I’m not really here to argue hugely for or against it, but here’s how I see it.
First off I think that watching it is a whole different experience than playing it, so without playing it, I can never fully say I understand it, but here’s what I can see and understand from watching a few people play it.
As the game starts, with no concept of what is about to happen, the game does something somewhat unique to current indie horror games. It keeps you stationary. I believe the youtuber Markiplier said something like, “I used to think the worst thing about horror games was how it forced me to go and do something I didn’t want to do. But this is worse! I’m just sitting here!”
So if you imagine a game like Slender, or even a much more well-made and smart game like Amnesia, you’re scared to walk into that tunnel or woods. Or to go in that door or down that staircase, but you KNOW, that in order for the game to progress, you have to do that. You have to go in the room, follow the noise, pick up the pages, whatever.
In this game, they play on a different feeling. And you feel truly powerless and paranoid. This is admittedly short lived. If you watch any LPer, by Night 4, they’re no longer very scared or paranoid. Just trying to get to the end usually.
But the sense of dread the game can evoke I think is very unique at the start. This is especially easy to see if you watch someone playing who has no clue what the game is or how it works. You start off without bearings, and find out slowly that you can’t move, your options are only to control the doors, lights and cameras. You find out that you’re assigned to watch animatronics that “roam”. So far, in your cameras, you can see 3 posed animatronics that you now know will move. You’re not sure how yet.
You then get told that you have a power supply that can run out. You don’t actually know the consequences of that yet. Or what uses power or how much. And learning that the things that you’re having to use to keep an eye on these things and protect yourself are limited can begin to put stress on you.
You of course eventually check the stage, the image has changed, one of them in missing, you quickly feel a sense of danger that something is coming to get you and that you don’t even know WHERE it is, or how it will play out. So you search the cameras for it and find it. Most if not all of the still images of these guys are well done to be unsettling. None of them move and they can still raise people’s anxiety and sense of impending dread.
Sure, jump scares can be cheap. But I think the jump scare is just the punishment, not really the “scare”. The suspense of the first 2-3 nights. not knowing how these characters behave, trying to watch them on the camera, listening to the sounds, and knowing all the while that you are responsible if your power drops to 0 gives it a great atmosphere.
I think the game has plenty of flaws. Major one is that the fear wears off, and most of the time, people are forced to stop checking their cameras, which robs it of a lot of the sense of dread. Over repeated viewings and repeated incidents, fear simply goes away. A monster repeated over and over becomes dull, that’s why I think zombie games are boring. That’s why I can really praise a game like Amnesia for trying a mechanic that PUNISHED you for looking at their monster. It keeps the terror very fresh. Along with making sure that the monster is not too frequently appearing.
I feel that the last few nights of Five Nights at Freddies are more of just an endurance test, more like a game of space invaders, you have a limited time, to make sure you block all the monster things from getting to your base. It’s a challenge but really not one tied into horror as much any more.
I think that it could be improved in several ways, a major one would be adding more plot clues. Too many would probably not make it as good, but perhaps a mechanic like, if you look in the kitchen camera, you can start to see things about the history of the restaurant or, maybe an optionally TV in the security room that you can use, that takes power, but reveals things. Something that would force you to use your power at the cost of your safety in order to draw out more clues as to what this place was.
I think there are lots of things this game could add to make it more robust, but for a single guy making it, the atmosphere was really great, the idea was a unique and well-executed one, and I hope that future horror games try out some of the concepts and build on them.
