Five Nights at Freddy's is a survival mystery created by . The game centers on a fictional called "Freddy Fazbear's Pizza", where the player must act as a night security guard, defending themselves from the malfunctioning, haunted characters by tracking their movement through the facility using . The game was first released on August 8, 2014, on . On August 20, 2014, the game was also released via after it was approved by the service's platform . Mobile ports were later released for and .
Five Nights at Freddy's received positive reviews from critics, who praised its originality. The game was the top-selling game on Desura for the week ending August 18, 2014, and the game became the subject of a number of popular "" videos on . The game's success led to the launch of an , including four sequels, a spin-off, and a adaptation, with two more books and a film in production.
ContentsGameplayThe player must check security cameras to find the animatronics.
Five Nights at Freddy's is a survival-horror game with point-and-click elements. Players act as a security guard at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza and must survive their shift, lasting from midnight to 6:00 a.m. (approximately 8 minutes and 36 seconds of real time, 4 minutes and 30 seconds on the mobile and tablet editions), without being by one of the five animals that inhabit the facility: the titular Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie the Bunny, Chica the Chicken, Foxy the Pirate Fox, and Golden Freddy.
The player, who sits in an , is given access to a network of throughout the facility to track the movement of the animatronic robots. The first four characters roam the restaurant and have distinct movement patterns, while Golden Freddy only appears at random, under the correct circumstances; however, most of the characters' movements take place off-screen. The camera feeds are dimly lit and , one of the rooms only contains an audio feed, and the do not cover certain areas of the building, most notably the two directly to the left and right of the player. The player cannot leave the guard room, but can close the doors to defend themselves, and briefly turn on in the to check for animatronics. Use of these actions consume the player's limited ; if the power runs out, the cameras become inoperable, the doors open, and the lights go out. Once these things happen, the will play, the screen will go pitch black, and the player will be jumpscared by Freddy, provided they do not reach the end of the night in the meantime. If the player is jumpscared by any of the animatronics, the , and the player must restart from the beginning of the night.
The game has five comprising five "nights" in the game, each increasing in difficulty. Completion of the main game unlocks an even more difficult 6th "night", and completion of this level opens up a "Custom Night" where the player can adjust the of each individual character.
PlotThree of the animatronics that appear in Five Nights at Freddy's: Freddy Fazbear (center), Bonnie (left) and Chica (right).
Set after the events of , the main character, whose name is later revealed to be Mike Schmidt, has started a job working as a at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, a owned by the fictional "Fazbear Entertainment". A message left by Mike's predecessor is left each night (until he is killed on Night 4, after which, there is just garble) and explains different aspects of the history of the restaurant. He explains that the restaurant's animatronic characters, Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie the , Chica the and the disused Foxy the , are able to roam freely around it at night, because if they were left off for too long, their would lock up. He also adds that the were no longer allowed to roam freely during the day following an incident referred to as the "Bite of '87", which apparently involved the loss of someone's . The employee warns Mike that if one of the encounters a , they will automatically assume that it is an endoskeleton not in , and "forcefully stuff them" into a spare mechanical Freddy Fazbear costume, killing the person in the process.
