Five Nights at Freddy’s World (FNaF World in game and by community) is a videogame RPG (Role Play Game) made by Scott Cawthon. It was released on Jan. 26, 2016. The game completely flopped on initial release, but has now garnered a decent amount of fans in recent years and has gained labels like “underrated.” The general player community has presented a plethora of challenges due to the easy editability of the game’s save file – which stores all of your data – to change difficulty, things you have or haven’t done etc., etc. The goal of the game is to defeat the final boss and collect all of the characters and upgrades.

Five Nights at Freddy’s is a game about being on your toes, scared, afraid. You worry about the giant animatronics stalking your every move. In FNaF World, however…Wait, do you just play as a bunch of cute small animatronics in an RPG? What is this?! You begin on the title screen, with cheerful music playing; a handful of the cast present on screen. You press start, open a new save, and begin the game! You find yourself in Fazbear Hills Fredbear rambles at you about the situation of the “flipside” having gone haywire and messing up the normally peaceful world. You may run into the occasional battle, from which winning will reward the in-game currency: faz-tokens, and experience points (EXP in-game). 

The battle system in FNaF World works as follows: In battle, you have two parties of characters that you can switch between. Each character has three separate moves. These can attack the enemies or boss or strengthen your party members. The enemy team consists of either one to four units of one kind of enemy, one boss, or one character to fight. Battles are very fast paced, as the opponent can attack during your turns. The battle mechanics and timer are quite strange for any RPG, which was one of the reasons that played into the game being rather disliked. After a while, you may find yourself in a shop, or if lucky enough, battling a new character.

Shops in this game all have one thing in common. They each sell three variants of one item. Most items are called bytes. Bytes assist you in battle, be it healing or dealing damage. The only exception is Mendo’s Endo Upgrades. Mendo sells you animatronic endoskeleton upgrades that prevent you from taking too much damage. The way you get new characters is by encountering them in the wild after battles. You have to do a more challenging battle if you want better characters, but boy is the reward worth it. After you recruit them on your team, you can switch which characters you have by selecting the “party” button in the overworld. You may find the boss in this area, Autochipper, who will fight you – and if taken down – will reward you with a hefty pool of cash. Along your journey, you can again find Fredbear, who tells you about glitched objects that bring you down to the sub tunnels; retro, bit crushed and smaller worlds that allow you to travel to new areas.

There are two different difficulty levels that you can pick when creating your save file. Normal and Hard. They don’t differ that much, just greater reward and more difficult enemies on Hard mode. Any player might choose normal when they first play, but if you are like me, you always pick harder difficulties. In FNaF World, difficulty doesn’t matter that much at first, but once you reach the end, everything changes. Sure, you beat the Security Owl boss, but the inconspicuous red tent behind it that didn’t do anything in normal mode can now be walked into. The music pauses. The tension rises. You see a blue glitch a matter of paces away. You walk into it, triggering a cutscene. 

“That’s some real dedication. Great job! Most people are content playing through the game on normal mode, but not you…,” The glitch speaks to you through dialogue on the screen. It continues after a few seconds, “There is always an over-achiever in the bunch. I guess that’s you.” It turns from the flashing glitch into a recognizable figure, Scott Cawthon’s avatar, Animdude. “So it’s your fault then, for my misery, it’s never enough for you people,” he blames the player for wanting sequels to Five Nights at Freddy’s. “Don’t you get it? I can’t do this anymore, I won’t…,” His figure begins to glitch and crackle as it becomes bigger. The screen flashes, and Scott reaches his true form. “It was fun being the puppet-master, but now I grow weary. It’s time to put you in your place,” he tells you, tension higher than ever. Right before the final battle of the game, he says to you, “Now let me show you how this game ends.”

Once you beat Scott, you can find a secret graveyard hidden in the code. I wonder what mysteries lie there. Perhaps new adventures await. Maybe more friends to find. That would be a major spoiler, so I think I’ll leave you, the reader, to figure that out on your own…