An eerie horror game featuring animatronic puppets and spine-chilling jumpscares
An eerie horror game featuring animatronic puppets and spine-chilling jumpscares
Pros
- Gameplay builds mock suspense
- Famous jumpscare mechanic
- Notable characters
- Easy to pick up and play
Cons
- Little control over the action
- More of a movie than a game
Five Nights at Freddy's is a point and click adventure game that offers players a rather unusual setting to explore. The entire game takes place inside of a pizza parlor that's equipped with a series of infamous pneumatic musical animals. Unlike those that have been found in a number of real life attractions for years, these dancing compressed air-driven terrors are all out for blood.
Your player character is a security guard who has to take over the night watch shift at Freddy Fazbear's pizza. At first, you might not even know that you have a series of robotic animals roving the halls. In fact, the game simply presents you with a series of display terminals attached to virtual security cameras that you have to watch at first.
Once you've taken the opportunity to survey your situation, you'll notice that some of the animatronics will begin to move. If measures aren't taken to stop them, then eventually one might come into contact with you.
When Freddy Fazbear or any of the other robot animals approach you, it will try to determine whether or not you're wearing a suit. The animatronics aren't intelligent enough to realize that you're not a misbehaving piece of equipment. As a result, you'll be soon forced into a suit yourself to better resemble one of the robotic animals that you're up against.
When that happens, your game is over since the force of putting you into a suit will actually be enough to kill your player character. Apparently, these robotic stuffed toys are actually quite vengeful. This is perhaps the most famous of all the mechanics and gimmicks used in the game.
FNAF, as fans know it, attempts to build tension over time by presenting you with a dark and brooding atmosphere. Once an animatronic animal appears, it jumps out at you giving some players what are regularly referred to as jumpscares. While mature players of the game are unlikely to actually be frightened by these moments, it's certainly an iconic aspect of the gameplay.
In fact, there's a good chance that you'll find the plot and setting rather humorous. In some ways, FNAF plays out like it was a sort of parody or pastiche of a number of popular stereotypes used to get cheap thrills from people who view horror movies.
In that sense, the game is a huge success. Another area where it does quite well is in terms of exploration, though, and it's this one that might prove the most attractive.
Much of the gameplay in FNAF is little more than essentially watching a film you have relatively little control over. Eventually you might come across an empty stuffed bear head, which you can use to fool the robotic animals into thinking that you're one of them. This gives you at least an increased chance of survival.
However, you still won't have all that much control over the game and you might feel like you're relying more on luck than skill to succeed and get to the end of the work week.
Exploring the game's meta themes will more than likely keep you coming back for more. FNAF has cultivated an entire community surrounding it that's dedicated to nothing but solving a variety of mysteries that are encoded in the game's backstory.
You might find yourself replaying the game repeatedly trying to collect individual clues that can help you learn more about what caused the robots to go insane and why your player character can still get fired even if you complete the game.
That makes it an attractive option for RPG and MUCK fans, in spite of the fact that the core gameplay doesn't resemble either of these models at all. FNAF is essentially a sort of specialized RPG in which you don't do any real leveling up. Rather, all of the action happens outside of the game's code as you struggle to discover little bits of information that the developer left out of the narrative on purpose.
Naturally, this won't appeal to everyone. Some people have claimed that children might be much more interested in this type of introspective research since mature gamers are looking more for actual rewards provided by a title's engine.
If you're open to the idea of plunging yourself into a search for answers that has spilled out onto a host of forum and wiki sites, then Five Nights at Freddy's might be the intellectual and comedic challenge that you've been looking for all along.
Pros
- Gameplay builds mock suspense
- Famous jumpscare mechanic
- Notable characters
- Easy to pick up and play
Cons
- Little control over the action
- More of a movie than a game
Pros
- Available on many platforms.
- Very frightening.
Cons
- Minimal gameplay.
- Confusing story.
Five Nights at Freddy's is a survival horror video game of the point-and click variety. It was made by indie creator and developer Scott Cawthon and is the first in a series of four games. In this entry to the series, the game takes place in a fictional, family-friendly pizza restaurant akin to "Chuck E. Cheese" named "Freddy Fazbear's Pizza". The player takes on the role of a newly minted night security guard. Nothing is as it seems in this game, however, and players quickly tense, waiting for the first jump scare.
Players take the role of Mike Schmidt, the new night security guard. As a voicemail left behind by Mike's predecessor plays on Day 1, players are told that at night, the animatronic characters that are employed by the restaurant during the day to entertain the children have a habit of coming alive and moving around the restaurant. While the former employee assures Mike that he will do fine and not to worry, he does also cryptically warn Mike that it would be for the best if Mike manages to avoid being caught by one of the animatronic suits. Apparently, should that happen, the animatronics will see him as an endoskeleton, not a human, and will try to forcibly stuff him into a spare mechanical suit. It is made more than obvious that this means certain death.
The goal of the game is to survive to the end of the shift, from midnight to 6:00 A.M., for five days in a row. Each shift lasts approximately 8 minutes and 36 seconds for the PC version. Completing five nights will unlock a special sixth night. Completion of the sixth night will unlock a custom night.
The player sits in the security guard office for the whole duration of the game, being unable to move. The only thing the player has to defend themselves against the roaming animatronics is the network of security cameras, a set of hallway lights, and hallway doors.
There are five animatronic characters in total to keep an eye on: Chica the Chicken, Bonnie the Bunny, Foxy the Fox, Freddy Fazbear the Bear, and Golden Freddy. Chica, Bonnie, Foxy, and Freddy have predictable movements that can been tracked with the cameras. Golden Freddy will only be triggered by a certain series of events.
Much of the horror stems from the fact that the player cannot escape from the security room. All the player can do is sit and nervously watch the cameras as the living animatronics creep ever closer. When the animatronics get to the two hallways on either side of the office, the player can shut down the doors and turn on the hallway lights in order to temporarily scare the animatronics. All of this would be tense enough, but the game amplifies the terror by giving the player finite electricity. Everything the player can do, from looking at the cameras to closing the doors, uses energy. Once the energy runs out, everything is disabled and the lights shut off. Then all the player can do is wait as music box music box plays and Freddy Fazbear lurches towards them. While the scares in this game can be stereotypical jump scares, they can still be very effective, so think twice before playing the game in the dark.
Pros
- Available on many platforms.
- Very frightening.
Cons
- Minimal gameplay.
- Confusing story.
