellation image, once lightened, revealed a news article detailing the closing of the in-game location due to gas leaks. The second "hoax" was much closer to the release date, in which Scott suggested he would have to work on the game for longer than anticipated due to its darker storyline, which would not be appropriate for younger players. Three days later, just as initially promised, the game released.

## Links

1. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw4-bZkxyKQ&t=18s
2. ↑ https://scottgames.com