The RPS Summer Games: Five Nights At Freddy's

Third on the RPS Summer Games agenda is Five Nights At Freddy's [official site]. The cult favourite horror game challenges you to spend five nights in the security room of a building populated by animatronic horrors. Some people find it dull/daft and some people find it unbearably tense. For the Summer Games we're just trying to last as many nights as we can (or, if you're as bad at horror as me, work up the courage to install the game at all)...

Rules:

• Only the original Five Nights At Freddy's NOT five nights at any of the sequels or five nights at any of the hundreds and hundreds of tribute games out there.
• You may turn on all the lights and have someone sitting next to you if you need.

RESULTS:

Adam

Adam says: My fear of Five Nights At Freddy's is well-documented, so this task was a great deal like one of those awful I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here challenges where somebody has to eat an unfortunate animal's arse. As RPS' resident horror buff, FNAF should be right in my wheelhouse but, as I've explained before, the game reminds me of a Jack in the Box. Tension builds and then a monster pops out right in my face (clowns are monsters).

That's not my idea of fun and it's not my idea of good horror. That's to take nothing away from the game but it's certainly not for me .

And so, as I prepared to venture into the pizza parlour once again, I knew I wasn't going to last very long. The first night is simple enough and I knew the risks of a jumpscare were extremely slight. I've conquered night two before as well and managed that again this time around.

Night three though? As soon as I realised my stress levels were rising slightly, I sat in my security room and waited to die.

Obviously, I don't believe FNAF should be a Summer Sport. It's an outrageous new form of an old favourite and the better way to separate the greatest horror athletes from the pretenders would be to have everyone submit their bestest Silent Hill fanfic. I'm starting a petition right now.

Alec

Alec says: I’m pretty much immune to horror games, because I am the strongest and most impressive and bravest and most wonderful human being that ever there was (and also because I am so hideously afraid of blood tests that nothing else can hold a candle to that), but one thing I am severely weak in the face of is boredom. I played through FNAF once and died at 6 am on the first night due to running out of power. I thought I was being tactical and conservational but clearly misjudged how briefly doors and lights should be active for. Even though I survived just a sole night, that night had felt endlessly long and tedious and I just couldn’t face going through it all again. Truly, repetition is my greatest fear, says the man who once was addicted to AdVenture Capitalist.

Alice

Alice says: No YOU shut up YOU'RE a big fraidy baby.

Brendy

Brendy says: I’ve never delved into any of the FNAF games before, and when I see that acronym, I always mentally pronounce it “f’naf”. This is just the first thing I find funny about the popular horror series. Animatronic toys, ventriloquist’s dummies, puppets and all other things like that – they crack me up. I simply lose my shit at them. I was cackling like a maniac when the first dummy ­a big grinning rabbit ­ appeared in the dining hall of Freddy’s. And the chicken guy? Oh my god. Look at that face. How could anyone possibly find that gormless expression threatening? It’s wonderful! When I saw Mr Rabbit peeping into the office from the adjacent room, I was almost sorry to shut the door on him. I was still grinning from ear to ear when the lights went out and the bear jumped up and murdered me.

Graham

Graham says: It did not go well. I had never played Five Night At Freddy's before, or read anything that fully described their function. I knew it was a horror game about looking through security cameras in order to avoid the attacks of roving animatronics. I didn't know that you as the player were stationary and that power was the resource you were trying to retain, which was being drained by your use of both the security cameras and protective doors.

The first thing I did in the game, in my ignorance? Close both doors and turned on both lights. Then spent a while looking at all the cameras, while an audio tape played, setting the scene, the story and then, at its end, mentioning about only closing doors if absolutely necessary in order to save power.

Shit. By the time I opened both doors again I was already down to 35% power. It ran out at around 4am with a terrifying rabbit not far from my door, and then I was dead.

I lasted zero nights. Or 0.7 nights. Yeah, let's go with that. Maybe Adam IS in control of time. This is definitely Adam's fault.

John

John says: The very first jump scare I experienced in my very first play of Five Nights At Freddy's was that Esc didn't bring up an option to improve the ghastly graphics settings, but just shut down the game entirely. Ah, we're in a professional space.

The second jump scare was forgetting this almost immediately, and when trying to back out of the camera interface pressing Escape, and once more seeing my desktop.

Not wanting to hear the phonecall again, I went downstairs to get a bowl of cereal, and when I came back up my power left was at 48% and nothing had happened.

The third jump scare came when I realised I was staring at poorly rendered security cameras when I could be playing Grow Up.

Then I ran out of power some time around 5am for reasons I don't understand, and then a bear face appeared on the screen when I assume I was supposed to be scared and then it ended and I was glad. I lasted one night.

Pip

Pip says: Yeah, so I did what I always do when a sport does not appeal to me. I phoned my mum and asked her to write a note that would get me out of it (she agreed but apparently decided to troll me pretty hard in the process so now I'm wondering what she said in all the letters getting me out of outdoor swimming classes):

CURRENT STANDINGS