DISCLAIMER - THIS POST WAS NOT MADE WITH THE INTENT TO TRASH ON PHANTRON, SANDWICHWARE OR ANY OF THE MEMBERS OF THE FAZBEAR FACILITY TEAM. THIS POST WAS MADE TO PROVIDE WITH CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM ON THE PROLOGUE OF FAZBEAR’S FACILITY, AND HOW THE FINAL GAME COULD BE IMPROVED. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

The Fazbear’s Facility is likely one of the most talked about upcoming FNaF Fangames yet. Now, contrary to most folks’ expectations, I was not looking forward to this game at all. I thought it looked bland, boring and would have contained most of the flagship problems that most FNaF Fangames had.

However, I was surprised during the FD2 live event, as the trailer for FF actually seemed promising. It had amazing cinematography, what looked to be fun gameplay and the inclusion of an all star voice cast.

However, upon playing Prolouge, I was met with a disappointing opening act to the game that only lowered my expectations and hype I had for the game even more.

THE POSITIVES

Believe it or not, I believe that there is good in every single bad project (unless you’re talking about the Avatar Last Airbender 2010 movie), and this is no exception.

For one, the graphical state of the game is incredible. I adore the character models, environments and animations present in the game. Every single character is made with a heartfelt passion to attention to detail, and it shows. The office, though it has a scary resemblance to the Phase 2 office (down to the fcking calendar), is the prime example of the great graphical quality of the game and the amazing attention to detail…I love it.

The soundtrack was also very impressive! Soundtrack is, in my opinion, 50% of a creative project. It determines the mood of a scene, and the emotions we should be feeling, and the tension rising. I feel like Phantron and his team were aware of this, and managed to pull it off. I loved the soundtrack.

The voice acting was also very impressive. I think Phantron has an all-star voice cast, filled with talented folks (DoggoMafia, Austin Adam, TVBunny, LMAO4DC etc.). He really struck gold with the cast, and I am looking forward to seeing their performance in the final game.

NEGATIVES

The gameplay is really boring. I know a lot of people are going to call me crazy that, after praising everything I just praised, I call the game terrible due to the gameplay. But let me remind you, folks. This is a game. If this were a short film, I would have been praising the fuck out of it because what I listed above is something needed more in film than in games. You can’t make a good game if the gameplay is bad, but you can make a good game if the gameplay is good but the graphics are bad. Just look at Pac Man.

The cameras are utterly useless. You can basically solo out this whole night without you even having to look away from Foxy’s hallway…and if that doesn’t sound bad, I don’t know what does. I know that there are gonna be users down below, commenting “but the cameras are probably gonna be useful later on!!!” Dude, I don’t know. I know there’ll be some “Come Find Me” mechanic judging by the trailer that will just be your standard hide & seek mechanic, but if you take that out, I doubt the mechanics will be of any importance. Chances are, they won’t even matter, and if that’s the case, you could as well have just wasted the time of several environmental modelers by making detailed environments that the player won’t have to look at once.

Then we have the gameplay mechanics for the animatronics, and this might be the most boring set of mechanics yet, and it also just suffers from “random thrown to the wall mechanics”. You got Bonnie, who you fend off by staring at him/staying still. Okay, okay, that’s normal, I guess. You could do something more original, but got it. Foxy is just FNaC3 Rat. You lost me. What are you doing?

How does that have to do with Bonnie’s mechanic? Why do basically plagiarize a mechanic from Candy’s 3? You should have come up with a creative idea rather than plagiarizing from someone else’s fangame. Not just that, but both of these mechanics have no cohesion whatsoever…they could come from different fangames and we wouldn’t have noticed. Oh, and let’s not forget, neither of these mechanics include the security cameras!

Honestly, I can see people defending this by saying “Oh, but perhaps they’ll become important later on!” But in all honesty, I doubt it. If the game is composed by random mechanics that all involve office gameplay, I doubt we'll see the cameras have a lot of prominence, except if there's a music box mechanic of sorts.

And also, can I say, I feel like I know exactly where the plot of this game is going by just looking at the marketing...seriously. For one, chances are, this is a Silent Hill 2 situation and Jackson's son is straight up dead, and possessing one of the animatronics. My money's on that he's either Freddy or The Marionette (if he is in the game, which he probably is). I would also count on the secret characters being the Fredbear's gang, because they're all over the marketing.

HOW TO IMPROVE ON THIS

I want to clarify that, although I may have sounded harsh, my intention was not to demotivate, but more so to motivate the developers to produce changes that could greatly help the final product, because what I love to see the most is seeing the success of others.

My first suggestion would involve adding a system of stages to your gameplay mechanics. These stages would be the following…cameras and office. The animatronics’ core mechanics would involve the security cameras, and you’d have to stop them from doing something within the facility. If they do this and you don’t stop them, they’ll go to your office. There, the animatronic has a harder mechanic to juggle that could test the player’s quick reflexes and quick thinking, being a punishment for not being able to stop the animatronic previously.

If you’re planning to do a boss fight (which I am 99% sure you will), try making it a test for the player’s skills and abilities that they’ve developed throughout the duration of the game. The reason why FNaTI’s boss fight was so effective in comparison to JR’s or Tealerland’s is because it was a final test, it really felt like a finale, whilst the latters fell flat in comparison and was the same thing as putting pineapple on a pizza.

I’d also suggest having Facility’s story have a use of psychological horror, the fear of the unknown and a mystery box factor to make it feel like an actual mystery rather than a predictable plot. I’d suggest studying the likes of Silent Hill, Jacob’s Ladder and Twin Peaks, as what you’re promising from your story has the potential to be similar in substance and style to these ones.

Well, folks.. that was my honest review of the Fazbear’s Facility’s Prologue. I’d honestly love to do more of these because this was actually kinda fun.

Anyway cya guys later I need to sleep.