Five Nights at Freddy's

About Five Nights at Freddy's

Five Nights at Freddy's is the 2014 horror game by Scott Cawthon that started one of the best known horror series of the decade. You take a summer job as the night security guard at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, a family restaurant whose main attraction is a band of animatronic animals: Freddy Fazbear and his friends. The store page puts it plainly: their behaviour has become unpredictable at night, and it was cheaper to hire you than a repairman.

You never leave your chair. From the office you flip through a map of security cameras to see where each animatronic is standing, and you have two steel doors and two hallway lights to protect yourself. The catch is power. The restaurant gives you a small amount of electricity for the night, and every camera check, every light and every closed door drains it. If the power runs out before 6 AM, the doors open and the lights go dark.

Each night lasts a few real minutes and gets harder, as the animatronics move faster and more often. A man on the phone leaves you messages at the start of each shift that hint at what happened at the restaurant. The fear is in the waiting: grainy, still camera images where a figure has moved since the last look, a face suddenly in the doorway when you turn on the light, and the jumpscare when you get it wrong.

Clickteam brought it to PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Switch on 29 November 2019 and sells the iPhone and Android versions; those have English voices and on-screen text in eleven languages, while the Steam version is in English only. It suits anyone who wants a short, tense horror game built on attention and nerve rather than combat, and it is the place to start before the sequels and the many games built on its formula.

How to play Five Nights at Freddy's

1. Start a new game and listen to the phone message at the start of the first night.
2. Open the camera panel and check where each animatronic is, then close it to watch the office.
3. Turn on the light at a doorway when you hear or expect something there.
4. Close a door only when an animatronic is standing at it, then open it again once it leaves.
5. Keep an eye on the power left and usage, and last until the clock reaches 6 AM.

Tips

• Every closed door and lit light uses power; use them for seconds, not minutes.
• Check the doorways with the lights more often than you check the cameras far away.
• Some animatronics only come down one side; learn which side each one uses.
• If one character is moving through the camera that shows a pirate-themed stage, keep checking that camera.

Questions