The Joy of Creation: Story Mode

It's the night of August 8th 2016, and Five Nights at Freddy's 2nd Anniversary has passed. Celebrated worldwide, the hit indie horror series and its creator have made themselves a place in modern culture and the hearts of many.

But success doesn't only bring fortune to your doorstep.

Play through the eyes of Scott Cawthon and his family, as they try to survive inside their own home on the dreadful night that brought the horror into reality, the scorched beings whose origin and motives are yet unknown. Find the secrets lurking in the house, and uncover the mysterious events that led to the cancellation of the next game in the series.

**The tragedy that ended the franchise of Five Nights at Freddy's.**

## **Gameplay**

You play as Nick Cawthon, Val Cawthon, Michael Schmidt and Scott Cawthon. There are 5 levels, called Forgotten Memories, in this gameplay. Your first memory is in the bedroom in which you will play as Nick. You will face challenges in the bedroom that are very difficult to learn on your first try. The second memory is in the living room, where you play as Val. Then, in the third memory, the office, you play as Scott Cawthon. The fourth memory is the basement, in which you play as Michael. The final memory is in the attic, where you once again play as Scott.

You start off the night with Michael telling you how to ward off The Ignited, with each night containing the main cast from the first game: Ignited Freddy, Ignited Bonnie, Ignited Chica, and lastly, Ignited Foxy. The only exceptions to this are the basement and attic levels by a group of The Fallen; who are the endoskeletons of the ignited. You must use hearing, sightseeing skills, and (sometimes) pure luck to survive until 6:00 AM.

If the player completes the levels as efficiently as possible, the duration of each of them separately averages out to 10 minutes total, and about 50 minutes with the levels altogether.

## **Challenge Modes from Extras**

**Bedroom Blind Mode**

 The rules for this challenge:

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Beat the Bedroom level blind.

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Can't pause the game.

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No cutscenes.

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Hold F to see for a short amount of time. (3 brief moments to be precise)

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If you die once, you lose.

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**Basement Run Mode**

 The rules for this challenge:

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Complete the Basement level in under 8 minutes.

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Can't pause the game.

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No cutscenes.

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Lose automatically if you go past the time limit.

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If you die once, you lose.

```

**Survival Mode**

 The rules for this challenge:

```
Beat each level from start to finish continually. You also get no breaks.

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Can't pause the game.

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No cutscenes.

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If you die once, you lose.

```

## **Developers**

* **Nikson (2MZ)** - Programmer, level designer, sounds, animatronic editor, developer, additional music tracks
* **Phisnom** - Designer, advisor, author, tester
* **Lucifersam01** - Animator
* **Nathan Hanover** - OST
* **MrBreino** - Writer
* **EverythingAnimations** - Base animatronic models
* **Supersonic2233** - Testing
* **SuperArthurBros** - Golden Freddy plush in Attic
* **RyanTheMic** - Voice actor
* **Ry-Guy** - Voice actor
* **Olivia Steele** - Voice actor

## **Development**

Nikson first started development on The Joy of Creation: Story Mode on September 3rd, 2016 after The Joy of Creation: Reborn. He was having doubts that the game would ever surface, and blow up in popularity, and almost ended up cancelling it due to time constraints far beyond his control. He had to scrap most of the features and cut-scenes of the game just to keep it afloat.

The first demo he released of the game was The Living Room Demo. It was extremely buggy, and Nikson tried to the best of his ability to fix it. There was even a Bedroom Demo, which came with a .sav file that allowed you to overwrite the save file that came with a step by step guide on how to do it, which was a method that let you skip the Living Room if it was unbeatable, which it was. Furthermore, Nikson realized that uploading demos was actually hurting the game, and Phisnom, his advisor, helped him a great deal. So he decided not to upload anymore demos until the game was finished, which left fans waiting for a long while until he started uploading teasers one by one on his YouTube channel.

The game was uploaded July 17th, 2017. As time passed by, more and more YouTubers started playing it, which boosted its popularity even more.

## **Trivia**

* Nikson considered cancelling *The Joy of Creation: Story Mode* multiple times due to wanting to make an ambitious project but lacking the qualifications to do so on his own.
* Scott posted about *Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator* being cancelled, where at the end of his post, he mentioned that he had fangames to catch up on, listing The Joy of Creation: Story Mode as one of the games he had yet to play.
* *The Joy of Creation: Story Mode* is one of the only *Five Nights at Freddy's* fangames that has been recognized as a game by YouTube.
* It is likely that the story was produced after the levels and characters, as the manner in which the developers refer to production in the game's anniversary video is rather carefree of the lore, mostly making it in an intuitive way and creating whatever works.
	+ The first version of the game's story was produced by Nikson and MrBreino, where Michael was a normal human being, rather than a doppelgänger who wanted to become a real human being via taking over Scott's body, who released animatronics onto Scott in order to have Scott's wife for himself, since he had a crush on her, and then burned down the house himself. When Phisnom partnered with, the story transformed to become Michael and The Ignited, now doppelgängers, infiltrating Scott Cawthon and his family in the real world to feed on the creativity of Scott Cawthon himself, with Michael's agenda being to simply overtake Scott Cawthon's body to live as a real human being, unrelated to the goal of The Ignited.
	+ Every memory in the game ends in the same electronic distortion to signify an unprecedented shift of reality. This includes Basement, the level set before the attack, where every entity is transported from the doppelgängers' reality to the Cawthon family's reality, unlike the levels set during and after the main attack where the reverse shift happens.
* In the demo, cutscenes were captioned before captions were then removed completely in the final release.