There has always been one thing that stuck out to me about video games and that is independent developers trying to make a game. However, one genre for indie developers needed a reboot, something to freshen up the landscape, and that was horror. 

Indie horror games felt and played similar to one another: some random monster is coming after you and you have to go around collecting papers or some other useless objects so you can escape some kind of dark environment. Over time it got really boring and interest stagnated until the release of a new kind of indie horror game that shook up the landscape, changing what indie horror was. The game in question is 2014’s “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” an indie horror game that was refreshing for its original gameplay, unique monsters and intriguing environment.

Take a second and think about the gameplay of horror games that came out before Five Nights at Freddy’s and games like “Slender: The 8 Pages” would come to mind. In that game the objective was to move around a dark forest to find eight pages in order to escape from Slenderman, the monster of that game. What made Slender tick was it allowed for the player to roam around and escape from the threat of the situation even if that threat was close.

Five Nights didn’t allow for that. There was no escape from the horror in “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” you were forced to face it head on. The only way to defend against the monsters was to close doors, check the lights outside the doors and check security cameras to keep an eye on the monsters. You were trapped, unable to leave the room, surrounded on both sides with limited resources that when they ran out, allowed for them to get in. You either survived or you didn’t; that’s what was refreshing about Five Nights’ gameplay — you couldn’t hide and were forced to partake in the action. 

What makes a piece of horror unique are the monsters. In “Five Nights at Freddy’s” players had to go against the uncanny animatronic faces of Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie the Bunny, Chica the Chicken and Foxy the Pirate, characters seemingly based off of animatronic bands like the one’s seen at children’s pizzerias like Chuck E. Cheese’s. We all know how creepy the animatronics at Chuck E. Cheese’s are with their blank stares, wide open mouths and unnatural movements for characters based on cartoon drawings. They’re creepy and that’s what makes Freddy and his band work really well. It plays off of how uncomfortable and creepy animatronics can be in real-life and applies it to a horror environment. The animatronics in “Five Nights at Freddy’s” were the first horror antagonists of their kind, taking the creepiness of animatronics and putting it in a scenario where they creep closer to you with their dead expressions.

However, the thing that makes Five Nights stick out more so than its unique gameplay or creepy animatronics is the environment in which the game takes place. It takes place in a children’s pizzeria yet again being modeled after Chuck E. Cheese. However the place isn’t as it seems for a place meant to entertain kids. The place is surprisingly low budget with limited power being supplied to the player. Papers and cobwebs are strewn about the building and the camera and other technical equipment seem low-tech and outdated. 

It’s for that low budget feel that just raises the tension with the player being uncertain if their equipment would even protect them from the danger; it makes you feel scared and out of control. The environment lends itself to making you feel helpless and always in danger something that other horror games couldn’t do very well.

While other horror games stuck to the tropes that games before them had done, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” changed up the game when it came to indie horror to the point where it’s hard to remember a time before it. Its legacy is grand with it going on to inspire other indie game developers to follow in its footsteps basing their own games with characters or environments similar to the ones in “Five Nights at Freddy’s.” 

“Five Nights at Freddy’s” was refreshing for the fact that it did change up the indie horror landscape for years to come but it was refreshing for the basis that it inspired others to go out and do their own unique thing with horror.