Five Nights at Freddy’s LIVE!

I adore this game.

Or should I say, I adore watching Markiplier play this game. I love it so much, in fact, that my husband got me the main four animatronic character plushies for Christmas this year.

We hide them around the house in unexpected places and scare each other. I mean, how could we not?

But anyways. If you don’t know about Five Nights at Freddy’s, you should. Go watch that video and then ask your teens about the rest if you don’t care to watch more. Basically, it’s a jump scare game about Chuck E. Cheese-esque characters who have taken to wandering about the place after hours. You, as the night security guard, have to look after the place without letting the characters get to you – or else they’ll kill you.

(It’s a bit more complicated than that, but that’s the gist.)

This year, for our After Hours Event™ (it’s the reward for completing our summer challenge), we’re doing Five Nights at Freddy’s LIVE! The teens and I are very, very excited.

Of course, for those of you who are familiar with the game, we can’t emulate most of the first one, as it mostly involves tracking the characters on security cameras and slamming the door shut before they get you.  Subsequent games, however, use flashlights and a music box mechanic, which we can TOTALLY duplicate!

So here’s how we’re going to do it:

Up to five can play at a time: Freddy, Chica, Bonnie, Foxy, and the security guard. Each of the animatronics will don a headband that denotes which character they are.

Our teen room is a long rectangle, and has two doors on either end. I’ll be blocking the windows if need be, but I think it’ll be dark enough by the time we do this, around 8pm in mid-August. I don’t want it completely dark in the security guard’s ‘office’ – just enough to set the mood.  Outside the room, I’m going to fashion some ‘ventilation shafts’ using large boxes I’ve been hoarding. Bonnie and Chica will have to crawl through the boxes to get from door to door (if this doesn’t work, I’m going just make them run around the stacks to space out the attacks). They’ll knock outside the open door, then wait for a count of ten before entering the room.

IF the security guard gets to the door before the count of ten is over and closes it, the character can stay for another count of ten before heading through the ventilation system to the other door. As in the game, the security guard will have to keep the door shut until the character leaves. Keeping the door shut, however, drains your precious power faster – and causes Freddy to appear (he’ll be hiding behind one of the bookshelves). As soon as one door is shut, Freddy will begin counting. If he gets to thirty with one door shut, or fifteen with both doors closed, the Freddy jump scare is triggered.

IF the character gets into the room, the security guard must shine a flashlight for a count of ten to get them to run away.  Neither the guard nor the character can move while shining the flashlight – which means they can’t wind the music box or open the door, if need be.

A laptop or iPad will be set up with speakers at a table away from the doors, with this video providing the ‘music box.’ It’s a minute long, and once the music is stopped, Freddy will wait for a dwindling amount of time (beginning with 30 seconds and lessening by ten seconds each time) before jumping. Therefore, the security guard must keep the music ‘wound’ by refreshing the video. If enough time passes and the music box has not been wound, the Freddy jump scare is triggered. (I do, in fact, realize that the music box triggers the puppet, but that would require yet another person.)

But what about everyone’s favorite pirate, Foxy? Pirate’s Cove will be in one corner of the room, covered by a curtain. Every fifteen seconds, Foxy become more visible – first the curtain will open, then an arm, etc. As in the game, the security guard will need to occasionally ‘check in’ by shining a flashlight on Pirate’s Cove for a count of ten, thereby resetting Foxy to his original position. Thirty seconds later, the curtain opens again. If you forget to check Pirate’s Cove long enough, the Foxy jumpscare is triggered.

In order to win, the security has to make it through five minutes of this without triggering a jump scare. Then the teens trade places and move on!

Character cards for role clarification.

Do you have any suggestions for improvement? Let me know!