Five Nights at Freddy's

About

Five Nights at Freddy’s is a point-and-click survival horror video game in which the player must survive five nights working as a security guard working at the Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza restaurant, avoiding being dismembered by the animatronic animals wandering the establishment.

Gameplay

In the original game, 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 next to him. To advance to the next night, the player must survive from 12:00 a.m. until 6:00 a.m. The four animatronic characters that must be avoided are Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie the Bunny, Chica the Chicken and Foxy the Pirate. Foxy the Pirate is unique in that he will remain at the pirate cove unless triggered, causing him to rush the security office (shown below).

Online History

Five Nights at Freddy’s was conceived and developed by Texas-based indie game developer Scott Cawthon using Clickteam’s Fusion 2.5 engine. On June 13th, 2014, Cawthon submitted Five Nights at Freddy’s to the Steam Greenlight.^[7] On July 14th, the first trailer video for Five Nights at Freddy’s was uploaded to YouTube (shown below).

On July 24th, a demo of the game was released via indie games website IndieDB^[5] by user animdude. On August 9th, the full version of the game was released on the gaming website Desura.^[6] On August 13th, Cawthon’s Steam Greenlight submission was approved and the game was subsequently released via Steam store^[8] on August 18th.

Reception

The game earned a rating of 79 from Metacritic^[13] and a score of 8 (Great) from GameSpot.^[14] On August 24th, PC Gamer^[15] published a review which lauded the game by saying:

“Five Nights at Freddy’s gets clever with its simple presentation. It turned my sense of awareness against me, relying on my mind tricking itself to override logic. Those brilliant moments during my five hours playing it typically came after I fought down the urge to curl into a whimpering ball of tears and sweat. It’s a first-person horror game, but the boogeyman jumping out of the closet isn’t its payoff--it’s the creeping buildup of dread watching that doorknob slowly turn.”

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2

As early as on September 12th, Cawthon updated his website with an illustrated cover art which hinted at the development of a sequel title for release sometime in 2015.

On October 21st, roughly two months after the release of the original title, Cawthon uploaded the official trailer for the sequel title to his YouTube channel. The trailer gained over 600,000 views within the first 24 hours; as of November 11th, the video has garnered more than six million views on YouTube. That same day, to many of the fans’ surprise, Cawthon submitted the sequel title to Steam Greenlight.^[16] By October 22nd, Five Nights at Freddy’s II had become the most fan-supported game on Steam Greenlight and the game was approved by the community within 48 hours of submission.

On November 10th, the first two episodes of Five Nights at Freddy’s II was released as a downloadable demo via IndieDB^[19] and the full version of the game was launched via Steam Store^[18] at the price of $7.99 USD. According to the title description, the sequel features a number of redesigned and more degraded animatronic movements, while all doors between the rooms, which were used to block the ambush of the violent creatures in the original game, have been removed and the player must utilize a Freddy Fazbear mask in order to avoid being killed.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 3

Sometime between December 2014 and January 2015, a teaser image of a mostly obscured animatronic head featuring the caption “I am still here” was posted on Cawthon’s website (shown below, left). About a month later, Cawthon updated the home page with another teaser image of a box filled with animatronic components and the number “3” displayed in the background (shown below, right).

Shortly after the second teaser was posted on the website, Cawthon formally announced the third installation of the game with a teaser trailer video titled “Five Nights at Freddy’s 3,” which has earned seven million views and 186,000 likes.^[22]

On March 3rd, 2015, the full version of Five Nights at Freddy’s 3 was launched via Steam Store at the price of $7.99 USD.^[23] Like its predecessors, the game takes place in the pizzeria, which has been now turned into a horror attraction, wherein the player must successfully reboot the ventilation, camera systems and audio devices in order to make it through the night.

Movie

[W.I.P. and researching]

On April 7th, 2015, The Hollywood Reporter reported that American media company Warner Bros. and the game’s developer, Scott Cawthon, had reached a deal to start production on a Five Nights at Freddy’s film directed by Roy Lee of Vertigo Entertainment alongside Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg of KatzSmith Productions.^[24]“The story really lends itself to being a movie, and it taps into a largely unexplored niche of horror that a lot of people will be able to relate to,” said an ecstatic Cawthon towards reporters for The Hollywood Reporter. The news has since spread to Kotaku and ScienceFiction.com.^[25]^[26]

Fandom

On August 13th, the fan run Tumblr blog freddyfazbear^[11] was created. On August 14th, 2014, the Five Nights at Freddy’s Wiki^[2] was launched. The same day, a thread containing gameplay footage, animated GIFs and fan art was submitted to the Facepunch Forums.^[4] On the following day, a thread about the game was submitted to the /vg/ (video games) board on 4chan.^[3] As of October 2014, the game’s Facebook page^[9] has gained over 37,000 likes. As of October 2014, there are over 10,000 pieces of fan art tagged Five Nights at Freddy’s on DeviantArt.^[10]