Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNaF), created by Scott Cawthon in 2014, is a seminal indie horror franchise that reshaped how scares are designed, how narratives can be delivered through gameplay, and how fan communities co-create meaning. At its core, FNaF games is deceptively simple: the player assumes the role of a night-shift worker tasked with surviving until dawn at locations populated by malfunctioning, homicidal animatronics. Yet beneath that premise lie rich design choices, narrative ambiguity, and a cultural ripple effect that make FNaF worth examining.
