Seven years after its release,Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulatoris the best game in the entire series. It was initially teased as a simple restaurant simulator, but turned out to be an ingenious combination of humor and horror, with a touch of the now iconicFNAFsilliness. Players must take on the task of creating their own Fazbear establishment, designing their restaurant, picking decorations, working with advertisers, fighting lawsuits, and battling monsters in the hours after closing.
The quirky daytime gameplay of building a new Fazbear pizza place is blended with terrifying vent-based horror at night, where players must keep their new animatronics away while wrapping up chores from the day before.Pizzeria Simulatoralso brings back almost all the true antagonists of the series to one location to meet their fate. This finale for characters like Circus Baby and Springtrap could have easily been the perfect ending for the entireFNAFseries.
How A 7-Year-Old Sleeper Hit Became The Best Of The Franchise
Free-To-Play With Outstanding Gameplay
AllFive Nights at Freddy’sgames since the first have been released with a significant amount of fanfare. Teaser images by the creator of the series, Scott Cawthon, would be lightened, blown up, and analyzed until small pieces of information could be found.Pizzeria Simulatorwas no different, but instead of scary images of Springtrap pulling his head open, the teasers mostly consisted of eight-bit art of Freddy Fazbear holding pizzas or cupcakes. Needless to say,the scare factor forPizzeria Simulatorwas not the sameas the previous games in the series and made the actual game that much more of a surprise.
Instead of just being a restaurant simulator,Pizzeria Simulatorprovided some of the scariest gameplay of any game using the traditional stuck-in-place styleof past games. The player is provided with no protection at all, not even a mask to hide under like inFNAF 2, whilehostile and scary animatronicstry to find them in a series of vents. Utilizing sound and strategically timing when to make noise, the player has to try to keep them away without any visual aid.
This free-to-play entry, which wasn’t even treated as a mainline game,proved itself to have the scariest version of the classicFNAFgameplay. It was presented in the disguise of a cute spin-off game, which makes its mark on the series even more impactful. Most players never expected the game to have such intense gameplay, or to have such a dramatic ending for series villains.
Pizzeria Simulator Is The Perfect Blend Of Humor And Horror
Lawsuits, Pizzas, Killer Animatronics, And More
What makesPizzeria Simulatorstand out among the rest of the series is thatit strikes the perfect balance between humor, horror, and whimsy. The first entries in the series up toFive Nights at Freddy’s 4were all pure horror games, with some small amounts of whimsy in the minigames or Easter Eggs.Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Locationwas the first to introduce humor as a major element in the game, with short cutscenes of a soap opera in between every night’s shift.
Pizzeria Simulator(December 2017) came out a little over a year afterSister Location(October 2016).
Pizzeria Simulatorupped the ante in terms of humor, giving it the perfect blend as it rapidly shifts tonebetween whimsy, horror, and the humor that would come to define the series. The game can switch between a wacky restaurant simulator, with Helpy the animatronic bear breaking his back in ball pit minigames, to a horrifying series of vents with no protection where players have to trick animatronics from getting too close.
Making decisions in the daytime, like taking on more advertisers, can drastically impact how difficult it is to survive at night. The whimsy of the day, with its ludicrous lawsuits and weird advertisers, make the nighttime gameplay much scarier by comparison. However, despite the constant tonal shifts,Pizzeria Simulatornever feels disjointed. The dark humor and the horror gameplay work in tandem for thequintessentialFNAFexperience.
Pizzeria Simulator Could’ve Been The Perfect End To The Franchise
Every Major Character Put To Rest
WhilePizzeria Simulatorwas on the surface a cute restaurant simulator, it revealed itself to actually have some of themost important lore in theFNAFseries. In fact,this game could have easily been the final chapter of the entire series, since it so dramatically wraps up the storyline for the Afton family.
Circus Baby and Funtime Freddy both debuted inSister Location, while Springtrap first appeared inFNAF 3.
Throughout the game, the player brings inscrapped animatronics that were found in the back alley and puts them through a series of tests for functionality. Each of these salvageable animatronics – a disfigured Funtime Freddy, anew version of Circus Baby called Scrap Baby, Springtrap, and the black bear Lefty – are revealed to havebeenlured to the new Fazbear restaurant by Henry Emily. His plan was to lure in the spirits possessing the animatronics, whichinclude his daughter and former business partner, and burn them down to release their spirits. This also includes Michael Afton, though that was not by design, which means thatalmost every major character from the past games is given a satisfying conclusion.
This ending, with its iconic speech by Cassette Guy (aka Henry Emily), could have almost perfectly finished out theFive Nights at Freddy’slore. The main perpetrator of all the deaths throughout the series, William Afton, is finally sent to hell while the spirits of his victims are put to rest. While later games in the series have created their own unique plotlines andiconicFNAFcharacters, it’s safe to say thatFreddy Fazbear’sPizzeria Simulatorcould have easily been a satisfying final chapter forFNAF.
Five Nights at Freddy’s
Five Nights at Freddy’s is a multimedia horror franchise created by Scott Cawthon that began with the first entry in the video game series, Five Nights at Freddy’s. The core story of the franchise focuses on a pizza franchise known as “Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza,” a kid-friendly entertainment center with animatronic hosts. The stores are closed when the animatronics begin to go berserk, slaying some of their guests. However, for most entries, a security guard is tasked with observing them at night, completely unaware of the horrible history behind the mysterious, murderous robots.
