The board game arm of Funko, Funko Games, has no business being as good as it is. The company is producing a non-stop supply of liscened games based on everything from Godzilla to Pan-Am and I’m consistently impressed with the quality and consistency of these budget priced board games. Five Nights At Freddy’s: Survive ‘Til 6AM is no exception. This is simple to learn, hard to master game absolutely nails the theme of the kid-friendly horror series it’s based on. It succeeds as both a translation and a unique board game in its own right, but unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be a very good fit for the target Freddy target audience.
Surprisingly On Theme
FNAF is a 2016 indie game that has grown into a massive franchise with incredible longevity. At it’s core it’s a simple game of resource management that became outrageously popular with young kids thanks to the unique combination of ugly-cute characters and jump scares. FNAF: Survive ‘Til 6AM is essentially the original FNAF game remade in the board game format, and I’m still blown away by how well it translates.
Like the video game, the board game is mechanically very simple. There is a narrow board (perhaps the smallest game board I’ve ever seen) that represents Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, the Chuck E. Cheese’s style restaurant haunted by evil animatronics. Each player has a dial that represents how much power is available and 4 decks of cards, each one representing one of the 4 security cameras in the building. If you’ve ever played the game, this should all sound very familiar.
At the start of each turn, both players turn over a card from each deck to “check” their security cameras. The card that’s revealed may force you to move cards from one deck to another, drain your power, or be an animatronic you will need to react to. Each time you “react” (turn on the lights) you roll dice to determine how much power is consumed. If you run out of power you can no longer react. If any animatronics are able to make is across all 4 cameras and reach your “office” (discard pile) you lose the game.
The game can be played with 1 or 2 players and works exactly the same both ways. The only difference is when playing by yourself you can only win by surviving until the final round (6 AM) whereas with 2 players you only need to survive until the other player loses.
Strategic Depth Too Clever For It’s Own Good
It takes no time at all to learn how FNAF works, but its fairly substantial amount of forethought and concentration to actually succeed at the game. The trick to winning FNAF is figuring out where all your animatronics are and to keep track of them as they move from deck to deck, ensuring that they never reach your discard pile.
From right to left: your first deck starts with 0 animatronics, decks 2 and 3 each have 1, and the last deck starts with 2. The first time you flip a card and find an animatronic it’s essential to remember which one it was and where you saw it. You’ll be shuffling your decks constantly so there’s no way to know when it will pop up again, but that information is key to planning how and when you use your very limited energy.
Failing to react to an animatronic will cause it to move one deck closer to your discard. However, each turn you’ll be moving cards face down from deck to deck, so it’s really a game of making educated guesses about how many cards are moving from right to left and how frequently. At the beginning, you can afford to let things slide over, but as the animatronics start to bunch up and your energy runs out, every decision you make can be win or lose.
This design is what makes FNAF a complex and rewarding game, but I bizarre that a FNAF is so complicated. The recommended age on the box is 13+, which confused me. As I unpacked it and saw how few components were in it I was even more confused. But after playing a few games, it totally makes sense. This game requires antipating consequences and the ability to keep lots of things in mind at once. 13+ is the right age restriction for it, but I don’t think it’s right for a FNAF game.
My 10-year-old nephew LOVES Freddie, all of his friends do. He could not play this game. I’m well aware that the first FNAF game released in 2014 and those 10-year-olds are now 16-year-olds, but I don’t think FNAF is one of those properties that has grown up with its fans.
FNAF: Survive ‘Til 6AM is an incredibly successful translation of the source material and a surprisingly unique and complex game, but if you’ve got a little Freddie fan in your life, it may actually be too complex for them. 13+ is strongly reccomended.
