The first Five Nights At Freddy’s Game was an event. Many, many people got in on the action to experience what many were hailing as the most interesting and most unique horror title in years.
Five Nights At Freddy’s found unique and interesting ways to utilize the concept of scaring players with what they didn’t get to see. By hiding away most of the game’s central mechanics and using what appeared to be a bunch of static character models that sometimes swapped in and out, the game created an air of mystery around it and its mechanics that was very difficult for many gamers to crack. And while the experience proved satisfying for many, it was also quite a bit too difficult for others.
As the titles marched forward, sequel after sequel added incremental improvements to the series, but fans began to feel like the games had stopped taking risks and were instead relying too heavily on existing formulas. That may not have been entirely true, however, as the subsequent sequels did add quite a bit to the formula. What seems more possible is that the additions ended up diluting the core experience rather than enhancing it, and fans were yearning for an expanded version of the core gameplay.
They got it. Five Nights At Freddy’s: Ultimate Custom Night is a free sandbox title that takes everything about the core Five Nights experience and turns it into a customizable game engine.
The game no longer follows the traditional Five Night progression. Now, each night is its own, and players have absolute freedom to do whatever they want. A grand total of 50 antagonists are toggleable each night, each with different behaviors, movement patterns, and difficulties ranging from level 1 to level 20. For players looking only for an extension of the core mechanics, they can stick to only the core animatronics. For those willing to go beyond, however, there is a host of new options available. From the game’s official Steam Store page:
This time you will have to master other tools as well if you want to complete the ultimate challenges, tools such as the heater, A/C, a global music box, a power generator, and more. As if all of that weren’t enough, you’ll also need to set up laser traps in the vents, collect Faz-Coins, purchase items from the prize counter, and as always, keep a close eye on not one, but two, Pirate Cove curtains!
But if you want to unlock all the game’s content, you’ll have to do more than just blast through some easy, custom nights. The free title comes with sixteen preset challenges, with completion rewards ranging from animated cutscenes to unlockable skins for the animatronic characters to different skins and objects for the “home base” office and more.
Any way you slice it, this is the idealized FNAF experience. If a player found themselves struggling to manage a certain character in the other FNAF games, they can turn to this game as a training tool and set that character to a low difficulty, slowly learning their movements, tendencies, signals, as well as how to counter them. Or, if a player is in the mood to get spooked, they could turn on all fifty possible opponents to difficulty level 20 and see if they could make if for longer than a single minute.
They could try. But we’d bet against it.
Five Nights At Freddy’s: Ultimate Custom Night is available now on Steam.
Featured Image Via Flickr / brickfigs 1
