A security guard in a fast food restaurant must survive five days of being hunted down by murderous animatronics from inside his workstation every night.
Five Nights at Freddy's has something of a rabid fanbase, and equally rabid haters, when it's really just good if flawed. But why does it work so well? There are several components that, when broken down, make this game much better than it gets credit for (from either side).
1) The sound design is spectacular, as the genre (in my opinion) lives and dies on the ability to make you scared of the noises the monster makes before you ever see the monster. The steps through the halls, pots and pans being knocked over in the kitchen, the low buzzing and droning the fan and power... it all works together to create a really haunting atmosphere.
2) In most horror games, when you fight spooky creatures, you'll have some idea of when they're coming. And when the jumpscares come, you rarely anticipate them and are helpless to prevent them. Here, you know when they're coming, and you have to do everything you can to prevent it. Giving the player agency in such a way is a much more powerful tool than I think is granted to this series, and one I wish more games approached themselves with.
3) Its simplicity. You have one goal (survive the night, each night), four things in your way, and some doors and a security camera to keep you alive. That's all you have to do. When thought of as a puzzle, instead of purely horror, the simplicity of your objectives help out greatly. There's no fluff, which makes the game a lot more focused. Of course, in order to accomplish this, there's a difficulty curve that increases fairly quickly (but it doesn't feed you what to do). The results are still good.
There are some issues, of course. The run-down aesthetic of the building you're in isn't particularly engaging except to serve as a set piece for you and the monsters, and the plot (what plot can be inferred, as most of it is kept in the background to mixed results) doesn't have a typical sense of build or climax. The jumpscares are also bound to be constant, and thus they may quickly wear off on you. However, I feel like the jumpscares... are not as big of a deal as people make them out to be. Their sole defining feature isn't to be "scary", and they exist to keep motivating you to do better and adjust to the game.
Future entries in the series would take the elements above and constantly refine and retool itself, to varied results, but this first game is a good foundation for the series, and I think the ambition presented here is what makes it appealing and charming, even if not the best.
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I was such a huge fan of fnaf back in the day, nowadays I do occasionally play I with friends, however it's little more than a party opener these days as the novelty of hiding from furry animations sadly wears out its welcome very quick.
The only thing worth talking about here is how much more interesting the lore is as the gameplay is beyond basic, just hide from the animatronics or else they'll turn you into one of them. Said animatronics are well designed as at first, they appear lovable and kid friendly, but eventually reveal themselves to be rather deadly and terrifying particularly whenever they catch you as they scream at you whilst presumably shaking you as the camera shakes violently during their jump scares. The exception to this being foxy who is appropriately in shambles due to being discontinued in universe and only screams at you upon being caught by him. Golden Freddy is the stuff made from nightmares that admittedly requires far too much hassle to summon him and is thus not much of a threat in this game. The only real threat is Freddy himself as he's ruthless when hunting for you and is the enemy that arrives should you run out of power. Bonnie and Chika are more of a nuisance than anything else as they tend to wait outside your office for long periods of time which drains your power to keep them out.
Like I said, it's the lore that makes this game special as while it can catch you off guard at first, the gameplay is basic as hell. It’s a good social game to play with friends but not one that gain enjoyment out of for yourself.
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The start of a pretty good franchise with a great story.
This game blew up, more than it deserved too, but I'm not angry about it. It isn't the scariest game, not even close to the scariest FNAF game, but it's great. The jumpscares aren't scary, it's the fact that you are trying so damn hard to stop them that is.
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Really just a superb indie horror game. Limitations breeding creativity, really superb gameplay and atmosphere. The story isn't great, but Phone Guy's writing both acts as a consistent tutorial, despite never giving you full control, as well as a really superb parody of minimum wage manager drivel, with the horrors of the restaurant and its past treated as surreal banter. I think although it is counter to the horrifying atmosphere, it all mixes really well together.
This game gets recontextualised by its later entries, most of which are really shit, so take this with a pinch of salt: this game does its story pretty good if you treat it as its own entity. The premise is plucked right from the mind of a 90s kid with an overactive imagination, which when mixed with the Phone Guy's lurid details, all lull you into this twilight world of electric doors and malfunctioning possessed robots, and it keeps its tension for most of the run time.
My only complaint is that its an hour long, and runs out of variety. For £4 you could do far far far worse in terms of content, and its worth a jump. Its the most spectacular cheese sandwich you've ever eaten, its the best cheese, bread, butter (and maybe branston pickle if you're a mutant), but at the end of the day, its a cheese sandwich. And I'll happily eat it.
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Good for what it is, however if the seemingly sole reason a game is scary is a random blaring sound effect, then you're doing something wrong imo. The jump scares overshadow a genuinely terrifying setting and plot. I get it's a device that's old as time, but come on if someone showed me a cute kitten picture and played the sound effect I would have jumped out of my seat the same way.
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This game is a simple yet effective horror game that spawned a big franchise and made lots of money, because 12 year olds and lets-players really loved this game. Ignoring everything that proceeded it, one can appreciate how solid this game truly was.
The game is simple. You are a night guard working minimum wage from 12am to 6am in a crappy (haunted) pizzeria, similar to Chuck E. Cheese, and are tasked with keeping watch of the premises with your cameras. Unfortunately, the place is on conserved power to save money (or because the owners are environmentalist hippies) and even worse is that the animatronics will hunt you down. You're bunkered down in a small office with two doors on each side of you, connected to two parallel hallways that connect to the main dining room.
You have 5 nights, plus a 6th night and a 7th "custom night" and with each night, the difficulty ramps up. I myself have never made it past night 4 because I suck.
The atmosphere is unmatched by any of the other games. The pizzeria is genuinely haunted and the sound design is really damn good. Little easter eggs hint to the dark history of the restaurant, including 4 newspaper clippings that document an incident in which 5 children went missing and were presumedly murdered. Their bodies were never found... However, you can quite easily work out where their bodies ended up, as it is mentioned that following the incident, the animatronics began to emit a foul odour, with blood and mucous appearing to ooze from their eyes and mouths.
This subtle - yet effective - method of unnerving the player and telling a dark story was never done well at any other instalment in the franchise.
So with detective work, you can work out that you are being pursued by animatronics possessed by murdered children, who are most likely quite vengeful and seem to be hellbent on taking it out on you.
I doubt any of you don't know this, as this game was inescapable back in 2014 and 2015. I would say that this is the only truly and legitimately scary Five Nights at Freddy's game. The rest rely solely on the fear of being jumpscared, whereas this has an unnerving atmosphere and design to back it up.
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