Folks Can’t Get Enough of Five Nights at Freddy’s
In 2012, Mark Hadley released a freaky little indie game called Slender: The Eight Pages. It didn’t take long for the game to become the biggest story of the summer after it blew up on YouTube and eventually inspired a “reimagining” with Slender: The Arrival. It even carved out its own little Slender Man subgenre for other indies to expand upon with their own games.
Scott Cawthon’s Five Nights at Freddy’s game is to 2014 what The Eight Pages was to 2012. Its reliance on simple mechanics — your character is restrained to a chair, forcing the player to use the security cameras to monitor any potential threats such as a gaggle of murderous animatronic woodland critters.
It’s a simple game, but that simplicity is exactly why it exploded. Hopefully Cawthon will be able to carry this momentum into 2015 with his next game.
