Five Nights at Freddy's is an American media franchise created by Scott Cawthon, which began with the eponymous 2014 video game and quickly gained worldwide popularity. The franchise has been expanded into various games and other media, including a novel trilogy and an anthology series, comprising an all-encompassing fictional universe. A film adaptation is also planned. Merchandise for the games has been produced, and a horror attraction based on the series was featured in the Adventuredome for Halloween 2016. The series also appeared in the Guinness Book of Records: Gamer's Edition, setting a record for the largest number of sequels released in a year.

The main series consists of nine games. In the first three games, the player controls a nighttime security guard who must utilize security cameras and other tools to survive against animatronic characters which become mobile and homicidal after-hours. The fourth game takes place in the house of a child who must defend against nightmarish versions of the animatronics. The fifth game takes place in a maintenance facility, where the player controls a technician who must complete different tasks each night. In the sixth game, the player assumes the role of a new owner of the pizzeria. In the seventh game, the player defends themselves against animatronics from previous games, with the ability to adjust their difficulty. The eighth game features virtual reality gameplay, and the ninth game features augmented reality gameplay. The upcoming tenth game will take place in a modernized family entertainment center.

History and development

The idea for Five Nights at Freddy's stemmed from negative reaction to Scott Cawthon's previous game, the family-friendly Chipper & Sons Lumber Co. Players said that the main character (a young beaver) looked like "a scary animatronic animal", and reviewer Jim Sterling called the game "unintentionally terrifying".[1][2] Initially discouraged by the criticism, Cawthon (who had previously primarily developed Christian-oriented games) eventually used the feedback to make something intentionally scarier.[1]

Five Nights at Freddy's was released via Desura on August 8, 2014. On August 20, after it was approved by the service's crowdsourcing platform Greenlight, Five Nights at Freddy's was also released on Steam.[3] The sequels were released on November 10, 2014, March 2, 2015, July 23, 2015, October 7, 2016, December 4, 2017, June 27, 2018, May 28, 2019, and November 25, 2019, respectively. A spin-off from the series, FNaF World, was announced in a Steam post by Cawthon in September 2015,[4] and was released in January 2016. Cawthon releases teasers for his games on his website,[5][6] and trailers on his YouTube channel.[7]

He used Clickteam Fusion 2.5 to create the Five Nights at Freddy's games and Autodesk 3ds Max to model and render the games' 3D graphics.[8] To enhance Sister Location, Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator, Ultimate Custom Night, Help Wanted, and Special Delivery, Cawthon used professional voice actors and original soundtracks.[9] In May 2016, he announced that all titles would be remade by third-party companies for release on consoles.[10]

Cawthon posted on his website in 2015 that he planned to publish his first novel (The Silver Eyes) in the near future, with its stories separate from that of the games.[11] On June 20, 2016, Scholastic announced that it would collaborate with Cawthon on a multi-book deal.[12] The Silver Eyes was released on December 17, 2015 on Amazon Kindle,[13] and the paperback version was published on September 27, 2016, slightly earlier than its originally planned October publication date.[14] A second novel, The Twisted Ones, was published on June 27, 2017,[15] followed by The Fourth Closet on June 26, 2018.[16]

Gameplay

The Five Nights at Freddy's series consists of horror-themed video games in which the player is usually a night-time employee at a location connected with Freddy Fazbea