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

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

The game was developed by 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.”