Ever since Slender: The Eight Pages came out in
2012, Internet horror games have become incredibly popular. A big problem with
the games, however, is that the tend to just be jump scares and nothing else. Five Nights at Freddy’s is a different
story. It does have the jump scares, but it also has characters, actual
suspense, and one of the best and well told stories in not just an Internet
game, but in a video game in general. The game is created by Scott Cawthon, a
game creator whose previous works were critically panned because the critics
said the characters looked like animatronics. Cawthon turned his negative into
a positive and created Five Nights at
Freddy’s
In the first game, you
play as Mike Schmidt, the new night guard for Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a Chuck
E. Cheese-esque restaurant.
On the first night, you get a message from the former night guard over the phone (he doesn’t have a name, so everybody (even Cawthon) just calls him “Phone Guy”). He explains what you’ll be doing at the job while also revealing some rather dark secrets about the restaurant. One day, five children went missing in the restaurant after they were lured to the back by a man in a Freddy Fazbear costume and were never found. Along with that, an incident occurred where one of the restaurant’s animatronics bit someone, causing them to lose part of their brain, which he refers to as “The Bite of 87”.
Phone Guy explains that because of the bite, the animatronics are no longer allowed to roam freely during the day, but are allowed to at night. The only problem is that they are programed to think no one is supposed to be in the restaurant at night, and will think they are a robot that doesn’t have a costume on. They will stuff you inside a costume, which will kill you.
The goal of the game is to make it to 6 AM without being killed by the animatronics: Bonnie the Bunny, Chica the Chicken, Foxy the Pirate, and Freddy Fazbear. It is a point-and-click game, which means you stay put and don’t leave the office. You are able to see what room the animatronics are in in the restaurant by checking the cameras, which aren’t actually videos, but instead still images that change constantly. To protect yourself, you have two doors and two lights on each side of the office, so if an animatronic near you, you check the light to see if they are outside the office, and close the door if they are outside the door.
Seems simple, right? Well, there is a catch. The restaurant has a limited amount of power at night and everything you do (checking the cameras, closing the doors, using the lights) uses power. If you run out of power, then you have no defense against the animatronics, and will be killed almost instantly by Freddy. Make your way through all five, progressively harder nights without dying and you win the game.
The sequel, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, is even tougher. This game follows Jeremy Fitzgerald, the new night guard at the “new and improved” Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. The new, bigger restaurant scrapped the old animatronics, shoved them to the back of the restaurant and replaced them with new, shiner (and undeniably creepier) versions of Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica. Alongside them are Mangle, a female version of Foxy which the kids get to take apart and put back together, Balloon Boy, a statue of a boy holding a balloon, and the Marionette (or the Puppet as Phone Guy calls him). On Night 2, however the old animatronics activate, and come after you as well.
The game features the same gameplay, but tougher. This time, there are no doors to protect you, more rooms to make you lose the animatronics easier, and more things trying to kill you. Luckily, power is no longer an issue, and is instead replaced with a flashlight to flash down the hallway in front of the office. Instead of doors, you have an old Freddy Fazbear mask, which will trick the animatronics into thinking you are actually an animatronic, and they won’t kill you.
Additionally, there is new feature with the Puppet. You have to keep a music box wound up throughout the night. If you don’t, the Puppet will get freed from his box and kill you. This game also expands on more of restaurants dark past. If you die, you will sometimes be taken to a low resolution, Atari style minigame, that reveals more and more about the events that took place, more specifically the five missing children.
Both games have absolutely great gameplay. Considering how point-and-click games have become almost non-existent nowadays, it’s nice to see a game try to take an old style and use it perfectly. Another thing that makes the gameplay great is how much suspense you feel while playing the game. The farther you get into the nights, the closer the animatronics will get to you, and you’ll start to feel like they are always right outside your door and could jump scare you at any moment. The scares basically come from not what is going to happen, but the fact that it will happen, and there’s almost nothing you can do about it.
I honestly can’t praise the story of this game enough. When I first played the first game, I just thought it was a fun little horror game and nothing else. But after playing both games, I realized that the story is one of the best I’ve played through in a long time. What I like most about the story is that the game doesn’t give everything away, and makes you really think about what is really going on. Those death mingames don’t outright tell you anything about the story, but if look closer into the details and what’s happening, it reveals so many darker secrets about the restaurant.
Basically, both Five Nights at Freddy’s games are near perfect examples of what horror games should be. The atmosphere and suspense is incredible, the gameplay is fun, and the story is so incredibly told and well thought out that it’s almost impossible to not be engaged in it. It truly is one of the best indie horror games in a long time. So go play both Five Nights at Freddy’s games. They’re available on Steam (which is free to download) really cheap, with the first being worth five dollars and the second being eight dollars, or on mobile for three dollars each. But if you want the full experience, you have to play it on a computer. So go download the games and get ready for Freddy.
On the first night, you get a message from the former night guard over the phone (he doesn’t have a name, so everybody (even Cawthon) just calls him “Phone Guy”). He explains what you’ll be doing at the job while also revealing some rather dark secrets about the restaurant. One day, five children went missing in the restaurant after they were lured to the back by a man in a Freddy Fazbear costume and were never found. Along with that, an incident occurred where one of the restaurant’s animatronics bit someone, causing them to lose part of their brain, which he refers to as “The Bite of 87”.
Phone Guy explains that because of the bite, the animatronics are no longer allowed to roam freely during the day, but are allowed to at night. The only problem is that they are programed to think no one is supposed to be in the restaurant at night, and will think they are a robot that doesn’t have a costume on. They will stuff you inside a costume, which will kill you.
The goal of the game is to make it to 6 AM without being killed by the animatronics: Bonnie the Bunny, Chica the Chicken, Foxy the Pirate, and Freddy Fazbear. It is a point-and-click game, which means you stay put and don’t leave the office. You are able to see what room the animatronics are in in the restaurant by checking the cameras, which aren’t actually videos, but instead still images that change constantly. To protect yourself, you have two doors and two lights on each side of the office, so if an animatronic near you, you check the light to see if they are outside the office, and close the door if they are outside the door.
Seems simple, right? Well, there is a catch. The restaurant has a limited amount of power at night and everything you do (checking the cameras, closing the doors, using the lights) uses power. If you run out of power, then you have no defense against the animatronics, and will be killed almost instantly by Freddy. Make your way through all five, progressively harder nights without dying and you win the game.
The sequel, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, is even tougher. This game follows Jeremy Fitzgerald, the new night guard at the “new and improved” Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. The new, bigger restaurant scrapped the old animatronics, shoved them to the back of the restaurant and replaced them with new, shiner (and undeniably creepier) versions of Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica. Alongside them are Mangle, a female version of Foxy which the kids get to take apart and put back together, Balloon Boy, a statue of a boy holding a balloon, and the Marionette (or the Puppet as Phone Guy calls him). On Night 2, however the old animatronics activate, and come after you as well.
The game features the same gameplay, but tougher. This time, there are no doors to protect you, more rooms to make you lose the animatronics easier, and more things trying to kill you. Luckily, power is no longer an issue, and is instead replaced with a flashlight to flash down the hallway in front of the office. Instead of doors, you have an old Freddy Fazbear mask, which will trick the animatronics into thinking you are actually an animatronic, and they won’t kill you.
Additionally, there is new feature with the Puppet. You have to keep a music box wound up throughout the night. If you don’t, the Puppet will get freed from his box and kill you. This game also expands on more of restaurants dark past. If you die, you will sometimes be taken to a low resolution, Atari style minigame, that reveals more and more about the events that took place, more specifically the five missing children.
Both games have absolutely great gameplay. Considering how point-and-click games have become almost non-existent nowadays, it’s nice to see a game try to take an old style and use it perfectly. Another thing that makes the gameplay great is how much suspense you feel while playing the game. The farther you get into the nights, the closer the animatronics will get to you, and you’ll start to feel like they are always right outside your door and could jump scare you at any moment. The scares basically come from not what is going to happen, but the fact that it will happen, and there’s almost nothing you can do about it.
I honestly can’t praise the story of this game enough. When I first played the first game, I just thought it was a fun little horror game and nothing else. But after playing both games, I realized that the story is one of the best I’ve played through in a long time. What I like most about the story is that the game doesn’t give everything away, and makes you really think about what is really going on. Those death mingames don’t outright tell you anything about the story, but if look closer into the details and what’s happening, it reveals so many darker secrets about the restaurant.
Basically, both Five Nights at Freddy’s games are near perfect examples of what horror games should be. The atmosphere and suspense is incredible, the gameplay is fun, and the story is so incredibly told and well thought out that it’s almost impossible to not be engaged in it. It truly is one of the best indie horror games in a long time. So go play both Five Nights at Freddy’s games. They’re available on Steam (which is free to download) really cheap, with the first being worth five dollars and the second being eight dollars, or on mobile for three dollars each. But if you want the full experience, you have to play it on a computer. So go download the games and get ready for Freddy.