Learn the essential gameplay mechanics of Five Nights at Freddy's, including day length, power consumption, and how animatronics drain your limited resources.
The overall goal of Five Nights at Freddy 's is simple: prevent the titular Freddy and his band of animatronic pals from getting into your office at any cost. As mentioned, you have three lines of defense; the cameras, the lights, and the doors. The catch is that each of these consumes power, of which you have a limited amount. Naturally, the more of them are active at any given time, the more power you use. Run out of power, and you'll only have a few seconds left before Freddy himself slips in and personally punishes you for your poor power management. That said, if 6 AM is close enough, you might be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat... if you're lucky.
On the Subject of Day Length
So the first question you might ask is: how long is a day in the world of FNAF? The answer is simple; each hour of game time corresponds to 90 seconds of real-world time. Therefore, each night lasts a total of 540 seconds, or 9 minutes. Knowing this can prove helpful when you're in the 5 AM hour and wondering how much time you have left before your power potentially runs out.
On the Subject of Power Consumption
Power consumption is a little more complex than it may appear at first glance. Each night, you'll see your power represented as a percentage in the lower left corner of your screen, starting at 99% and cutting off shortly after it hits 0%. However, this is a little misleading; power is actually calculated in tenths of a percent, with each night starting at 99.9. Since the tenths value is hidden, the game simply rounds down to the nearest whole number to display your power. Therefore, it'll show that you have 99% power when your actual power level is between 99.9 and 99.0, but the moment it reaches 98.9, your displayed power will drop to 98%.
The number of bars shown just underneath the percentage represents how quickly your power is draining, and increases as you use more devices. There is always a minimum of one usage bar, presumably from things like the fan and the office lights which you can't disable. The lights and cameras are all tied to a single bar; you can't have more than one of them running at the same time. Each of the doors contributes another bar. Therefore, you can have up to a maximum of four usage bars if you have both doors closed and either have a light on or are looking at the cameras.
The specific way the game calculates power drainage is simple; it deducts 0.1 every second for each usage bar. For example, if you have one of the doors closed and are looking at the cameras, you'll be using up 0.3 power per second, thus draining a full percent roughly every 3 seconds. Now remember that you've got to hold out for 540 seconds, and suddenly you can see just how precious a resource your power really is.
But it doesn't end there. While the drainage mechanic works exactly as described on Night 1, the remaining nights throw a little wrench in the works. Each night imposes an additional power penalty in which it drains an additional 0.1 power every so often. How often this occurs depends on the night:
- Night 2: Every 6 seconds
- Night 3: Every 5 seconds
- Night 4: Every 4 seconds
- Night 5 onward: Every 3 seconds
As a result, your power will drain much faster the further you get in the game. To put this in perspective, at the late stages of the game, after taking into account base power consumption, you will only have a mere 27.9 power to work with in terms of camera, light, and door usage.
Finally, there's one last way for your power to get drained; whenever Foxy hits your door when it's closed. We'll get into the specifics of that when we discuss Foxy's AI in depth.
That's about it for the gameplay fundamentals, so let's get into the meat and potatoes of this guide; discussing how your foes work.
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