Five Nights at Freddy’s

Well, in the wee small hours of this morning – Hallowe’en, of course – I watched the trailers for the fun-looking Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 and decided to do the famous 4/20 mode, where the AI of all the animatronics is set to maximum. I figured out a working pattern – catching Freddy right outside your door and keeping him there, then checking on Foxy every time Chica comes so you can shut the door on her and Freddy at the same time, going quickly enough not to let Bonnie in – so got my third star.

As just about everyone knows by now, FNAF is a jump-scare game. You play a security employee who is stuck in an office with limited power while four (well, strictly five) creepy animatronic puppets stalk through the corridors. If they catch you, they will forcibly cram you into a puppet suit...only the puppet suits already have animatronic parts in them, so that wouldn’t end very well for you. You can catch them by shutting doors on them, but this takes power, and you only have a limited supply so must balance being vulnerable with being able to last the night.

Now, I don’t care much for scary games, which aren’t exactly my sort of entertainment. Creepiness hasn’t got to me since I was very small and playing The 7^th Guest, which should totally get a remake – that has nothing to do with that terrible 7^th Guest 3 failed kickstarter a year ago today. As an adult, I mostly find creepy games either very daft or enjoyable completely separate from their supposedly creepy parts.

And it was in the latter camp that FNAF fell. I bought the game primarily to watch others play – and it succeeded nicely in that respect, with the friends who had big silly reactions to the scares still making me laugh when I think back to them. But for my part, it got no more out of me than a little jump. But that’s fine. After all, the most well-remembered part of Resident Evil hinged on just such a moment, with dogs smashing through windows.

Besides, the jump-scares aren’t what makes FNAF a scary game. That’s the pay-off, but really it’s about the tension on the higher levels, where you know several enemies are coming to get you and dealing with any one of them stands in the way of dealing with the others. The sound effects build a good atmosphere, and the game is very good at building then releasing tension – once you get past the first couple of nights where the game relies on fear of the unknown. The jump scares ultimately end up irrelevant, nothing but punishment. But for the easily-scared, there’s much more to be enjoyed than just big creepy things jumping out. In other words, the journey ends up better than the destination.

But for all I bought FNAF for the jump-scare gimmick to watch others play, I ended up really enjoying it as a challenging strategy game. It is incredibly simple, and part of the aforementioned tension comes from the fact that you can’t move, you can’t fight back, your defences are highly limited, and the best situation you can be in is doing nothing.

The real fun of it, of course, comes right at the end – the fifth, sixth and custom max-difficulty levels. That’s where you’re not sitting tensely hoping things don’t pop out. You are constantly having to balance controlling four AI programs to win a game. It’s not scary, and you will know when you lose and why, with only Foxy having any capacity for surprising you with a jump scare (and he looks a whole lot less alarming when he appears than the others). The genius of the game is that two enemies must constantly be checked on with the lights, one must be checked on with the camera as much as possible, and one must be looked at occasionally and may just sprint towards your office if you don’t get the chance to check up on him – and you only just have enough power to stop this on the 4/20 mode. I don’t care if arrogant gamers want to call the game gimmicky or boring: the last levels are, plain and simple, a fun and challenging game that I am willing to bet next to none of those who censure the game have beaten. Effectively, most of the people who dismiss it have played the tutorial and decided they beat the game on expert mode.

A few other things make the game impressive. Obviously, there’s the fact it’s a small-scale indie game that one guy made on his own. Then the way the fandom has become so large and so prolific – the super-cutesy fanart being my favourite. There’s the numerous over-the-top theories based on the sparse backstory about five murdered kids, and then there’s the excitement around the sequel.

Definitely worth the meagre price and an enjoyable challenge. And I really wanna go see the creepy animatronics at a Chuck-e-Cheese now!