Welcome to Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, a magical place for kids and grown-ups alike, where fantasy and fun come to life.

Five Nights at Freddy's is a 2014 indie point-and-click survival horror video game designed by Scott Cawthon. The game centers on the fictional pizza restaurant Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, where the player must act as a night security guard, defending themselves from the malfunctioning animatronic animal characters by tracking their movement through the facility using security cameras.

Five Nights at Freddy's was first released via Desura on August 8, 2014. On August 20, 2014, after it was approved by the service's crowdsourcing platform Greenlight, Five Nights at Freddy's was also released via Steam.[1][2] A port for Android was released on August 27, 2014, via Google Play Store.[3] On September 11, 2014, an iOS port was released.

The game was praised by critics for being a unique take on the survival horror genre, with a particular emphasis on its simplistic design, along with how its gameplay mechanics and aesthetics contributed to an overall feeling of fear and paranoia. Five Nights at Freddy's was the top-selling game on Desura for the week ending August 18, 2014, and the game became the subject of a number of popular "Let's Play" videos on YouTube—including one by Markiplier, who labelled it the "scariest game in years".[4]

A sequel has been hinted at by the creator through updates of his website.

Plot

The main character, whose name is later revealed to be Mike Schmidt,[8] has started a job working as a night watch security guard at the restaurant Freddy Fazbear's Pizza (a pastiche of restaurants like Chuck E. Cheese's).[2][7] A voicemail message left by Mike's predecessor who explains that the animatronic animal characters used at the restaurant—including the titular Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie the Bunny, Chica the Chicken, and Foxy the Pirate Fox[5]—are able to roam freely around it at night, because if they were left off for too long, their servo motors would lock up. He also adds that the characters were no longer allowed to roam freely during the day following an incident referred to as the "Bite of '87", which apparently involved the loss of someone's frontal lobe. The employee warns the player that if one of the robots encounters a human, they will automatically assume that it is a robot that is not in costume yet, and "forcefully stuff them" into a spare mechanical Freddy Fazbear costume, killing them in the process.[9]

Newspaper clippings in the background of one of the scenes reveal that the restaurant was site to the disappearances of five children whose bodies were never found, after a man dressed as Freddy lured them into a back room, and was said to have murdered them. Later, the restaurant received complaints that the animatronics began to smell foul and became stained with blood and mucus around the eyes and mouth, with one customer comparing them to "reanimated carcasses".[10]