One Night at Smiley's

made in...

One Night at Smiley's began as a personal challenge: could I make a game using Clickteam's notoriously restrictive Free Edition? For those unfamiliar, the Free Edition is a true test of patience, imposing severe limitations like a strict object limit, a mere three frames, and laughably tiny memory capacity. Unsurprisingly, the original game turned out to be garbage. Part of the joke was that the engine was so bad you could only make a mess, but it didn't stop me from getting really frustrated over time that the original "One Night with Smiley" was basically slop. I always aim to never make slop.

So, I decided to give Free Edition another shot and remake the game with better visuals, better mechanics, and overall just make it a better game, determined to give the game justice. I managed to get past the menu and even start on the office frame, but then it happened: before I could even reach the 6 AM frame, I ran out of memory.

I was absolutely pissed. This forced me to switch to the full version of Clickteam much earlier than anticipated. For context, the Free Edition only lets you export projects as HTML5 games, which are notoriously buggy when coming from Clickteam's Free Edition. I'd originally tried to upload the original "One Night with Smiley" as an HTML5 game, but it literally broke the moment you clicked "New Game." So, I had no choice but to move that project to the normal Clickteam just to export a functional .exe. I didn't see that as cheating then, as nothing was changed; the game was still made within the Free Edition's limits, and nothing was improved.

This time, the switch happened even sooner. My original intention was to finish the entire game in the Free Edition and then, only at the very end, move it to the full version solely for .exe export. However, I hit that memory wall at around 50% completion, leaving me no option but to finish development in the full release of Clickteam.

So, is this cheating? That's up to you to decide. Personally, I don't think so. Since I was forced to switch so early, I did go ahead and add one single feature that wouldn't have been possible in the Free Edition: a fullscreen toggle.

Other than that, the game was completed entirely with the Free Edition's limitations still in mind. I added absolutely nothing else that I couldn't have done in the Free Edition. This means:

• No save system.

• No fancy fading transitions.

• Only three frames with extremely simplistic code to avoid hitting that memory ceiling.

All those original limitations are still present, and the core gameplay was never altered; it was always designed within those strict confines. So, whether you consider my methods cheating or not is entirely your call. All I know is, I had no choice because, well... Free Edition sucks.

Credits

@MrMalos - Game.

FunWithSound - 6AM Music.

Tags

#fnaf #horror #fangame #other