Five Nights at Freddy's

Five Nights at Freddy's is a survival horror game created by Scott Cawthon and released for Windows on August 8, 2014. It places the player in the security office of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, a fictional family restaurant built around singing animatronic characters. The player is hired as the restaurant's night security guard and must survive five shifts, from midnight until 6 a.m., while monitoring the building through a network of security cameras.

The original game's central threat is the restaurant's four principal animatronics: Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy. During the night they move through the building toward the office. The guard cannot walk around or attack them. Instead, survival depends on checking camera feeds, closing the left or right security door when necessary, and briefly using the office lights to inspect the entrances. These defenses consume a limited electrical supply. If the power runs out before morning, the office becomes vulnerable, and Freddy's approach produces one of the game's most recognizable jump scares.

The story is delivered indirectly through newspaper clippings, phone messages, environmental details, and rare visual events rather than conventional exposition. A recorded employee, commonly called Phone Guy, explains the restaurant's rules and warns that the animatronics may mistake a person in the office for an endoskeleton lacking a costume. He also refers to the “Bite of '87,” an earlier incident that supposedly caused severe injury and explains why the animatronics are not allowed to roam freely during the day. Later clues connect the restaurant to missing children and suggest that the characters are haunted, although the first game deliberately leaves much of the chronology unresolved.

Cawthon developed the game after criticism of his earlier title, Chipper & Sons Lumber Co., whose characters had been described as unintentionally unsettling. He responded by making that discomfort the foundation of a horror game. Five Nights at Freddy's became widely known through YouTube playthroughs, especially videos by prominent gaming creators, and grew into a major multimedia franchise. Sequels, spin-offs, novels, merchandise, and film adaptations expanded the mythology. The first game remains notable for turning a small set of fixed viewpoints, strict resource management, recognizable mascot designs, and carefully timed audio cues into sustained tension. Its success also established Freddy Fazbear's Pizza as one of independent horror's most recognizable fictional locations.