There’s a new horror game on the table, and it’s perfect for people who love high stakes adrenaline rush games, but don’t enjoy jump scares! 

On December 16th, 2021, Steel Wool Studios released the newest game in the Five Nights at Freddy’s line. Earlier last year Scott Cawton, the original creator of the FNAF games, took a step back after he was doxxed and received backlash for donating to Republican politicians. Since his departure, fans of the game series were worried that this would be the end of the saga. Luckily, he announced it is not, and finalized this with the seemingly premature release of Five Nights At Freddy’s: Security Breach.

Synopsis:

Throughout this first person horror game, you play as 10 year old Gregory, who is stuck overnight in Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Plex, the newest building in the entertainment franchise. Freddy, one of the 4 antagonists in the original game, aids Gregory in escaping the security guard and avoiding the other animatronics, who are out to capture him and, according to the lore surrounding the games, kidnap and murder him. Throughout the game, Gregory must go around completing tasks, avoiding other characters, and eventually dismantling and decommissioning the other animatronics. In this game, we see a new side of original characters, meet some new characters, and uncover some secrets about our new villain, Vanny. 

Background and Comparison:

When it comes to the franchise, Security Breach is the biggest game yet. While being an open map survival game, it loses some of the original charm that the first 5 games had. For the first 3 games, jumpscares were what gave the game its horror factor. As the 4th game came out, it was all about the audio in the game, and the 5th game was about visuals. Security Breach utilizes the audio and visual aspect to create the terrifyingly anxious setting, but it lacks in the jumpscaring department. It could be the brighter nature of the characters, or the missing rows of teeth, but almost every player can agree that the jumpscares are not nearly as scary as the first 5 games. 

Reviews:

Beginner gamer or professional, everyone can agree on one aspect of Security Breach: it was released too early. While being a beautiful and impressive game, it is full of bugs and needs a lot of patchwork. Glitches and bugs are the basis of all memes that have been created about it, and while its all hilarious, its negatively impacting Steel Wool Studio’s reputation. Many believe it was released early to be available for Christmas. While this may be true, it is clear that the end of the game and revisions were rushed. While this is not serious enough to deter someone from the game, it could cause the game to crash or your computer to overheat if it does not have the space to run the game. The glitchiness both helps and hurts the jumpscares that occur. It helps, because they are very unexpected, but they hurt, because the frame rate can decrease horribly and lessen the suddenness of the scare. At the same time, you may get “attacked” when you shouldn’t be, and “die” in the game, even if you were nowhere near an animatronic.

Overview:

With the anticipation for this game being so high, many were let down at the outcome and results of it. If you’re not an avid gamer and don’t mind a few quirks, its a wonderful game with its blend of easy and difficult levels, with all being equally as scary (expect the endoskeleton level, that is a level to give people nightmares). Personally, I would give it a 4 / 5 rating after playing, and based on player responses, others would give it the same rating. If some bugs and glitches were patched, it would probably receive a 5. All in all, Scott Cawthon really stepped it up with this game, and anticipation is already high for the next one.