Who knew that singing animatronic bears could be so terrifying? Welcome back to Gamerscore, making you pee your pants with fear since September 10th. Today’s topic is one that is on the weirder side. Horror games. In a world filled with so much fear already, why play horror games? Some people say they like to be scared. Others say that it is for the adrenaline rush. My take on them? Run. The ways that modern horror developers make these games baffles me. How can you think of these odd concepts?

That brings me to my topic. Five Nights at Freddy’s. This is the story of a guy applying for a job. Scary, right? Read on, it gets worse. So our stalwart hero applies as a security guard for a pizza place. He has to work the graveyard shift. This pizza place, known as Freddy Fazbear’s pizza, is filled to the brim with animatronic characters. There is a bear (Freddy Fazbear himself), a duck, Chica, a bunny, Bonnie, and a pirate fox, creatively named Foxy.

So you start your fist day… or night. A friendly co worker calls you to give you all the details. The animatronic characters draw in a whole lot of money during the day, but have been acting strange during the night. They tend to wander around during the night, and if they find anyone, they will try to put them in an animatronic suit. The problem with that is the fact that these suits aren’t made to fit humans. There are crossbeams and screws poking out and around. So if you are forcefully shoved into one, you are dead. Not pleasent. So you look around and see four buttons and two doorways. Two buttons are for lights outside of your office, the other two are for military grade blast doors. So, you can take a guess that this is not a regular establishment. The problem with trying to leave the lights on and the doors shut is the fact that Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza has been experiencing some financial issues lately. So to your misfortune, you only have a limited amount of power. You can only flick the lights on and off, look at the cameras, or close the doors so much.

Here is the way that many start this game:

12:00- Oh look, I’m getting a call. Well, I’m on duty so I better ignore it.

1:00- Going good so far. I’m a bit tired though.

2:00- Still nothing. This is boring.

3:00- Still goi- wait, I swear that that duck was on stage. I must be more tired than I thought.

4:00- Oh no, wasn’t that bear in the party room?! Why is it in pirate’s cove?!

5:00- I’M NOT OPENING THE DOORS! WHY DO I HEAR KNOCKING?! THAT JACK-IN-THE-BOX MUSIC DOESN’T HELP!

6:00- I QUIIIIT!!!

This game overall has one of the best atmosphere of any horror game I’ve seen in a while. To make a simple point and click game so scary baffles me, to be honest. I would rank this as the downright spookiest game of the year so far. Just having a game about clicking buttons and looking around security cameras seems boring in theory, but this game really pulled it off.

…wait, did you hear that?

Gamerscore is a bi-monthly blog posting on the 10th and 20th of each month, written and created by Jeffrey Wilkinson, highlighting gaming through its ins, outs, triumphs, and tribulations. 

Jeffrey Wilkinson is a freshman at Shawnee Mission South, and is an active participant in Debate. 

Opinions written in blogs on smsouthnews.com only reflect the opinions of the writer of the post and is not in any way the opinion of The Patriot staff as a whole.