Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location

Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location
Steam storefront header
Developer(s)	Scott Cawthon
Publisher(s)	Scott Cawthon
Composer(s)	Leon Riskin[1]
Series	Five Nights at Freddy's
Engine	Clickteam Fusion 2.5
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release date(s)	Microsoft Windows‹See Tfd› WW: October 7, 2016 Android and iOS ‹See Tfd› WW: December, 2016
Genre(s)	Survival horror
Mode(s)	Single-player

Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location is a survival horror game and the fifth installment in the Five Nights at Freddy's series created by Scott Cawthon. The game was released on October 7, 2016. The release date for the Android and iOS was revealed by Scott Cawthon in a Steam discussion to be after the release of the Custom Night update, which was December 1, 2016.

Sister Location distances itself from several key gameplay and storytelling mechanics used in previous games, instead featuring walking access to any area in the game, each with its own differing objective the player must carry out. Throughout the game, the player interacts with a new cast of animatronic characters, central to which is a seemingly benevolent animatronic named Circus Baby.

Gameplay

Barring a secret area and the Custom Night mode, Sister Location does away with the survival aspect of previous games. While previous games have the player monitor and keep the animatronics from reaching the player, who remains at a stationary position, through five increasingly-difficult nights, the player instead has to fulfill a series of objectives, which differ depending on the night played. For example, Night 3 requires the player to cross a dark room while avoiding Funtime Foxy and to dismantle Funtime Freddy by pushing a combination of buttons, while Night 4 has the player prevent springlocks from unscrewing while also preventing a horde of Minireenas from reaching the player. A secret level accessible on Night 5, however, is a near-recreation of the gameplay of the original Five Nights at Freddy's, which necessitates the player to conserve energy while fending off the animatronic Ennard from reaching the player's office by looking at the monitor and shutting electric doors, which consume power. As in Five Nights at Freddy's 2, every so often, when the player loses a mission and gets a game over, they are sent to play an 8-bit minigame involving Circus Baby, who has to deliver cupcakes to children; doing it causes an ice cream to appear, which can be delivered to a little girl who appears at the beginning of the level. Delivering the ice cream is necessary to be granted access to the secret level.

Clearing all five nights unlocks a gallery, where the player can view the game's five animatronics, their making-of, the pizzeria's map and gain automatic access to Circus Baby's cupcake minigame. As of the December 1, 2016 update, clearing all nights also unlocks the non-canon Custom Night mode, which pits the player in a modified private room, itself modeled after the survival gameplay of previous games. The Custom Night has several animatronic options and difficulty settings. An achievement system exists in the form of four stars, obtained by unlocking both of the game's endings, delivering the ice cream in Circus Baby's minigame and completing the hardest Custom Night setting.

Plot

The player character, named Mike, mistakenly referred to as Eggs Benedict,^[2] is a new employee of the underground Circus Baby's Rentals and Entertainment, a sister company of Fazbear Entertainment featuring animatronics that are rented out to children's birthday parties; they were originally intended for use in a pizzeria called Circus Baby's Pizza World, but the pizzeria had been shut down shortly before it was supposed to open due to "gas leaks".

Mike is instructed by HandUnit (an AI that helps the player throughout the game) to watch and 'motivate' the animatronics by electrocuting them so they may be used during the day. He is also guided by the voice of Circus Baby, a female clown animatronic and the star of Circus Baby's Pizza World, who gives instructions sometimes contradictory to those of HandUnit. Baby's instructions help Mike survive the nights from the hostile animatronics: the ballerina Ballora and her minions known as Minireenas; miniature animatronics known as Bidybabs; and 'Funtime' versions of Freddy Fazbear and Foxy the Pirate Fox. It is implied via monologues throughout the game, as well as the ending of the 8-bit-style minigame, that Baby houses the remains of Mr. Afton's daughter, who was previously killed by her in a freak accident.^[3]

In between nights, as the player completes each one, a voice of a young British girl (presumably Afton's daughter) can be heard asking her father if she can see Circus Baby. Her words imply that her father refuses to let her go to Circus Baby, and when the player obtains the death minigame, it is revealed that the girl went to Circus Baby against her father's wishes, supposedly causing her demise.

As the week passes, the animatronics are taken to the parts and service room one by one due to apparent malfunction. At the end of the third night, Circus Baby reveals that she kidnapped Mike, and on the fourth night, hides him in a spring lock suit just outside the "scooping room", where the animatronics' endoskeletons are forcibly removed by a machine Baby refers to as "The Scooper" (designed in a way similar to an excavator), and has Mike watch as the machine tears Ballora's endoskeleton out. On the final night, two agents sent to fix the animatronics are found hanged in the Ballora and Funtime auditoriums, respectively. After reaching the Parts and Service room, Mike is told by Baby to take her to the scooping room. From there, Mike can heed Baby's instruction and obtain the normal ending, or sidetrack to the hidden "private room" and get into the alternate ending after completing Baby's minigame, where the player needs to clear a survival mission modeled after the first game for the alternate ending.

In the normal ending, after entering the scooping room, Baby, who is now the consciousness of Ennard (an animatronic formed out of the other animatronics), reveals that she and the other animatronics have been attempting to escape the complex, but without a human guise, they are unable to. However, now that they are assembled with a human, i.e Mike, they have merged into a single animatronic called Ennard to take his body. The epilogue ends with Ennard locking Mike inside the scooping room and using the machine to disembowel him and take his body. The final scene of the game shows Ennard inspecting itself in the mirror while inhabiting Mike's body.

In the alternate ending, after surviving inside the security office, Mike escapes to his home and watches the season finale of the animated series The Immortal and the Restless (whose previous episodes are shown in-between the nights and whose plot lampoons the series. An example is the Night 4 episode mimicking the destruction of Fazbear's Fright). After the show ends, however, Ennard appears in the room and slowly advances towards Mike.

As of December 1, once the player completes the game, they unlock a non-canon Custom Night mode. Despite being non-canon, if the player completes one of the settings on the hardest difficulty, they unlock a mini clip, expanding on the post-game story. The clips show a man in a purple shirt (Ennard in disguise as the player) walking along a sidewalk, with people happily waving at him. However, as you complete more settings, the clips change. The player's body decays more each time, until eventually they begins falling apart. As they decay, the people along the sidewalk become concerned and eventually hide from the abomination. On the last level, the player vomits up Ennard and collapses, due to a lack of innards. However, Ennard then says "You Will Not Die" repeatedly, somehow reviving the player. The final clip ends with the man getting up and Ennard being left in the sewers. The man's fate is currently unknown, but to the final clip, this has lead many theorists to believe that the player is William Afton, A.K.A, The Purple Guy. However, this has not been proven, and as thus is just another theory.

Development

In April 2016, Cawthon released a teaser image of the game on his website, entitled Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location, featuring a clown-like animatronic, revealed to be named "Circus Baby ".^[4] Several teaser images followed, revealing different characters and hints at their origins.^[5]

The trailer for the game was released on Cawthon's official YouTube page featuring new animatronics and a new location. The release date was later confirmed to be October 7, 2016.^[5][6]

In August, a teaser image was posted on Cawthon's website with the words "Cancelled. Due to Leaks." This was initially taken to indicate that the game itself had been cancelled, due to one of the game's animatronics' voices being leaked, namely Ballora's. However, it was quickly revealed to be a part of the story line, as a fictional news article was found when the image was brightened, discussing how the in-game location had been closed due to "gas" leaks.^[7]

On October 4, 2016, Cawthon posted on the Steam Community forums, stating that the game has a very dark story line, and that it might not be kid-friendly. For this, he said that he might work on the game for several more months, to make the game and its story more suitable for younger players,^[8] which, however, turned out to be a hoax.^[9] The game was released on October 7, 2016.

On October 17, 2016, Cawthon announced on his website and the game's Steam page that a non-canon Custom Night will be added to the game in December, and that an update for it will be released prior to its original version.^[10][11] It was released on December 1, 2016.

Reception

Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location received mostly positive reviews. GameRankings aggregated a score of 67.50% for the game.^[12] Destructoid rated the game 6/10,^[13] while GameCrate rated it 7.50/10.^[14] The Android and iOS versions of the game was revealed by Scott Cawthon in a Steam discussion with a fan of the game that they will be released after the Custom Night is done first. The game's Steam reviews are 93% positive.

References