Reviews Videogame / Five Nights At Freddys

Less Eats More

In a time where mainstream horror games, even those that used to be venerated for some level of atmosphere (i.e. Resident Evil) have become bloated, hectic, twelve-jumpscares-a-minute big-budget affairs, Five Nights at Freddy's is nothing less than a triumph of minimalism, and testament to the fact that the creativity of one man may well surpass that of 80+ person development studios. It takes me back to the atmospheric horror classics of the '90s, such as Clock Tower, The 7th Guest, and, erm... Wordtris (seriously, look it up).

As the new night watchman of the local Suck E. Cheese's, your job is to keep watch over the place to make sure that nobody sneaks in... and, more importantly, that nobody gets out. For, you see, for some reason the already quite creepy animatronics of the establishment have a tendency to... move around at night. If they see you, they will... do things to you. What's worse, you have only a limited amount of power at your disposal until that clock strikes 6 AM, so you had best do your damndest to ensure those critters don't get into your office...

Your friendly, unseen colleague will leave you nightly phone messages about your job situation, chalking the animatronics' weird behaviour up to programming glitches. You initially take him at his word, but as you proceed through the five (though not really) titular, nail-bitingly tense nights, you spot something out of the corner of your eye. A news clipping that wasn't there two seconds ago. Some bad shit's gone down in this place. Those noises those creatures make when they come uncomfortably close to you... sound much too human. And it only gets worse from there.

Enhanced by deft touches such as randomly occurring events that unsettle you, Five Nights is also a throwback to the Nintendo Hard games of yore. It doesn't pull any punches. Sure, a lot of complaints are being thrown at the series for relying on "cheap" jumpscares, but the entire point of the game is to fight tooth and nail to avoid those dreaded scares, ensuring they never lose their effect. And that's just brilliant. I got lost in its minimalist approach to storytelling, moreso than a dozen games released during the past decade trying to build epic "lore" with the increasingly common crutch of flavor text books. Less is more, indeed.