Five Night’s at Freddy’s is an American media franchise created by Scott Cawthon. It was released in 2014 and has since gained massive popularity around the world.  It was the top-selling game for the week ending August 18, 2014. It started out as a video game series having eight horror survival games in total. These games took place in connection with the family pizza restaurant known as Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. In most games, the main player takes the role of a night-shift security guard. The games largely gained popularity due to being included in several popular “Let’s Play” videos that were uploaded to YouTube; some videos receiving millions of views. 

The newest installation is Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach, which was released December 16, 2021. Although this is probably the biggest game so far, it has the most problems. The game has an open world, meaning you can explore without being limited to a certain space. There are some new animatronic characters introduced to the player such as; Glamrock Freddy, Montgomery Gator, Glamrock Chica, Roxanne Wolf, and the person you play as, a child named Gregory. In the game, players are placed in a huge mall-type location,and run around and completing different levels depending on which part of the mall they are in. The game brings a whole side of gameplay features and a new look. The game still retains many characteristics that fans have come to love from previous games.

Yet, here’s the thing. The game wasn’t produced by its original creator Scott Cawthon. It was created by a company named Steel Wool Studios. This being said, many fans speculate this is one of the reasons why the game is so buggy. It is like the game wasn’t even finished before it was released.  

Junior Tyson Head said, “The trailer for the game was very misleading. There were a lot of things I expected from the trailer that was not in the game. It seemed like we were going to actually play as some of the animatronic characters when in reality we only could play as one character. The game was also delayed many times throughout the year. So I thought the game was going to be good after spending all that time being worked on. But considering the many plotholes throughout the story, the bugs, glitches, and saving issues, it was not satisfactory.” 

In past games, the player is very limited in movement throughout the game; They are playing in an office only able to move side-to-side. It is unfortunate that in the first game where the players are actually introduced to a whole new playable world, it’s a struggle to even get through a level without problems. In some situations, the game will crash or glitch which causes the game not to save progress which means the player will have to start from the very beginning. Some glitches actually cause certain cutscenes within the game to be skipped over or not be shown at all. This might confuse the player as noticeable plotholes will occur when not knowing the full story.

Overall, while this game does introduce a new world of survival horror with its open-world playthrough, it needs a lot of updates and fixes from the production company. Something also to note is that this is one of Steel Wool Studios’ first production games in this franchise. It was speculated that there might be some errors within the story and gameplay as the original creator was in the background working with the company. With many changes, it has the potential to turn into an amazing game that will surely change the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise around.