quickly after the release of the
first game, five night's at freddy's
2 was released on november 10th 2014.

fnaf 2 took the first game and upped
the panic substantially. this is the
only fnaf game i have played and
finished myself rather than watching
someone else play it. and even if i
personally am the most used to this
games gameplay loop, it's still very
hectic and panic-inducing in the
later nights, when you have to ward
off constant attacks from the
animatronics, while making sure the
music box is wound up.

this is probably my favorite, tied
with only maybe one other game in
in the franchise. there's just so
many things i enjoy about this game.
i love the designs of the withered
animatronics, the mangle, the
puppet. and the way fnaf 2 told it's
story through the death minigames is
one of my favorite aspects of the
franchise altogether. i've been
interested since the first game, but
this game really made me love the
series.

five night's at freddy's 3 was
essentially a final ending to
the story that had been built up
over the past 3 games. fnaf 3 had
one sole enemy that could actually
harm you, with the rest being
hallucinations that just serve to
hinder your ability to deal with
that threat.

and what better character to be that
threat than springtrap. springtrap,
as he was in fnaf 3, is one of the
best characters in the franchise.
he is the killer, trapped in the
very suit that he used to lure
the kids to kill them. i love
springtrap. i love how you can so
clearly see that there is a rotting
corpse inside that costume, and yet
it's hard to tell just how alive he
is.

five night's at freddy's 4 was released on july 23rd 2015, despite originally being slated for a halloween release. this is one of the only of the original clickteam fnaf games that i have never played, simply because: i find the setting scary. something about it being set in a house, and specifically in a child's bedroom puts me off for some reason, and i'm not sure if it's because of the setting being a house, considering i enjoy other games like tattletail with a similar setting. i don't hate fnaf 4 by any means though. i think the nightmare animatronics are well designed, and are genuinely scary, even if i feel like they lean a bit too much into being overly scary, rather than the uncanny valley that made the original animatronics so scary. i do find the details of these designs to be absolutely amazing, the models are very well done, and i think they fit very well for what they are: nightmarish versions of the animatronics made up in the mind of a child.

if there's one thing i can say i don't like the game for, it's the overreliance on audio, to the point that the game is completely inaccessible without it. i understand why it was done, to make it so that you must have your volume high enough to hear the breathing that the jumpscare will be even more shocking when you mess up, but i think the jumpscares would've been scary enough for most people as it is even without having to destroy the players ears.

what fnaf 4 did for the fnaf lore was interesting, for better or worse
to the point where i don't even think most people can decide who
they think you play as, the older brother or the younger brother
who got bitten by fredbear. personally, i lean towards the
younger brother, with nightmare then being symbolic of his
eventual death in the hospital. this is just the version of
events that i feel works best, however i'm not entirely
opposed to the idea that we play as the older brother, who is
none other than michael afton, who is basically widely accepted to be
the protagonist of many of the other games. i think it's an interesting take on fnaf 4 to view it as michael being haunted by nightmares about the fact that he killed his own brother, and i definitely understand why a lot of people would view it that way.

also side note i fucking HATE the theory that the nightmares are like actual physical entities created via illusion sound discs. it makes way more sense for them to just be as the name says they are: nightmares.