We restart the game and we’re face to face with Maggie again. This type, we select the manual. The manual seems vaguely vandalized, the text written information was marked out by red marker, with new written text likely done by said red marker taking its place. Now, there’s a lot of information dump here, so I’ll just paraphrase what’s happening. We appear to be trying to sabotage the animatronic to some degree, we are taking off the chestplate, cutting and reconnecting the wires to some kind of energy zap system that takes a while to charge. Remember that piece of information. Once it’s fully charged, we can press SPACE to zap the animatronic. When we do so, a loud shocking noise occurred, and the screen flashes white before fading to black. 7 white rectangular dots can be seen, before one fades away. After this, an 8bit cutscene occurs. It states the time is 7:48 AM, it’s May 9 1985. The scene cuts into some kind of room. A rugged bearded man enters, covered in blood. Lamenting that he “has all the things”, but feels he needs to give up, go into hiding again, as “he” is now trapped, unable to do anything. The cutscene ends. We are then put into Night 1.

After beating Night 1, we are presented with the repair minigame again. This time with Bob. We open the animatronic parts, cut some wires and reattach them to our energy charge pad, and then try to charge said pad. Only one tiny difference… We now hear something to our right. Upon checking, Endo/Cerdi is now agro, and it seems it’s now trying to prevent us from charging Bob. You can keep him away by using the flashlight on him. He will periodically come from time to time to try and impede your progress while you try to charge your energy pad until you finally fully charge it and zap Bob into oblivion. The screen flashes white, fades to black, and the now 6 dots turn to five as the once 2nd dot fades away.

A new 8bit cutscene plays. It’s 17:08, March 31st 1992. Two characters can be seen this time, one bald ginger moustache character, another one being dark skinned. The two characters, the ginger moustache being Aaron (presumably the same Aaron being mentioned throughout the series), and the dark skinned being Steve (Wait, Steve Genaro from the classic series?). Aaron prepares tea while Steve asks to read the newspaper. As he reads, he learns of a new incident regarding “The Frankenstein”. For those who don’t know, The Frankenstein is a nickname given to the alleged serial killer responsible for the murders of the four children who are heavily implied to be possessing Lola, Chanchi, Hank, and Flower. According to said FNaM 2 teaser and the newspaper that Steve is reading, it was once considered that John McAdams was indeed the Frankenstein killer since the killings stopped right around when he was found dead, only for another victim to be found dead in the John McAdams warehouse (the same location in FNaM 2), whose name is Lester Arias, the victim who is implied to have possessed Jerry. This was years after McAdams kicked the bucket, so now authorities have effectively ruled him out, and now the public suspect that it was likely John’s own son instead, Henry McAdams. Aaron, with the tea suddenly being finished, just suddenly interrupts Steve and asks him to leave since he “needs to finish some work for tomorrow”, and apologizes to Steve for making him come to his home. Steve then wishes Aaron well and proceeds to leave. After Steve leaves, Aaron reaches to the newspaper that Steve read, and laments to himself that “he” didn’t stop, not even in “his body”, and that he now needs to stop “him”.

This cutscene is most likely showing what was happening with Aaron before the events of Five Nights at Maggie’s 2. Can I just say how much I really like the sound design in this cutscene? The constant ticking of the clock, which is also reflected in the minigame clock itself (even if the clock show’s 5 PM and not 5:08 as stated earlier), the whistling of the kettle getting louder and louder as Steve reads the newspaper, it’s pretty good stuff! I also really like the implication is likely reading the same newspaper article shown in Five Nights at Maggie’s 2’s teasers. Way to finally tie things together!Also, is it just me? Or does Aaron look like Baldi with a mousta-

Night 2 begins, we beat Night 2, and then we move on to repair Lolo. Once again taking off parts of him, cutting some wires, and reconnecting them to our shock pad, and then we have to charge said pad. Unfortunately for us, the endo is back and is attempting to kill us as we do so, and is now more active than ever. We keep warding him off, and then we finally shock Lolo. From this point on, every minigame is like this, so I won’t go into too much detail.

We finish the repair, and we move on to Cutscene 3. It’s 16:13, on the 2nd of June 1981. The story takes place outside the diner, presumably Maggie’s Magical World, with cars running by in front of the restaurant. We see two individuals in front of us, what seems to be an adolescent brunette male, and a young blonde female with a red balloon. The former is Henry, the latter is Stacy. They have a small talk. Normally, I’d paraphrase... But this time, I want to say the whole dialogue because this, to me at least, is a genuinely wholesome and emotional scene. I don’t think me just paraphrasing everything will do this scene justice. The writing isn’t out of this world or anything, but it is something I really like for some reason.

Both Henry and Stacy make it to the entrance of the restaurant, while walking Henry asks Stacy “So, did you have fun?” with Stacy cheerfully answering back “Yes, I had so much fun!”, with Henry then saying “Okay let’s go, dad is waiting for us”, ushering her to come to dad quickly who’s presumably in the restaurant. But before that happens, “Wait… Henry… Can I ask something?” asks Stacy. Henry kneels before her and asks back “Yes Stacy? What’s happening?”. Stacy, being a bit hesitant to ask says “Uhm… Where’s my Mom?” with Henry awkwardly saying “Oh…” in response. Stacy continues saying “All the other kids in the birthday had moms, but I never had one. Why?”. Trying to come up with some kind of answer that wouldn’t devastate the young girl, he said in response “Well uhm… Let’s just say… She went to heaven after you were born”. “Heaven? Like, she can fly?” Stacy asks curiously. “Something like that yes” Henry responds. “But why?” Stacy asks back. “Well… She got a little bit sick. So she went to heaven to get some help from God”. Henry continues. “Wow… Will she ever come back?” Stacy asks. “Come back? She is always with us, you just don’t see her.” Henry replies to her question. “She is always taking care of us, and making sure that we are safe” he continues. “One day we will see her again, but we will have to wait for that.” He elaborates further. “Wow! That’s so cool!” Stacy innocently exclaims in joy. After that conversation, Henry tries to rush back to his father saying “Okay now let’s…” Before getting interrupted by a question by Stacy “Wait… Did she love me?” With Henry kneeling once again, assuring her by saying “Love you? More than anything in the world Stacy. She wouldn’t stop holding and kissing you when you were a baby.” “You were her precious baby girl.” “Before she went to heaven, she made me and dad promise her that you were always gonna get the life and love you deserve.” “And that’s what we are doing everyday.” With cheerful excitement, Stacy responds with “Wow! Thank you mom! I’m having so much fun with them.” Presumably trying to speak to her Mom as she’s “with them always and we just don’t see her”. Unfortunately, here cheerfulness fades as she says “But dad is always busy… Maybe he doesn’t love me”. Henry trying to comfort Stacy, says “Hey, don’t say that. Dad loves you with all his heart. He would do anything for you, no matter what”. “He is just a little busy right now. But when he is with you, he gives you everything you want, right?” Stacy answers “Yeah…” Henry continues “That’s why he loves you. Don’t ever think otherwise.”. Stacy then follows up with “Okay… Does he love you too?” Instead of answering however, Henry just says “It’s getting late now, we should go inside. Dad’s waiting for you.” With Stacy obediently saying “Okay!”. They were both about to enter the restaurant to meet their father, John McAdams, only something bad happens… Stacy lost control over her balloon, and she tries to get it back. Unfortunately, her balloon ended up floating around the road where there are cars passing by. Henry tries to stop her but unfortunately… As Stacy tries to get her balloon back, a car passes down the road… The screen turns to black.

Okay, again, this isn’t really what I call “the pinnacle of video game dialogue” or whatever, it is a rather simple cutscene. But dammit, I can’t deny, I’m a sucker for this scene and stuff like it. We actually have a cutscene that at least gives some kind of casual personality with these characters who are supposedly very important to the plot… That isn’t locked behind some kind of book or external media. Seriously, if there’s something I remember that was solely missing from the original FNaF games, it’s how almost no character in the game had any personality, all the characters are just… “There”. Mentioned in newspapers, portrayed by Atari 2600 styled minigames, and nothing more. Some consider this good because it allows people to make up their own interpretation of each character and it all could be fitting since they’re all blank slates, for me, if not for the minigames and music choices (I’ll further get into that whenever I review the FNaF series), I almost… Don’t really have a reason to care for any character in the game whatsoever. Phone guy mainly, but that’s because he’s the character who, at the time, spoke or had any proper dialogue until FNaF4. Maybe 3 if you wish to count Phone Dude. Here though? We get actual personalities of the characters, we see them having a conversation an older brother and young sister would have, talking about their parents and whatnot. And how it all just end abruptly with a tragic scene. Again, this isn’t much, many fan games and even games did this before but again… I’m quite the sucker for these scenes.

It’s also a bit weird for me to bring this up now but, I also thought to myself that this is where Manuel really improved his dialogue writing from the Classic series. I know it’s a bit unfair to compare since the classic series was made when Manuel was just a teen whereas he’s in his early 20s now, but I can’t help but see how far he’s come after reading the tutorial dialogue from FNaM 2c and looking at this.

Anyways, moving on. We finish Night 3, we zap Crackie, and move on to the next cutscene.

It’s the Third of June 1981, 2:14 AM. Once again, I will not paraphrase. I will directly quote the conversation since there isn’t much in terms of dialogue. But it is still important dialogue.

“Dad… Where am I?” “My body hurts.” Stacy groans.

“I know, Stacy… I know.” As someone replies, most likely John.

“Don’t worry, you’ll feel better very soon.”

“Dad, I’m scared.” Stacy whimpers.

“I know, just don’t worry.” “Here, take this.” “You’ll get sleepier” “You’ll fall sleep” “And you’ll wake up better than ever.” “In a new and improved body” “And nothing will ever hurt you again”. After this conversation, blue sparks occur. We can briefly see a man with black hair, alone with what seems to be the corpse of Stacy connected to some wires. After that, we see the corpse had likely turned into ashes with the man, who we know at this point is John, sitting there sobbing in despair, along with a Maggie animatronic standing in the room. The cutscene ends shortly after. This confirms that Stacy had in fact possessed Maggie, the titular “antagonist” of this series.

We begin and finish night 4, repair Rolf, and move on to Cutscene 5.

May 9 1985, 7:10 AM. We see some kind of cutscene where there’s a man with gray hair on the office desk. A brunette man in blue clothing comes into the room. The gray man then talks to the blue man and refers to him as Stephen, telling him he’s busy and that he should speak to the gray man’s secretary for a meeting, only for “Stephen” to then pull a gun on him. After that, the manager/gray man, whose name is Robert Madden, just tells him that we have no money anywhere for him to take (that’s bullshit, this is a restaurant/business but okay). Only, “Stephen” doesn’t actually want the money and wants something else. It’s here where Robert finally refers to Henry by name, effectively confirming that Henry and Stephen Caddel from FNaM 1r are the same person under different identities, and considering cutscene 2, might also be Aaron Meyer. Robert apparently knew Henry all his life, hence he recognizes him. And the only reason he hasn’t had him given to the police was because he was only recognized by Robert AFTER he’d been hired, and he couldn’t hand him over to the authorities due to public outcry, stating that the press might blast the company because apparently Human Resources doesn’t perform proper background checks on the people they hire. I am just guessing at this point that Henry is also being suspected for being “The Frankenstein” or is being suspected for the murder of John, not sure. Robert tries to convince Henry to put the gun down and he won’t hand him over to the police, only for Henry to keep insisting that he needs what’s in the safe. It apparently contains something really important, and it’s “difficult to explain why”. At this point, Robert thinks Henry has gone mad, since he was aware of John’s plan to try and “bring eternal life” with the use of endoskeletons. Apparently the reason he didn’t bring this up was because he didn’t want the company to get into more trouble. John McAdams being a murderous lunatic who killed children for a dream for immortality? That wouldn’t do good for a company that’s literally named after him. Robert wants to keep the company afloat, stating the money, and the people who could lose jobs over this. He also then questions Henry, why he wants the blueprints. Henry states that John actually somehow managed to make his dream of immortality work, stating the reason why the animatronics move at all was because they now contain the souls of said victims John murdered. Of course, Robert isn’t having any of this due to how ridiculous it all sounds, and insists that it was all just a malfunction and nothing more. After further arguing, Robert proceeds to belittle and insult Henry more and more, saying he’s just as crazy as his Dad. Henry snaps, and pulls the trigger on Robert, effectively shooting him directly in the head, instantly killing him. Henry just proceeds to stand there, being stunned at what he’d done.

This minigame is basically set before the first minigame, and is also meant to elaborate on the ending of FNaM 1r.

After Night 5 and zapping Ester and Lester, we begin the 6th and final cutscene.

It’s August 26 1982. 12:13. Henry comes home drunk past his curfew, and John nags at him for it. Both go into constant arguments about how poorly treated Jason and Stacy were, and how they were both failures. This keeps going on and on, until John finally snaps and throws a wrench at Henry, berating him for everything. And even outright yelling out loud implications that both Jason and Stacy were “steps to greatness”. Henry, finally snapping out of it, looked at his father and only asked “what did you do to them?”. With John only saying that he’s too drunk to discuss, and just leaves him be. Henry, being fed up with the abuse, and now seeing his father in a whole new light after the implication he yelled out loud… Pulled the trigger connected to the animatronic that John was working on, effectively electrocuting him. The scene cuts to John unconscious on the floor, with Henry being nowhere to be seen.

This pretty much explains as to what happened to John, and how he ended up possessing Cerdi.

We gain our paycheck, we beat night 6, and now… We are in the last “repair” section.

The only instructions we’re given is “shock when in X”. Oh yeah, that X on the floor. And the endo sometimes moves onto the X. We need to time it just right to where the endo is on the X. Once it is… Unleash the zap power…

Now here… Here is where we see the epic finale of Five Nights at Maggie’s 3. Now, I won’t quote everything. I will simply describe what’s happening. But when you can, whether it’d be through a YouTube video or by playing the game yourself… Watch this speech please, I beg you. It’s genuinely the most epic scene in this game.

After shocking the endo, Henry gives a final speech recounting the events of the entire Five Nights at Maggie’s saga. How he’s tried to find every possible way to stop John, especially after the murder of Lester Arias, who became Jerry/Rolf. How he finally freed Jason and Stacy from the hell that John put them both through, so that’s what we were doing with the cable zapping. We were trying to “fry the circuits” in order to destroy the endoskeletons and free the souls. But not for endo/John. Henry, in revenge to put John through hell for his sins, made it so that John cannot move whatsoever. But he can still hear, see, and feel everything around him, he simply has no control over his movement. Essentially, being stuck as a living statue forever. Henry also didn’t want John to come back into any form of relevancy, so he ended up taking the blame for all of John’s murders, plus the murder of Robert Madden and John himself. Essentially, putting the mystery of “The Frankenstein” at ease, and making sure John McAdams was forgotten forever. Or at least not as remembered as he would’ve been if he was exposed. Even if it was for not so good reasons. The speech ends, and we’re greeted with a newspaper that talks about how “The Frankenstein was caught” and how it was none other than Henry McAdams himself.

What an epic way to close the game man. We’re then given the game’s credits, including Manuel Genaro’s final message about how it was a pleasure to make these games for the past 9 years, and how he’ll be forever grateful for being part of this community.

And, the game is over! So, what are my final thoughts on- Oh right. I still have Custom Night and the Extras… Let’s go over those.

There’s nothing much in Custom Night. All animatronics are set to 20 by default, that’s good. But, once again, John/Cerdi isn’t available to hack, dunno why. And once again, like in FNaM 2r, because Endo/John/Cerdi was such a major threat in this game, when he was removed, this game became piss easy. Like in FNaM 2, I basically beaten Max 20 mode in one try. We are playing as Peter Cohen apparently. I’m guessing this is the phone guy…? I dunno, at least in FNaM 1r we got confirmation that the phone guy did try to mess with the AI, but it’s more ambiguous with 2 and 3. Maybe the Phone Guy in 2 tried to hack them, but ended up aggravating Jerry too much, who knows?

As for the extras? There’s more to see actually. Full body references of the animatronics, jumpscares, and some images! And that’s all! Okay, okay. I’m sorry really, but I’m guessing I just yearn for the days of old when extras menus had more stuff in them? You know, FNaF 3 and 4 had cheats and challenges, JOLLY 3 had a full transcript of every piece of dialogue, FNaC 3 gave you easy access to minigames, FNaF 4 and FNaC 3 gave you in depth creation processes on how the enemies were made, in FNaM 1c we had credits we could move and mess around with along with a fourth wall joke, and so on. The extras menu had always been bare in the Maggie’s series and it was somehow worse in the reboot series. Oh well, we have some images to look at, at least.

Up close and personal shots of the posters and props which look pretty nice and remind me of FNaM 4c for some reason, unused AI movement for Maggie and Rolf which… Kinda makes me feel sad that Maggie likely was meant to be a “main threat” only to be downgraded into a mere distraction, an original prototype of the office and a big vent, both of which I assume were meant to reference Pizzeria Simulatour before Manuel went back on that choice and ran with FNaF 1 instead for the finale, thank God. An unused model for Maggie, a Maggie toy which looks like a possible Toy Maggie character for something like FNaF 2, and a fixed version of Cerdi that was not used. That model looks terrifyingly uncanny. And yeah, that’s it!

Now that we have that out of the way, what did I think of this game and its story?

Like I said about the gameplay itself, it’s good. Not amazing, not terrible, not mediocre, it’s, in my opinion, “better than fine”, which I personally would describe as “good”. Obviously the biggest problem with the gameplay is that, it’s not really THAT original, nor challenging. But quite frankly, it didn’t need to be. As long as it worked and didn’t rely on dogshit RNG, it’s all fine. And besides, it being based on FNaF 1 was the point anyway. That being said, I’m more likely to return to FNaM 2r before this. In terms of everything else? Presentation, personality, charm, production value, story? My God, this is Manuel’s magnum opus so far. I already gushed about the graphics and the presentation and the sound design. Sure, I do think it could’ve had areas where it could’ve been improved, but then again, that justmight be copying fnaf even further and who knows if that would’ve made the experience better. The story, while not the most epic or original story in existence, I think it’s been mostly saved by the fact that the story-telling was done rather well here. We had some form of development, saw bits of personalities with the characters in these games, their motivations, feelings, and the reasons they do the things they do are clear as crystal. Nothing is too vague here to the point where it feels like random tropes were just thrown into the wall, and just going with what “sticks” despite how random and ungrounded it all is. Of course, not everything is perfect with this story. Besides the aforementioned unoriginality, there are some plot-holes and unanswered questions.

How did John get Stacy’s injured body after she publically got ran over? How would John explain to the public, authorities, or medical staff of where the now missing body is? How did Henry get his identity changed from Henry to Stephen to Aaron? What happened to John McAdams entertainment after the closure of the warehouse? Were they fused into Creative Concepts? Why did Creative Concepts reuse the old endoskeletons and not just make their own using the fundamentals from said endoskeletons? They managed to heavily modify the design, surely they could’ve made their own? Did they fail? How? Why? Why was that not stated? Did the phone guy from FNaM 2r die? If so, why was his death not reported? Where was his body kept? What happened to the Phone Guy in FNaM 3? Was he Peter?

But overall, those are just small minute details that don’t really matter TOO much when you don’t look too deep into them. Nah, I’ll leave THAT to CinemaSins to do. But overall really, story was alright, but was helped massively by well-done story telling. I also REALLY like how you can play FNaM 3r without having to play any of the prior games for story knowledge. Sure, the different cast of animatronics and their relation to the old cast may confuse you a bit, but overall, you can play this game and not miss anything regarding the lore since it’s all recapped here.

Overall, I really recommend this game! I REALLY do! Along with the entire reboot series, and hell maybe the classic series if you want! Do I think this game or FNaM 2 are better overall? Who the fuck cares? They’re BOTH amazing, you should try them both out at least. No, I don’t care if it’s a cop out, go play these games! Because in MY opinion, when it comes to the traditional pre-rendered 3D 2D images sit and survive for 5-7 nights style of gameplay, with a fully original cast of characters that are animatronics, FNaM 2r and 3r do it the best for me than any other fan game ever (that I am aware of at least). Oh sure, there’s Five Nights at Candy’s, but I have my problems with that series. Sure, there’s One Night at Flumpty’s, but personally, that to me is not comparable as it has a different kind of appeal, it’s only one night (mostly), and has a completely different aesthetic, makes it its own thing in my opinion.

You know, come to think of it… I’ve been thinking of reviewing other fnaf fan games too. Heck, maybe even…? Eh, maybe another time.

This is Philip Buchanon from Nyctobloom Creations signing off. Have a good one.