Hello everyone, Philip Buchanon from… Nyctobloom Creations here. Man, it’s been way too long since I’ve last said that. I know Five Nights at Maggie’s 3 is almost out, and I STILL have yet t review Five Nights at Maggie’s 2, but man… I have been gone for the majority of 2022 and beyond, I’m gonna do a nice little return first with Five Nights at Maggie’s (2021)… And, let’s just say, I’ve replayed the game during parts of 2023 and 2024 and my opinion of it has changed drastically. But what are those opinions? Well, best to stop talking and start reviewing.

Five Nights at Maggie’s (2021) stats up with, of course, a warning about the game having flashing lights, loud noises, and of course, jumpscares. We are then greeted with the main title screen and goddamn do I love it. The eerie music, Maggie slowly approaching the 4th wall, the static getting louder and more visible as she gets closer, wonderful first impressions. The font seems to be the same as it has been in Five Nights at Maggie’s 4 (2020), but that’s not a big deal.

The first night begins, and we, in typical FNaF fashion, have a phone guy who pre-recorded a bunch of tapes for us to listen to, a bit illogical because phones don’t play tape audio but, whatever. FNaF logic. Once again, I won’t be 100% dissecting what the phone guy says and paraphrase his statements, basically, he states that he’s recording these tapes/calls for you, since we are likely to replace him, go figure. He then tells us that the animatronics tend to move, and there’s no explanation whatsoever other than a half-hearted one given out by the company about their inner components locking up, or whatever. And there are rumours too that the place may very well be haunted because the owner died here, who’s heavily implied to be named John McAdams, and his soul now possesses the building. But hey, those are just rumours. Would be pretty silly if they were real. Regardless, we are then told the mechanics of Five Nights at Maggie’s (2021), and then we are on our own for the remainder of the night.

Alright, sooo gameplay. In your office, you have a computer monitor in front of you, and you can press the numbers 1-7 on your keyboard to switch the cameras, or the visual buttons if you’re playing on mobile. I’ll be honest, I don’t like this mechanic, I still don’t. Sure, I’ve adjusted to it better than I thought I would, especially on mobile since the controls are basically identical to how they would be if they were traditional FNaF controls, but still. I’m guessing this was an attempt to make the game feel more realistic since cameras back then probably controlled like this, but it feels awkward and clumsy that I can’t just click on any camera I like on a whim. Regardless, it’s not THAT big of a deal, you’ll adjust to this perfectly fine… Barring maybe one mechanic, but I’ll get into that later. You can flick your mouse down, or tap down, to view the wide open vent under your desk, big enough to fit a whole person inside with zero vent covers! Typical FNaF shtick. We can even flash our flashlight there, I wonder if that’ll be relevant. Next, we can flick to our right to see the hallway that connects our office to the rest of the building. Once again, you can shine your flashlight here. And that’s all you can see in your office. No poster to honk on Maggie’s nose unfortunately…

 Now the animatronics. For the first night, there are THREE animatronics out to get you. Maggie, Lola, and Chanchi. Maggie and Lola are essentially the “Bonnie” of this game, they’re the common typical enemy in a Five Nights at Freddy’s style game. They will move from the main stage, and the make their way to your office. Unlike with most fnaf games however, I’d argue that Maggie and Lola’s paths are a bit different. You see, in most FNaF fan games, the animatronics would typically have a long path to get to you before they become an actual threat that you have to deal with. For example, Bonnie needs to get through the dining area, the left hall, the left hall corner, and then to your door before you have to deal with him. Sometimes, he may take alternate routes to the backstage, the janitor’s closet, or even take multiple different poses in the cameras. With Maggie and Lola however, they don’t have that much of a distance to go through. They start from the stage, they head to the arcade area, and they’re already in your side hall. As a result, they would appear in your office almost frequently, despite there only being two of them. I’m guessing this was intentional because, again, they’re the main threats, and 2/3 of this game’s threats are typically dealt with using the door which requires to be held down in order to stay close. It doesn’t take up power or anything, the only real limit is how long you can keep that thing pressed down. Surely, we can’t keep doing that right? That would make the game pathetically easy. Well, of course. There’s the next threat of Night 1, Chanchi. Chanchi works like Phantom BB and Foxy. He will appear in front of the cameras, no eyes and everything which looks pretty terrifying good job. Of course, you can combat Chanchi by either switching to another camera, looking away by going to your side door, or… You could just continue to stare at Chanchi. Of course, doing this will not result in an immediate game over, rather, Chanchi would start rushing to your side door, in order to deal with him, you simply shut the door on him for a whole second, and he’s just gone. No metal clanging or anything just gone. I’ve always liked this sequence, how freakishly well animated Chanchi moves in the hall, the set up with the Phantom BB styled, mechanic, the subtle but unnerving violin string that accompanies Chanchi running, seriously well done. Do I still genuinely find this scary after three years however…? No, unfortunately. I’ll get into that later. But, since every threat in Night 1 can be handled by simply closing the door on them… doesn’t this mean we could just keep the door shut until 6 AM for the remainder of the ni- Yes. Yes, you can. I’m not kidding, there’s no fail safe such as letting a later night animatronic activate in night 1 that you can’t deal with using the doors to circumvent that. As funny as this was, I didn’t mind it because this only works on Night 1. And I don’t mind FNaF styled games where you can basically beat Night 1 by doing almost nothing. FNaF 2 had that, FNaF 3 had that, and so on. Overall, barring the door exploit which only works here, I like the introduction.

Speaking of the introduction, I should probably speak about the presentation. I remember back then I spoke about how awesome the presentation was in Five Nights at Maggie’s ’21, and how it, to me, the atmosphere in the game had perfectly recaptured the vibe given off all the way back in the original Five Nights at Freddy’s in 2014. I’m so sorry to say… I no longer hold that opinion. Not that I think the presentation or atmosphere is terrible, I just don’t think it “perfectly replicated” what was present in FNaF 1 or anything in the classic mainline games. Buuut, it still has elements from those games. Namely, the buzzing if the sound, the hard metallic sound of the doors closing and opening that honestly sound like the have much more of an impact than the doors in Five Nights at Freddy’s 1, so props for the sound design on that one, your camera sometimes glitching out showing a distorted image of a man with the text “IT WORKED” flashing on the screen, weird faces can be seen when you flash your light at your side hall, the camera footage looking exactly like the video footage you would see back in the 80s, which this game was heavily implied to take place in, 1985 to be exact. I want to address a mistake I made regarding CCTVs, I used to think they were only made widely available in the very late 90s, despite being already made in the Second World War. This actually isn’t true, they were made widely available in the 70s and 80s soooo… Sorry. Back to presentation, I also liked the 90s arcade vibe the game gives off, with the font in some of the night transitions, and the alarm clock and music that plays at the end of each night. Might I need to mention again the violin string that plays when Chanchi comes after you in the hall? The jumpscares sounds are also well done too. I won’t critique the actual jumpscares themselves yet, but the noise is done well. It’s like in the classic Five Nights at Maggie’s games, where it sounds like a metallic screech, which I find fitting since, well, these are animatronics. I find the presentation to be good… Yet, a the same time… Kind of lacking? Mainly in the atmosphere department, which is why I don’t think this game did as good of a job at replicating the FNaF vibe from the mainline titles, and that’s because… Besides the sounds of the cameras switching, the violin screech when someone is running in the hall, the shunting sound of the door, and the clicking of your flashlight… The main nights are virtually quiet. The only real ambient noise, as far as I’m aware, is the constant buzzing of the fan on your desk. There’s no creepy distant humming, there’s no sounds of cars rushing by, there’s no random footsteps sounds… Actually, there kind of is when an animatronic leaves your door, but it’s so quiet and subtle. There’s no sounds of someone messing up in the kitchen, nothing. There’s no real ambiance in FNaM ’21. Where as in FNaF 1 for example, there were constant electrical whirring when you were in the cameras, the implied sounds of gum chewing whilst looking through said cameras, the unearthly sounds of the pizzeria, the random flashing hallucinations, seriously it was genuinely terrifying. None of those audible things are here, and I’m guessing they were left out in favour of getting straight to the point in FNaM ‘21’s gameplay, but I felt like they could’ve been awesome additions. But hey, at least the visual presentation is still pretty good. The Analog Horror and 90s arcade aesthetic is lovely and compliments the game well. The lighting has always been a major strength of the Five Nights at Maggie’s games, even since the first classic game in 2016, everything in terms of lighting looks grounded and realistic, the graphics themselves are also a major glow up from Five Nights at Maggie’s 4 (2020) and especially from FNaM ’16. While not fully replicating the Scott Cawthon style, the graphics still look amazing on their own right, again wit the realistic lighting, the textures on the the very detailed models, the actual rendered fir on the animatronics themselves, seriously it’s pretty epic. Overall, the presentation could’ve done more in terms of audio, but what IS there is amazing. Those Analog Tapes are also pretty banger. Oh yeah, the analog tapes…

In Between Nights 1 and 2, there is a cutscene that plays that takes the form of an analog video tape. Here, we can see the date of May 25 1978, and we can see what appears to be the backstage area in the main game. The sounds of electrical buzzing can be heard, and we can see some kind of light being flashed, with a shadow of an animatronic that can be seen in said light. I assume a bunch of sparks are going off. Soon, the lights keep flashing more and more, and we can see the animatronic starting to shake and shake more rapidly until it finally got up, to where it now cuts to a close up shot of presumably the animatronic in question, which seems to be a damaged eyeless animatronic with brown fur. And just like that, the end of night 1, and night 2 begins. There are more analog tapes in later nights, but we’ll move on to them later.

Night 2 begins, and we get a new call from our buddy from yesterday. He doesn’t say anything else lore related, but he does mentions the mechanics of night 2 before signing off. Sooo, gameplay of Night 2. The newcomer animatronics, Hank and Flower. How do they work? Well, they are on stage most of the time, but occasionally they would leave stage, and you would go have to “find” them. I put find in quotations because, if and when they do leave, you can always tell where they went because there’ll be a caution sign right next to the camera button that surveys the room they’re in. The phone guy states that the caution sign only seems to appear when you actually see that Hank or Flower left the stage, but I dunno, from what I can tell, the caution sign appears regardless. He also states that watching them seems to stall them for a little bit. I’m not sure if this also applies to Maggie and Lola, but since this logic also sort of applied to the mainline games, I’m just going to assume it does. If you catch Hank or Flower on camera, they leave back to the main stage. If not, they would then proceed to move to the vent below your desk. At that point, you need to duck under your desk and flash them to make them go away. After that, it’s recommended that you check the stage again regardless, because there’ll be a small chance that they actually hadn’t left the vent completely, and will come back to try to break your legs again. At that point, you must keep flashing the vent until you can see that they’ve retreated back to the stage. I don’t know how your flashlight can affect the ones in the vent, but not in the hall, barring maybe Chanchi since he’s, you know, running. But I’ll just assume they were coded to be stopped by the flashlight as some kind of security measure, since these two were apparently programmed to be “hide n seek” players, hence their mechanic. The owner and, I assume creator, John McAdams, seems to be a technology genius after all. Just make sure that both don’t go in the vents at the same time, or else the end will result in your player character’s organs getting sucked out of their arse. Say, I just thought of this… Why are they trying to kill you? I don’t think it was stated by phone guy whatsoever, other than “the spirit of the owner is possessing this restaurant”, but… What does that mean? He wants to… Get revenge? On some new employee? Why? It’s a mystery in Five Nights at Maggie’s ’21, and I think there were answers and clues given in FNaM 2’ 23 and the upcoming FNaM 3, but I won’t comment there because I’m looking at the games based on their own lore, and not how it connects to the rest of the series. I also won’t be discussing theories as… they’re theories, and anything could be possible when it comes to theories. Sooo, yea, moving on back to gameplay, I didn’t mind this mechanic. It’s a pretty unique mechanic, one that I don’t think I see often in most FNaF styled games. I don’t mind FNaF fan games borrowing mechanics from the mainline entries, as long as they at least have their own spin, or don’t coincidentally borrow every single mechanic from one singular game. Five Nights at Maggie’s of course, doesn’t do this, which I love. Of course, I didn’t mind Hank and Flowers mechanic… On their own. When combined with Maggie, Lola, and ESPECIALLY Chanchi however… That’s where things get problematic. But, it wasn’t that much of an issue in Night 2, so we’ll discuss that later. Overall, Night 2? Not bad, a pretty good night.  

There’s no analog video cutscene in between Night 2 and 3, so we’re moving on.

Night 3, we’re now halfway done with the game. We get one more phone call, where the guy states that there’s essentially nothing else we need to worry about, besides maybe one more animatronic. Guppy from CAM 3, backstage. Oh hey, it’s the brown furry animatronic we saw at the end cutscene of night 1. Guppy essentially works like Foxy from FNaF 1. You need to keep an eye on him to keep him at bay in Parts and Services, the less you look at him, the more he moves. He will constantly move more and more away from his initial spot in the Backstage, until he starts making a mad dash for your office. That’s basically it for Night 3 in terms of new mechanics. I used to think Guppy’s mechanic wasn’t good as good or scary as how Chanchi was done. Now however? I’d say, maybe at first I did think that considering Chanchi had a great and unique setup, whereas Guppy felt more random if you’re not constantly looking at him, and his setup is practically 1:1 with Foxy. But later, I would soon find Guppy’s mechanic to be better, despite not being as cool on paper, and I’ll let you know why once we’re in Night 4 and onwards. Overall though, Night 3, not that bad. But I have noticed that the mechanics are starting to really clash with each other, which can sometimes cause me some near death experiences in the game at least once or twice in Night 3. I wonder if this’ll cause me problems in the later nights where they become more aggressive.

After Night 3, we get another cutscene ala Night 1’s post night cutscene. We get an analog video of the backstage, with the date June 3 1981 being displayed. We once again we can hear stuff being shuffled in the background, soon those sounds start to become more and more quiet and subtle, until a crash of some kind can be heard, before the video feed cuts to black, and the video ends.

Now, Nights 4 and 5… Besides the phone guy giving us one last word of wisdom in the beginning of Night 4, these nights aren’t that different to me so I’ll just mesh them together. So, in the beginning of Night 4, we get our last call from Phone Guy, stating he got fired for tampering with the animatronics AI, and that if we wanna get fired, we basically now know how. Well, at least he didn’t die at the hands of the animatronics, which would honestly be the most cliché thing they could’ve pulled off, hope you found good work elsewhere buddy. Sooo, nights 4 and beyond, aren’t much different, other than they’re more difficult. And let’s just say, this is where I began to really feel the intensity of this game. I remember back in my ranking of the FNaM games in difficulty, I said that FNaM ’21 was easy as fuck. Looking back, I really want to question what my mind was thinking back then. FNaM ’21 is a lot of things, “easy” is not one of them. Night 4 and 5, aren’t the most difficult things in the world, but they will challenge you. They’ll challenge your reflexes hard. Let’s start with the main offenders, Nights 4 and 5 is where I began to absolutely get annoyed by the mechanics of Hank, Flower, and Chanchi. Again, Hank and Flower would sometimes leave the stage, and then go into hiding somewhere in the restaurant, again, finding them won’t be an issue because the camera systems themselves would tell you outright where they are. What’s the issue with that though? Chanchi. Sometimes, he could appear in the exact same location as Hank or Flower, and that’s problematic because you need to keep your camera onto Hank or Flower in order for them to go away. Now thankfully, you can just turn to your side door, and that bypasses Chanchi while also still keeping the camera onto Hank/Flower, which also can cause a visual glitch on mobile where the camera static will be seen… in the hallway. And once you get back to your camera, Chanchi won’t be there anymore, and you can continue camping on the stage camera to keep an eye on Hank or Flower. And, here's the fun part, Hank and Fower’s AI can be quite the fickle thing. Sometimes, Hank and Flower can be hella aggressive. So much so, that there’ll be times where you’ve sworm you’ve dealt with them already, and they’ve already left the stage again regardless. Sometimes you have just diverted your attention away from them for one second when the caution sign appears in he cameras, and they’re already in the vent, while other times, you can ignore them for a few seconds and still come back to them and see that they’re still in the room they were hiding in. Because of that, I can’t help but just constantly camp on the main stage to stall them q bit longer and to make sure I don’t get screwed over, but that’s problematic with Chanchi. You see, unlike with Phantom BB where he only appears if you click on a camera, or pull up the tablet, Chanchi will appear in random times, even if you didn’t select a different camera. In other words, you could be staying in one camera altogether, and Chanchi would be right there to screw you over. So combine his mechanic of being a distraction on the camera, as well as Hank and Flower’s finicky AI, yep… We’re in for one hell of a ride boys, girls, and my non-binary twirls… I can’t believe I just said that. And it’s not just those three, I have issues with, it’s Maggie and Lola too. Because they’re more active, and because the distance between the stage and your office hall isn’t that far off, they’ll be appearing much more often on your doorstep. This can put a lot of pressure on you, which is probably why I died a lot on Night 4 and especially Night 5. Sometimes, Maggie and Lola will leave your door for about a second and a half, other times, they’ll just outright camp there ala Chica in FNaF 1. And since the door needs to be held shut, and Hank and Flower can appear on your vent, wuh who. This doesn’t happen often thankfully, but man it can be stressful when it does. It’s probably why I didn’t find Chanchi that scary anymore since I’ve seen Chanchi’s setup so many times, and his penalty for not clicking away being relatively easy to deal with, I guess I grew numb to him. Whereas with Guppy, his running animation and violin string would play regardless if you were looking down in the hall or not, and, especially if you were not looking at him in the cameras that often like I was, it makes him come up more unexpectedly, which I think has more of a long term impact than Chanchi. His running is still goofy to look at though. I wouldn’t call this game completely RNG based like FNaF 2 or JOLLY 3, because there were some things Manuel did to make sure this doesn’t happen. For starters, Chanchi would take a second and a half before actually charging at you in the hall, Maggie and Lola would appear on the back end of the hall first before being directly at your doorstep, meaning you can anticipate them coming to you, and again with the caution sign in the cameras for Hank and Flower. At this point, RNG is not what you need, you just need to have really quick reaction time. This can lead to the last two nights of Five Nights at Maggie’s being insanely intense, but hey some might find some appeal in this. I did. Sometimes, Hank and Flower both would be in their hiding positions, and then Chanchi would be there to screw me over, until I moved away in time, and get the sound prompt (and visual bug) that Hank and Flower have been kept at bay, while seeing Maggie or Lola at my door, or hear a violin string playing indicating that Guppy is running to my office, only to then shut the door on him, only to then realize I’ve also dealt with Maggie or Lola at the same time. Moments like those make you feel satisfied as fuck, like you killed multiple birds in one stone and dodged multiple bullets at the same time.

So, yea. Those are the ends of Night 4 and 5, and we’re treated to one final cutscene.

This time, the video is dated August 27 1982, where we can hear some metallic shuffling. This time it sounds even louder, and much more violent. But then, it starts getting slowly more quiet, until a jumpscares occurs of a seemingly damaged animatronic with human eyes stares daggers at the camera. The feed cuts to black, with yellow text saying “It worked Henry”, “You tried to stop me and you failed”, “Now the experiment is complete”, and “All thanks to you”.

After that, we receive our paycheck for the week, which reveals that we are named Stephen Caddel, and have earned $100.50, even by mid 80s standards, I sure do hope that was worth it. This officially marks the end of Five Nights at Maggie’s (2021).

Oookay, we all know that’s not really the end. Because there’s a Night 6! And as expected, Cerdi. One of the major antagonists from the classic Five Nights at Maggie’s series, is back and like in the original 2016 version, will act as the main antagonist in this night, like how he was back in Night 5 on that 2016 version. And if there’s one word I can use to describe Cerdi, it’s “janky”. Cerdi, is aggressive as heck, yet acts exactly like everyone else. But everyone else is inactive, so maybe that’s why he was made so aggro. Cerdi will sometimes appear in the door or vent, you need to close the door on him. Sometimes, he can appear too fast for you to react, other times he’ll be in your vent, and unlike Hank or Flower where they’ll sometimes come back in the vent, Cerdi is 100% going to come.back in the vent immediately, where you’ll have to fight him back a couple of times before he leaves for good. His animation of his being in the vent after leaving looks so abrupt. He’ll sometimes retreat back into the Backstage where he’ll go into three different positions before heading to your door or vent. And by the way, there is no indication as to where he may end up being so you may get screwed when you check the vent first, only to find out he’s at your door or vice versa. And since he’s fast, there’s no room for error. I basically would just look at the vent first before immediately checking the door right after. Once Night 6 ends, you get a newspaper detailing that the restaurant owner, Robert Madden had been shot in the forehead with the safe being hacked open with the contents being emptied out, and our protagonist Stephen Caddel is suspected to be the perpetrator as he was the only one present in the building at the timez together with Robert. Now this is where FNaM ’21 truly ends, unless you want to take Custom Night into account. But honestly, I’d rather not as, while it is implied to be canon, you’re not missing much in terms of lore when you do beat it. Sooo, yea. This ending obviously gives us more questions than answers. Was it really Stephen that killed Madden? Why was the safe box emptied? What was in there? Was Madden aware of Cerdi or even the other animatronics wondering around trying to kill us and the previous guard? Was McAdams the one possessing Cerdi? Why? There are many theories talking about the ending, and possibly details in FNaM 2 and the teasers for FNaM 3 that she’d more light into the ending but, again, I’ll get to those when I actually review those games.

The story in Five Nights at Maggie’s (2021), works as a setup for the series in my opinion, and nothing else. Therefore, I don’t feel much for the story. It works as a setup, and that ending is quite the interesting twist, even if I think things went from 10-100. The gameplay still is good, it can be intense, and depending on the player, incredibly stressful and not always in a good way, but it’s still fun in it’s own right. I can appreciate the effort put into the game, from the stylish colourful visuals of the 80s, the look of the restaurant, the models and texturing of the animatronics, it’s amazing. While I still think the audio presentation could be drastically improved, the existing sound design is still great stuff. Do I still think it’s the best Five Nights at Freddy’s fan game to ever exist? Ehhhh, no… I don’t even think it’s the best in the series. But it’s still an objectively high quality fan game that I think is still work checking out if you’re a fan of the franchise, and is a wonderful glow up from FNaM ’16 and FNaM 4 ’20.

Welp, that’s it. I’m so sorry to everyone for constantly delaying my review for Five Nights at Maggie’s 2, and especially for disappearing for the majority of 2022 and onwards. But, for my next review, I’m going to focus completely on it. Next time we meet, I’ll be reviewing Five Nights at Maggie’s 2 (2023), and may even compare it to it’s 2016 counterpart. Until then, this is Philip Buchanon from Nyctodre-, Oh wait, I can’t say that anymore. Hm. This is Philip Buchanon from Nyctobloom Creations signing off, take care everyone.

Wait a minute, there's no poster to honk Maggie's nose though to make a squeaking noise. Well then, this game is a complete flop. 0/10 not recommended /j