Are you ready 4 Freddy..? - Horror oriented Gameplay Mechanics in "Five Nights at Freddy's"

So, yesterday I stumbled across the recent indie title "Five Nights at Freddy's", which seem to have taken the spotlight on multiple popular Youtube gamer channels along with gaming forums, meme websites, and so on. Although I'm not really one for these kind of "creepypasta-esque" jump-scare games (my mind does not cope very well with them), there were some things that got me curious about this particular title, to the point where I figured I'd write a maybe a bit quick and not-so-long article about it. Although I haven't played it myself, I've been watching quite a few videos about it along with reading about it where I could find information.
Since the success of this title is extremely recent it is still to be suspected that many easter eggs and hidden events in the game are not very well-documented as of yet, and naturally that means that even after my search for information I'm not an all-knowing guru, or anything even close to that. Yet. Also, this short article will spoil some of the "events" (that is, deaths or triggered events) that can occur, so if you have any plans on playing this for yourself, you might want to do that before reading too much of this.

Well, are you?

Five Nights at Freddy's, produced by Scott Cawthon, a.k.a. Animdude, is a single-player horror game in which the player character, Mike Schmidt, is employed as a security guard at nighttime in a fastfood restaurant that has a crew of animatronic mascots. The mascots themselves serve as the antagonists, as they walk around at night trying to mutilate the player. The player, stationed inside a security office and denied the ability to move around the restaurant, must watch a security monitor connected to multiple security cameras located around the restaurant, try to determine the movement of the mascots and close the doors to the office should any of them try to get in. All of these actions, however, along with lighting the corridors right outside of the security office up, require power, and the player is restricted to a ludicrously low amount of power before running out, rendering her or him defenseless against the mascots. The player lacks any means to defend him- or herself, and victory is achieved simply by not dying from 12pm until the time reaches 6am in the morning. Losing is punished with a single jumpscare followed by a game over screen. The player must survive one work week, that is, five nights, in order to win the game. Along with this, an unlockable sixth night and a customizable seventh night is also present in the game.

As mentioned, the player cannot move, and the art style of Five Nights at Freddy's takes the form of what i think is 2-dimensional art, as the player perceives the different rooms from fixed perspectives. The game employs a characteristic graphics style, and it's difficult to see whether the rooms have been created using a 2d picture of a 3d environment, whether it's created from the ground up in 2d, or whether it's actually rendered in full 3d. The dark environments of the restaurant are portrayed using what's reminescent of low-key lighting and lots of contrasts. The environments, albeit dark, are quite detailed, and the distinct visual style of them certainly helps reinforcing the unnerving mood of the game. The animatronics themselves, especially as they're depicted in the trailer, notably looks quite resembling of cartoonish early 3d art, although their models are more detailed. This is also apparent in their animation in the trailer, and in their animations when they kill the player. The characters look menacing no matter where they're standing, and their colorful design looks depraved in the dark rooms and halls of the restaurant.

The Show Stage at the beginning of the night. Notice how the lighting contributes to the eerie look.

One of the things that struck me at first is the setting. While other horror games like Slender, SCP Containment Breach and so on tend to be set in fairly isolated environments, allowing for some degree of suspension of disbelief, Five Nights at Freddy's is set at a fast food establishment, a reasonably public place. This, to me, seems like an extremely unlikely place for a bunch of killer animatronics to run around and kill people without authorities or guests taking any kind of legal action. Although in-game lore describes that the place is to close soon due to sanitation issues, it makes the setting seem even more absurd as the sanitation issues are implied to be obviously related to multiple murders in the establishment, making it seem a bit ridiculous that people are too daft to draw the connection between a previous serial murder and rotting smells and blood coming from the animatronics. This ultimately means that the restaurant will remain open for another month until the end of the year before closing instead of it being closed down instantly.

A lot of the game's logic also seems to be constantly questioned on Youtube and game forums, etc., even despite it's current status as a horror hit. The fact that there's a bunch of killer robots roaming around the place which in ingame logic has already been proven unsafe at multiple earlier incidents as mentioned above, the fact that the player happily accepts and continues working the job despite average-to-poor wages, obvious danger and ludicrous rules regarding legal responsibility and power usage, and the fact that the previous guard contacts you through previously recorded messages and assures you that absolutely nothing is wrong at your new work place at all except you'll die do just fine makes the concept seem a bit ridiculous, but it's clear that a lot of these logic issues regarding the setting are caused by the attempt to create a setting that would appeal to automatonaphobia. This is something i don't recall any other dedicated horror games trying to do, although it's probably there somewhere, and due to this, and the previously mentioned appealing aesthetics, i find most of the strange logic absolutely tolerable.

The 3 main antagonists, as depicted in the trailer.

Automatonaphobia is a fear of things that falsely represent sentient beings. It's commonly associated with the theory of the Uncanny Valley, a theory that when something closely resembles natural human behaviour, or the natural behaviour of a sentient being, but only almost, it will revoke feelings of repulsion or emotional discomfort in some people.

In the case of Five Nights at Freddy's, this concept is played upon by the 4 animatronic mascots of the restaurant, who at day are cheerily singing and performing for the customers at the restaurant, but at night seemingly intend on causing suffering and fear in the protagonist. The animatronics rarely move when the player is looking, instead remaining stationary, usually in poses displaying their soulless, lifeless nature, until the player looks away. The exceptions to these rules only apply when they attack and kill the player, or to the pirate-themed animatronic named Foxy, who remains behind the curtains of the closed-off "Pirate Cove"-section of the restaurant unless the player tries to "cheat" by only watching the doors to the security office, or by frequently watching the camera near him.

The Dining Area. Again, the lighting makes the area look eerie and unnerving.

One of the things I like about the concept of the game is how certain things that can happen have required criteria, or are simply unlikely to happen. The concept of utilising randomness or systems that are vague and difficult to predict and understand is great for creating uncertainty, and uncertainty can be exceedingly powerful in helping to evoke fear in the player. Although I just stated that Foxy follows a specific behaviour, it can be difficult to predict excactly how much of doing something is necessary to trigger it, and what excactly is necessary to keep it at bay. This especially applies since the difficulty of the animatronics varies from night to night, meaning that they'll not even behave in the same way throughout the different nights. Along with this, the movement between rooms is semi-random, meaning that it'll be difficult to track their movement. Occationally they may just be standing there, looking creepy, and occationally they'll be looking directly into the camera, potentially startling the player. Along with this, doing certain things can potentially trigger events much more terrifying than simply getting killed by the animatronics, but as mentioned, this is still somewhat undocumented, so there may be only few or lots of these kinds of events in the game for all i know. 

The use of these semi-random and unpredictable systems brings to mind some of the things that i'm actually writing about the surreal indie title "Yume Nikki", especially concerning the infamous "Uboa event" which had a 1/64 chance to occur when turning off the light in a specific area. This rendered it extremely unlikely, but still possible, to stumble upon it by chance, and it definitely added to it's disturbing nature that it was so unlikely and obscure an event.

So, in the end, despite the problems with suspension of disbelief I think Five Nights at Freddy's is a fairly well-executed game. It has an interesting concept, and the fact that it does it's job well is fairly clear from the many people praising and playing it around the internet. Although there are some parts of it's design I left out, I've been through the elements of it design I found particularly noteworthy, and it's been refreshing to do a one-day article "speedrun" like this. The engaging visuals and the interesting concept of watching security cameras creates a fairly interesting horror-concept, and it's choice of focusing on automatonaphobia has resulted in an interesting aesthetic that will hopefully be enjoyable for everyone who's going to play through this game, even through all the screaming, panicing and hammering at the door buttons.


*All ingame pictures are from the Five Nights at Freddy's wiki which can be found here
The .gif of Freddy Fazbear and the .gif from the trailer are from the game's knowyourmeme page here

Rollercoaster Tycoon, Part 1 – So I'll just write a Review or Something

After recently acquiring an unopened copy of Chris Sawyer’s “Transport Tycoon” from a local charity shop, and with the birth of my new blog, I figured it would be appropriate to write a bit about another one of Chris’s games, Rollercoaster Tycoon, and also just pay a bit of tribute to the man himself.  
While part 1 of this article will mostly just focus on explaining gameplay mechanics that was introduced in the first installment and largely remained intact throughout the series, part 2 will focus more on gameplay mechanics that did not.

Chris Sawyer is a video game programmer and designer who is best known for his simulation/management games, in particular “Transport Tycoon”, its successor “Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion”, and the subject of this article, the Rollercoaster Tycoon series. Both series have received wide praises for their complex and detailed simulations of the subjects they are built around, along with their great entertainment potential.

Rollercoaster Tycoon, the first installment in the series, was released in the late 90’s. As the name heavily implies, it’s about building and managing your very own theme park, sometimes from scratch on a fresh plot of land, and sometimes by expanding upon a park with some prebuilt rides already up and running. Despite it being largely a commercial success, today it seems that few reviews and articles have survived the test of time to make it onto the corridors of today’s internet, and it would seem that its success today has mostly been overshadowed by the series’ most recent installment, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. Most articles endorsing the first installment seem to be found only on the game’s GOG page. However, it certainly is comforting to see how high praises a lot of people are taking their precious time to sing for it there. Along with this, many people are still doing youtube videos of the game, and there's a fairly wide fanbase still digging the old classic on different forums and other websites dedicated to sharing screenshots, ideas, and other fan content.

Along with this, Rollercoaster Tycoon remains one of the least “aged” retro games that I can think of. With the release of the Rollercoaster Tycoon Deluxe edition on GOG.com and now also on Steam, almost any issue with installing and running the game on a modern operative system is gone, and the game runs as fluent and crash-free as ever, at least from my experiences. Asides from a few occasional graphical glitches with overlapping textures that were never fixed, almost no initial acceptance of simplistic pixel-graphics must be made as the game runs in a reasonably high resolution (1024x768) whilst utilizing an isometric graphical style that looks pretty much as good as it ever did, which is a lot to say for a management game that doesn’t even require “stunning” graphics to maintain its immersion anyways.

Stunning graphics!

But much more importantly than that, Rollercoaster Tycoon is hell of a lot of fun. To this day, it remains the only one of the installments that I actually still fairly often find myself wanting to play.

I’ll come back to why that is in part 2 of this article, but for now I’d like to just take a moment and explain some of the gameplay elements that contribute to making Rollercoaster Tycoon so fun.

RCT's ride construction mechanic in all it's glory.

Building in Rollercoaster Tycoon is fairly easy and intuitive. As mentioned before, the game employs an isometric viewpoint. A map is made up by a grid of square meters or square feet, resulting in a simple, grid-style construction system. Hills are easily formed by dragging terrain up or down in steps, following a sort of vertical grid. This means that you can easily undo a mistake, and for the most time you’ll have an easy time knowing what the hell you’re doing. A tunnel is easily constructed by directing a pathway or ride track into a wall and through the ground.

Editing terrain really couldn't be any more intuitive.

Some rides simply takes up a certain area, requiring you to simply place them somewhere and place pathways leading to them, some are towers and you can decide how high they’ll be, and some follow longer tracks that the player can design more freely. Tracks are segmented and can be placed one after another, effectively forming the ride until the end and beginning of it has been connected.

A recurring element in Chris Sawyer’s simulation/management games is the thorough utilization of physics regarding movement of vehicles, along with complex simulated systems, and these are both important gameplay elements in Rollercoaster Tycoon, since it must be taken into account when designing your rides, as well as your park in general. 

When designing rollercoasters, trains must be able to make it around the entirety of the ride without being stopped by hills designed too steeply, and different types of rollercoasters have different characteristics which must be taken into account when designing the rides.

Failing to design rides properly could mean the trains flying off the tracks and crash, killing anyone onboard and ensuring a major drop in your park’s reputation, or the ride being so rough and uncomfortable that no one wants to try it. Alternatively, rides can also be so long and tedious or short and gentle that only few guests will find them enjoyable. Additionally, the reliability of rides degrade over time, resulting in more frequent breakdowns, and usually at some point resulting in the dreaded “station brakes failure”. This event has a tendency of causing crashes (and casualties) on rollercoasters with multiple trains, further raising the need for the player to design their rides intelligently. 

Designing a safe and enjoyable ride.

The accumulated design of a ride is ultimately boiled down into three ratings; Excitement, intensity and nausea. While excitement simply means how enjoyable the ride will be and is the one rating you’ll always want to raise to the highest value you possibly can, intensity and nausea will determine which guests will want to try that particular ride. Some guests really don’t like getting sick on a ride, some don’t like rides with a high intensity, and some are daredevils who’ll only want to try rides with a high intensity.

This is the first -and only- rollercoaster i somehow managed to design with an excitement rating above 9.

Along with this, shops and other utilities must be used to keep the demands of as many guests as possible satisfied, personnel must be employed to keep the park tidy and the rides functional, etc. etc. Aside from all these factors, the complexity of the game is demonstrated by doing something that I find exceptionally entertaining and interesting in games utilizing as complex systems as Rollercoaster Tycoon; 

Robb T. here is having a pretty good time.

Any guest has certain simplified stats, an inventory, a number (or a name) and a few menus highlighting important aspects of their experience in your park; Their favorite ride, their money spent, their time in the park, their happiness, their energy, their hunger, their preferred intensity of rides, etc. Additionally, a handy button grants the player the ability to track any guest they choose around the park, informing whenever they’re queuing for a ride, using a toilet, buying from a shop, entering a ride, and exiting the park. Now, coupled with the fact that a park usually ends up having more than a thousand of guests walking around –at once–, there is nothing more fascinating than not just being able to observe the accumulated crowds of people wandering about your park, their accumulated satisfaction with your park, their accumulated experiences- but being able to observe any given individual, their experience in your park and how that experience is formed…

Statistics about Robb's time in the park. His finances, inventory and thoughts about his current situation also have tabs.

Maybe you have a super successful park with plenty of well designed rides and environments, but one particular guest is having a terrible experience because, by chance, the queues are full at exactly the moments when he passes by the rides he wants to try, and he consistently chooses pathways leading him around all the strategically placed shops you have. There’s pretty much always going to be a minority in the park who’s having a terrible experience and a minority who’s having a fantastic experience, and to see how the general picture is formed by all these simplified but semi-unique small people provides an experience that I have seen in only few other games.

Complexity coupled with excellent game design is what makes Rollercoaster Tycoon truly enjoyable. Even despite the fact that it is a fairly complex game to understand, it’s not really difficult to play. Building, as mentioned, is intuitive and easy, and managing your park is, well, manageable. There’s something enjoyable both by designing a park to fulfill the game’s criteria of high satisfaction and sky-high profits, and also just about designing a park that just… Looks cool. Tunnels, rides and pathways passing over and under each others, designing vertically and using tunnels, placing fences and foliage. Watching a park you’ve made earlier and realize how you got lucky and made something really cool looking is a good feeling. And it’ll keep me playing and enjoying this classic, presumably, hopefully, for years to come. 


*All pictures are screenshots taken directly from Rollercoaster Tycoon Deluxe and edited by me.