What made Five Nights At Freddy's so scary?

The indie horror genre has become somewhat awash with mediocre releases since Five Nights At Freddy’s dropped over a decade ago. Everyone wants a slice of the pie now, and so it’s become routine for developers to dip their toes into the genre with uninspired, unoriginal attempts that seem utterly desperate to go viral. Most of them share common traits of convoluted plots, artificially eerie atmospheres and an overreliance on jumpscares – all things that are done in an attempt to scare the player. But what is it that games like Poppy’s Playtime and Tattletail do wrong that the first FNAF does right?

Scott Cawthon had never intended to make horror games when he first started as a game developer. The original designs for FNAF's main cast of animatronics were inspired by characters from his child-friendly adventure game, Chipper & Sons Lumber Co. The characters had abnormally robotic appearances, and were even described as looking like animatronic dolls by gamers. Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy all give off this same uncanny aura, from the stiff movements of their limbs and torsos to their piercing stares and agape jaws.

There's something deeply unsettling about Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria that you notice from the moment you step foot in the establishment. Children's drawings and colourful posters are plastered on the walls of the office, but the cute imagery clashes with the dull lighting, dangling wires, and the mechanical whirring of the fan. FNAF 1 constantly plays with this contrast between life and lifelessness, making even something as innocent as a children's pizzeria terrifying when shown in a state so devoid of life and joy.

Without even knowing a thing about the game's lore, you start to develop the feeling that something bad has happened here. But despite how complicated the FNAF Universe has become over the years, the first instalment was relatively simple in its story. If anything, though, this sense of mystery only made everything even more scary, and led to countless theories spreading across the internet that spawned constant discussion between fans.

The soundscape of Five Nights At Freddy's does an incredible job at immersing you in it's world, making those 9-minute nights truly feel like 6-hour long sessions. Aside from the ambience that constantly plays in the background, the game throws so many different noises at you, like Foxy humming down the hallway, or Chica bashing pots and pans in the kitchen, or Freddy's "Toreador March" playing throughout the building. All of this clutters the game's sound environment, and simply listening for the characters' footsteps becomes a strenuous task.

FNAF's camera system contributes hugely to it's unsettling atmosphere. Every shot is so deliberately framed, and makes incredible use of lighting, space and posing of the animatronics to send shivers down your spine every time you check them. It often feels as though when you watch them, they are watching you back, staring back through the camera with a menacing gaze. The grainy lens filter forces you to squint as you attempt to locate each animatronic, only for the camera to cut to black as they move to their next location, never letting you catch them in action.

In reality, the jumpscares in Five Nights At Freddy's 1 aren't all that scary. Sure, they're a bit creepy to look at, and you might get caught off guard every once in a while, but the animations themselves are far from what makes the game such a disturbing experience: it's everything that builds up to them beforehand. The game doesn't need to try too hard with gruesome violence and loud noises to be scary, because it is scary. Future FNAF games have tried to replicate this, but none of them could ever live up to the authentic horror of the first. It's no wonder why people are still talking about it ten years on, and why indie developers are still trying to live up to the cultural impact it had, not only on horror games, but video games as a whole.