The Return to Freddy's Classic
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 This is what happens when you attempt to fool people into believing this is an actual game of an actual franchise than something fan-made.
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The Return To Freddy's (previously called Five Nights at Freddy's 3 and later Five Nights at Freddy's 3 Fan-Made) is a 2014 point-and-click horror Five Nights at Freddy's fan game developed by BFPFilms424. It was released on December 23rd, 2014 as Five Nights at Freddy's 3 to fool people into believing this was the real FNaF 3, but once it spawned controversies, it was later changed to Five Nights at Freddy's 3 Fan-Made before Scott Cawthon, the creator of Five Nights at Freddy's, asked BFPFilms424 to change the name, otherwise it would have been taken down. The game was rereleased on January 5th, 2015 titled The Return To Freddy's. The game garnered extremely negative reviews from fans of the Five Nights at Freddy's series and it's often cited as one of the earliest examples of awful FNaF fan games.
Why It Got Jumpscared
- As mentioned above, the biggest problem with the game is that not only it was intended to fool people into believing this was the real Five Nights at Freddy's 3, but it was also made to capitalize on the success of Five Nights at Freddy's 2, which was released a month prior to this game, and it worked. This also led to Scott Cawthon asking BFPFilms424 to change the name to avoid confusion and controversies.
- As mentioned in WIGJ#2, the game stole Candy from Emil Macko, which as a result made the latter angry and told the developer to remove it. Despite removing it, the developer showed to not handle criticism, as when he updated the game, the was a secret code where he outright insulted Emil Macko. Granted, the latter wasn't much better, since he literally sent hate a mob after BFPFilms424, but it's still immature.
- Another major problem with the game is that it features a lot of stolen assets from Five Nights at Freddy's 1 and 2 and even runs on those games' codes. The game is also not afraid of stealing other fan games' assets, with the most notable example being Sugar, which was directly stolen from Emil Macko. Because of that, it was later removed once the name changed to The Return to Freddy's.
- The jumpscares are ripped off from Five Nights at Freddy's 2, with barely any changes. In fact, the only new stuff was Bonnie's jumpscare (who now has his face fixed, which as a result looks uncanny) and Sugar's jumpscare, which doesn't even scare at all due to it being poorly made and it was based on Toy Bonnie's jumpscare.
- The way the developer mixed the assets is also terrible, as the game badly mixes various things such as the poster from Camera 2A and lazily puts the render of the Marionette in various cameras.
- Despite running on the original FNaF games' codes, it uses The Games Factory 2 engine, which is severely stripped down compared to Clickteam Fusion 2.5. As a result, certain issues are caused by the limitations of this engine.
- Although most fan games have gameplay similar to the original games, they still put original stuff to differentiate from the original games, so it feels less repetitive and more fun. But here, the gameplay is uninspired and generic that's directly stolen from FNaF 1 and FNaF 2. Keep in mind that the demo of Five Nights at Treasure Island was released 5 days prior and had more original and creative gameplay, making this unexcusable.
- Speaking of stolen gameplay, the game tries to mix both gameplays from Five Nights at Freddy's 1 and 2. While it sounds like an interesting idea, it doesn't really work because both gameplays don't mesh well at all, since in FNaF 1 you just have to use the doors to block the animatronics from jumpscaring you, while in FNaF 2 you have to use a mask and a flashlight. Both work very differently and mixing them wouldn't make sense.
- Mixing them is also very useless since the doors don't even work at all in the game (As mentioned in WIS#15), making the entire idea pointless.
- Ugly, bad and outdated graphics despite stealing them from Five Nights at Freddy's 1 and 2 (both of which had good graphics). This is due to the mishmash of those games such as mixing the assets and not properly placing them, which can lead to issues such as visible white lines.
- The broken doors (the ones added in The Return to Freddy's) are absolutely hideous due to them being poorly placed and extremely lazy, as all the developer did was just putting them and removing some parts to make them look broken, but of course it failed miserably.
- Due to the mishmash of the assets, the animatronics have inconsistent designs. In the cameras, they have their FNaF 1 designs, looking like they're fixed, but once they enter the office, they have use their FNaF 2 designs. This is very noticeable with Foxy, who uses his original design when he enters the office but when he jumpscares you, he uses the FNaF 2 design.
- The game suffered from multiple bugs and glitches to the point of making it borderline unplayable.
- The most notorious example is Freddy's mask. If you can manage to listen the Phone Guy (read WIS#5), you can understand that he tells that you have to put the mask instantly and use it with one animatronic at a time. But the problem is that the mask has a timer and if you use it more than it needs, you will still fail. It doesn't help the fact that the developer actually decided to bring back the toxic meter, which was scrapped from FNaF 2, making it more harder than it needs to be.
- The Phone Guy, at least in the original games, is an iconic character that does his best to inform players how to survive the night, and he actually does it decently. But the Phone Guy in this game is barely understandable due to him making a lot of noises when talking and doesn't properly explain how to survive the night, along with Tyler's awful voice acting that tries way too hard to sound like a serious worker but fails miserably. It's also worth mentioning that this game came out before captions existed in a FNaF game, so there's no way to easily understand what he says.
- Due to the outdated graphics, uninspired gameplay, inconsistent animatronics designs and laughable jumpscares, the atmosphere is terrible (if you can even call it atmosphere) and the game is hardly scary and doesn't even attempt to scare you.
- Speaking of explaining how to survive, the game never bothers to tell you how to avoid the Puppet. What you're supposed to do is using the mask immediately, but because of how broken the mechanic is, it's almost impossible to avoid her.
- The story is downright messy, filled with plot holes that contradict the newspaper and also the lore. Some of the plot holes are directly caused by the stolen assets. Examples include:
- The newspaper mentions that the animatronics are all repaired and fixed but Bonnie still has his missing left arm, due to the developer taking Withered Bonnie for the game and the only thing he fixed is Bonnie's missing face. In addition, Chica and Foxy didn't change at all from their Withered designs from FNaF 2.
- Foxy blindly believes that Mike with Freddy's mask is actually Freddy, even though in FNaF 2, he knows the Night Guard that wears Freddy's mask isn't really him.
- The Marionette also blindly believes that Mike with Freddy's mask is actually him.
- The animatronics have no AI whatsoever. Instead, they all have a pre-set path and they don't go whenever they want. If the player easily notices this, they can easily cheese the game and easily predict where they go.
- Lockjaw's introduction in this game is very poor. Its design is very awful and lazy and is essentially a silhouette of the Puppet but it's entirely black and has a hat on his head. The cutscene also heavily plagiarizes FNaF 2's starting cutscene when you open the game.
- Even though Lockjaw is incredibly popular, he was actually created as a self-insert of the creator of the series Tyler Ahlström, and this issue persisted during the entire franchise. This shows how egotistical he is.
- The doors are absolutely useless, as they don't stop the animatronics. There's no reason for them to exist, since the animatronics can still enter in your office.
Redeeming Qualities
- The game introduced one of the most iconic animatronics in the series: Lockjaw, who was later used in The Return to Freddy's 3.
- Thankfully, there's an unofficial version of the game that fixes numerous bugs and glitches called The Return to Freddy's Recoded, which you can find it here. It fixes major issues such as the mask not working properly and also adds the animatronics AI.
- The game would later gain a cult following and receive numerous fan remakes, including one well-done remake called The Return to Freddy's Rebuilt, a fan game that remade the original game from scratch. Unfortunately, it was later removed from GameJolt due to the developer's controversies.
- There's also another remake called Another TRTF1 Remake: Overdone!, which not only fixes the game's major problems, but it also adds some new stuff to make it more original and enjoyable.
- Kudos should be given to this game, due to it being one of the first FNaF fan game series ever.
Reception
When it was initially called Five Nights at Freddy's 3, many people were actually fooled by this and gave it a try. However, it garnered negative reviews due to it being a scam and the fact that it steals tons of assets, uninspired gameplay, no guide whatsoever and the nonexistent AI of animatronics. Even after changing the name, it still garnered negative reviews, mostly because of the game having tons of bugs and glitches. Despite the negative attention it gained, it would also gain a cult following (as mentioned above) and numerous remakes were made. The game has been often cited as the black sheep of the Five Nights at Freddy's fan games and also listed as one of the most infamous fan games of the franchise and gained an infamous legacy.
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