FNaF World is an indie role-playing video game created by Scott Cawthon. It is the first official spin-off to the Five Nights at Freddy's series. The game was released for Microsoft Windows on January 21, 2016, but came with unfinished gameplay and a large amount of bugs, leading to bad reception and ultimately the decision for the game's takedown from digital storefronts. On February 8, 2016, the game was updated, and re-released as freeware on Game Jolt free of charge.
Gameplay
The player has two modes to play in: Adventure and Fixed Party. The game also has two difficulty levels to choose from, Normal and Hard. The player starts by choosing two parties consisting of four characters each. The starter characters, the original and toy versions of the first main games characters, can all be swapped in and out of the party. As the player continues, they collect more characters to place in their party, with there being 40 characters available in total from across the first four games. Along the way, a character known as Fredbear will give the player tips on what to do next.
The player is then tasked with exploring the game world and defeating enemy characters in battle. Once new areas are revealed and a special button is pressed in them, the player can use "jumping" to teleport between each area through an overworld map.
Setting
FNaF World takes place in a world inhabited by enemies and FNAF characters, who live in different biomes, that include a snowy plain, deep forests, graveyard, lake, carnival, and caves. There also exists an inner dimension known as the "Flipside", the world's game code, in which there are several glitches that enable travel to otherwise unreachable places. The Flipside has four layers in total, although going beyond the third level is a point of no return.
Development
FNaF World was first announced on September 15, 2015, in a Steam post by Cawthon. Later, a trailer was uploaded to YouTube, depicting the characters of the four previous games as cute. The announcement was considered to be a hoax due to similar PR actions taken by Cawthon, however, it was not disproven until its release. Cawthon noted that the game is a spin-off, considering the main arc of Five Nights at Freddy's completed with the fourth game. Though originally planned for release on February 2, 2016, Cawthon rescheduled the release to January 22, 2016, but eventually launched yet another day earlier, on January 21, 2016, respectively, releasing it digitally through Steam.
Upon release, community and critics criticized the game for missing key features, being unstable and generally unfinished, which Cawthon later apologized for, stating that "he got too eager to show the things that were finished, that he neglected to pay attention to the things that weren't." He agreed with the community that he had rushed the release, and that the game's rough state was unacceptable. Cawthon stated that he would be working hard to get the game in order, but this eventually led to Cawthon temporarily taking the game off Steam, offering refunds to everyone who bought it. It was later announced that, once the game would be patched further, it would be released for free, first to Game Jolt, and stay free from that point on.
On February 8, 2016, an updated version was released to GameJolt as freeware, also featuring a new overworld and other new features.
On May 13, 2016, a second update to FNaF World was released, featuring new characters and a new map, as well as voice acting.
In January 2017, Cawthon dispelled any rumors of the highly speculated "Update 3", saying that no further updates will be made to the game. He expressed his dissatisfaction of the game, stating that most mistakes in development were made "very early", and that attempting to better the game would "be remaking the game from scratch". He removed the game from Android and Steam later.
Reception
FNaF World received generally mixed reception among critics and community, with many YouTube gamers responsible for launching the franchise to its high popularity, such as Markiplier, opting not to play it, most likely changing how critics responded to the spin-off. However, Angelo M. D'Argenio from The Escapist gave the game a decent review, stating that "Five Nights at Freddy's World is a retro parody JRPG that feels incomplete now, but is steadily getting better as patches come out", giving FNaF World a score of 3/5. This, however, doesn't make it as popular as FNAF's other games. The Gaming Ground also gave a satisfactory review, giving the game a 3.5/5.
