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