On January 21st 2017, Five Nights at Nutty's 2 began development with the help of Superlolzreddit- and Megaskullgames. Exactly two years later, on January 21st 2019, the game officially released after multiple development troubles and much procrastination.

On March 13th 2020, Mr. Nobo pitched to me and Doctor Raven the idea of a Five Nights at Nutty's remaster, an idea I quickly signed on board to and eventually grew into an entirely new re-imagining of the concept.

.........

So. What the hell happened?

Alright, let's cut to the chase: What happened was gameplay concerns. As I already alluded to in the Nutty's Game Night devlog, I've been struggling to figure out with how I want this game to play for the good part of two years now. There were key components there that have always been in place, but it was putting the puzzle pieces together that I really struggled with. The general plan has been restarted I think twice now, concepts for mechanics have been considered for months then thrown out, as have the ways that each character worked. I really want to nail this game, to make sure that it's spooky, sure, but also that it's fun to play. FNAN 1 and 2 are boring as hell. They had interesting ideas, but the way they were utilised made them a complete snorefest. That's the key thing I want to avoid with FNAN:R, I don't want it to be boring. And trying to find the right mixture of mechanics to prevent it from being boring....well, I think you get the point.

But it isn't just gameplay problems, there's been a lot of other little things that have slowed down progress of the game. Currently, the only people on the team are me, Mr. Nobo, Doctor Raven and Marp. Everyone else, while they do still get updated on progress with the game, left either due to other priorities or having nothing of note to do just yet. Even then, our current team isn't the most stable either. Mr. Nobo has been busy with University and working on other projects like Chomper's and POPGOES Evergreen, while Doctor Raven has been working on their own individual projects. I myself have also had to balance University with other projects such as Saving the Person, POPGOES Recoded, Riddle Reunion, and whatever else I feel like doing at the time. And I'm also lazy, so, y'know. So with a majority of the team being busy, it's been hard to get efficient work on the game done.

I would like to clarify though, one problem the game HASN'T been facing is an unclear vision. In November 2020, I honed down on the one thing, one word, that FNAN:R should focus on in its entirety. I'm not going to say what that word is, but almost everything in the game revolves around that theme. As such, like I said, we have key components to the game that aren't going to change; they're what make FNAN:R FNAN:R. Every once in a while, a return to the drawing board has been suggested. There was once a point in time where making Harry Hat the star of the restaurant was suggested, for example. But it always returns to the key ideas set back in July 2020. We know what we want this game to be. It's just the nitty gritty of what it'll be that's been tough.

So, that's the long and short of what happened. We know what FNAN:R is going to be, what it'll focus on. But knowing the exact details of the gameplay has been the challenge, and it's persisted for an extremely long time. But, of course, I wouldn't be saying all this if something hadn't changed. And lucky for all of us, something has.

Three weeks ago, I discussed the mechanics of FNAN:R with ZX Games and got some suggestions from him. At the end of it all, I left the conversation with one mindset: Trust my gut. Go with the first thing I think of for the characters to do, stick with it and hope for the best. Maybe if it was still July 2020 or so, I should still be trying to perfectly nail it down. But it's been two years since development started. It's time to get some god damn results. Because like Jonochrome (yeah yeah, i know) once said, if you keep trying to achieve this perfect game, it's never going to come. Eventually you've just gotta go with what you think are your best ideas. And so that's what I did.

A week ago, I finished programming for all the characters in the night gameplay. It's bare bones, and it lacks one crucial mechanic for the final game, but otherwise it's a way to finally analyse how the current ideas for the game work, to see if they're any fun at all. So that's what the next step is. I'm going to begin conducting some playtesting with people, getting their opinions on the gameplay and tweaking from there. After that, I suppose the next step is getting environmental work done. While we have a general idea of what it'll be like, there is nothing fully modelled of the environment yet. All we have is one (frankly incredible) piece of concept art from TigeraRainbowra for one specific room. So those are the next steps. Playtest, adjust the gameplay, get modelling.

I can't promise Five Nights at Nutty's: Reimagined will release any time soon. I really can't. For all I know, the playtest could be a disaster, and nobody enjoys it. But I'm confident in the ideas I currently have. I think if they work, they're really going to work. So I'm going to move forward with them, hope for the best, and finally begin focusing on other aspects of the game. I still stick by what I said on Twitter: If this game (or saving the person) haven't released by the end of this year, then something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Let's hope it doesn't.

....oh, and of course, it'd be a bit cruel to go all this time and leave you all with nothing to show. So....

More very soon.

https://twitter.com/FNANReimagined

- Sonnakai & Co.