The art featured in this post was made by me, it's an recreation of the banner of the game.

Heya!

As some of you may know, just yesterday FNaS Solar Switchup, an official game of the same series, was released, and it's probably the last one for a while.

Since the game came out and I finished it very quickly, I decided to properly share my opinion of the game through a review.

The structure of the review will be organized as follows:

• Graphics: 2 points

• Gameplay: 5 points

• Sound Design: 1 point

• Story: 2 points

Each section will have a different maximum score, with the most important aspects receiving more points and being the most demanding to score well, in the end of the post I will score the game in scale of 0 to 10.

Without further ado, let's begin!

- G R A P I C H S -

We started in a very inconsistent way with the game's visuals, which worryingly affects the other areas.

Not straying from the topic, the art drawn by @/BagelGabel is very good, as it generally looks quite nice, with even the characters having smooth animations that look great. The jumpscares, while not scary, are visually appealing and have good death concepts, such as Blaze burning you alive. In general, this is the best part and clearly shows a lot of effort put into it.

Now, when discussing the overall graphic design apart from the drawings, it's terrible. It's one of the worst visual designs for a game I've seen in a while, being incredibly bland, boring, and not representative of the game's theme, which is Sonic Rush. The only elements that reflect this theme are the extras and the CN menu, with the latter being the only part that genuinely conveys that Rush style in its menus.

The HUD in the gameplay is hideous, poorly designed to the point that it doesn't even look good with all the pueple. The night start screens, which show what night you're on, only display the text "12 AM" and the night number on a completely black background, looking awful and clearly not put together with much care. The game menu is a kind of recreation of the original FNaF 1 menu, but it’s an obvious poor attempt. Even though the characters look fine, they are placed against a completely black background with a logo that's not particularly decent. The text options use only the OCR font in white, and this same font is used almost everywhere in the game.

This section can be summed up as having well-done art and high-quality animations, showing the love put into it, but with a regrettable visual design that only brings shame and undermines the good work done by Bagel.

Because of this terrible inconsistency, I can’t do anything but rate this section a terrible 0.9/2

- G A M E P L A Y -

Oh boy, this is something.

The game, as its premise dictates, is based on the events of Five Nights at Sonic's 1 adapted to the Sun dimension from which Blaze comes. I will judge the gameplay based on my preferences for this type of game, and I'll tell you right away that this game has many problems.

The basic mechanics of the gameplay are a carbon copy of the original FNAF 1, just as FNaS 1 did, with the following features: You have two doors on each side of your office, each with two buttons to close or open them, or to turn on the lights in case any threat approaches. There is also a camera panel where you can monitor the entire premises and track your threats. However, you need to manage the use of these tools carefully because you have an energy level that depletes passively. The energy drains even faster depending on how much you use your tools to avoid a game over.

Although this follows the basic formula, additional factors come into play. No matter how much you save energy, it drains quickly, meaning that eventually, you will run out of power because you can't keep up. To solve this, you will have three generators in three specific rooms, where you must recharge from 0% to 100%. Once your main energy is depleted, you can use the energy from these generators as a backup, but it will be spent just as quickly. Additionally, in each room with a generator, there is a button to administer an electric shock. Finally, there is a room with a ventilation system that connects directly to the office, where there are buttons with the same function as the doors of the office, with the ventilation acting as a third door.

At its core, the gameplay tries to add a twist to the typical FNAF 1-style fangame, but it ends up being an even simpler version of Five Nights at Candy's, which doesn't vary much from the original gameplay style. This, unfortunately, leaves a bad impression.

Next, I will summarize the mechanics for each character:

• Blaze: If she is at one of your three entrances, keep the light on until she goes away.

• Silver: Same as Blaze, but you must close the door. He also has the added mechanic that, if he is at the office doors, he can use his psychic powers to open the door if you close it. You can see this with the blue door button. Just hold the button to close it and wait for him to leave.

• Marine: She will attack any of your three generators and damage them, making them useless. When the game alerts you, quickly go to the camera of the generator being attacked and use the shock button to make her leave. Alternatively, she can attack your doors in the office, and you just need to close them until she leaves.

• Cream and Cheese: Both function like Foxy from FNAF 1, except Cream will attack any of your doors in the office, and Cheese will go through the ventilation system.

• Blossom Blaze: Works exactly the same as Blaze, but she also attacks the generators. She can be avoided the same way as Marine.

As you can see, each character has their own mechanics to provide variety, but this is poorly executed. From the start, it's clear that most of them share the same mechanics with minimal changes in dynamics. This is not counting Blossom Blaze, who is essentially the same character as Blaze but with Marine's mechanics added. This results in a rather bland and monotonous gameplay experience, which becomes incredibly tedious during the first two nights, making the gameplay feel repetitive and boring as time goes on.

To make matters worse, the overall programming feels very rough, as if it were from a 2015 fangame, despite being at the end of 2024. This seriously affects both the visual and gameplay experience, which, at least for me, feels uncomfortable and annoying.

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Now, moving on to the content side:

The game doesn't offer much and, in fact, is very short due to its lack of replayability.

It consists of: the 5 nights of the game, night 6, the extras, and the custom night with challenges.

The game offers almost exactly the same amount of content as the original FNaS 1, only surpassing it with the custom night challenges. This makes it clear that the game gives absolutely no reason to replay once you’ve completed the six nights and the game’s maximum mode. The challenges in the custom night are simply the characters with different AI levels, which isn’t much, really. To make matters worse, the extras are incredibly sparse, consisting only of a showcase of the characters in full, their jumpscares, and how they look in the cameras and the office, which is a huge disappointment compared to what is typically offered in fangames extras.

Due to the boring and monotonous gameplay and the lack of meaningful extras, I give this section a 2/5.

A game that tries to be something more than the usual, but ends up being terribly boring, easy, and with very little replayability.

- S O U N D D E S I G N

The second worst part of the entire game

I won’t go into too much detail on this. The game has a terrible handling of audio, as it is incredibly lacking in a large amount of sounds and music, and what little it has is very bad.

Starting with the menu theme, which is horrendous, it’s not scary and is just annoying.

The atmosphere during the nights is empty and lifeless. Due to the significant lack of sounds, the only things you hear, by sheer miracle, are the fan and the interactions with the doors and the cameras, making the entire auditory charm of the original FNAF 1, with its large number of sounds, completely vanish. It’s even worse than FNaS 1, making the auditory experience bland.

The jumpscares aren't even scary or anything.

For the silent and lackluster audio section, I give this part a 0.2.

Incredibly bad and dull, only minimally saved by the Sonic Rush themes.

- S T O R Y -

The worst part of the game

I'm going to go straight to the point: there isn't any story, absolutely nothing. It only has the "you are a night guard, clones want to kill you, and the phone guy dies, but you survive"—that's literally all there is to the story.

As you can see, this is incredibly bad because it’s even worse than FNaS 1, since that one, at least, imitates (poorly) the FNaF 1 phone calls and tells you more things aside from the mechanics. Here, that doesn't happen. The phone guy just calls you to explain the mechanics and then dies.

The non-existent lore of this game gives it a score of 0.

- F I N A L S C O R E -

If you've done the math, you probably already know the score of this game.

Overall, Five Nights at Sonic's: Solar Switchup gets a 2.2 out of 10. It’s a game with art that shows a lot of love and effort, with a debatable overall visual style, but ultimately it’s boring, short, and bland, offering a bad experience compared to other fangames of FNaS with FNAF 1 gameplay.

I do not recommend it at all; it's not worth it.

That's all.

Before finishing, I would like to say that this is just my opinion. Personally, I didn't like the game at all, but I still tried to highlight its virtues as best as possible, such as the art and its attempt to at least step out of the comfort zone of current fangames.

I hope the developers don't take this as an attack or any kind of insult; that is not my purpose with this post. I just want to point out the things that really bothered me and could have been improved, so that in their next attempt, they can improve and deliver a high-quality product. I am also a developer, and I know how frustrating it can be to read comments like these about your game, and I understand if it might be upsetting. On top of that, I'm not an expert in making reviews, so I may have been unfair in some parts, and I apologize in advance, as this is basically my first time doing this.

Finally, if you'd like me to write more posts like this, just let me know and I'll keep it in mind.

Nothing more to say, goodbye!