https://gamejolt.com/games/treasureislandofficial/222994

Finished all of Five Nights at Treasure Island (2020) aside from True Nightmare. It's a pretty damn impressive and plentiful game that made me actually interested in a universe I'd never cared about, and excited for the upcoming projects by the Team Radiance developers.

Treasure Island has always been an interesting case to me. I remember reading Abandoned By Disney years and years ago, and seeing Markiplier play the demo of the original Five Nights at Treasure Island (which I somehow never realised was a demo), but after that I never even knew any more official content had been made. Which was understandable, because no further Treasure Island versions really found popularity in the main FNaF community, as far as I saw. I always remembered it though, thinking it was just some forever abandoned fangame. So imagine my shock when I learn this brand new version of Treasure Island has released, and it looks super high quality! I didn't play it for a while because I still wasn't that interested, but eventually I was convinced by a friend who loved the game, and I do not regret the decision.

Gameplay was the main thing that worried me going into the game. I never liked the idea of the main camera deactivation mechanic, because it promoted a natural gameplay style of just sitting in the office and waiting for animatronics to walk in, which is boring. To an extent, I still maintain that opinion after beating the game, but it was more enjoyable than I expected. The inclusion of characters who utilize other mechanics than the cameras makes the gameplay a little more diverse and fun, along with being pretty fast-paced and tense on later nights. However, camera deactivation is still the main mechanic of defense, and it did let me down, mainly because there is no real importance to the cameras.

Conceptually, office gameplay where you shut off cameras is a great idea, because it prevents the player from using the vital visual resource that is their camera system. A good example of this is the Observatory level of Fredbear and Friends: Left to Rot. The task in this room is to disable the visual and audio feed to each of the cameras before moving on. There are three enemies; Fredbear and Springbonnie roam through the whole camera system before arriving to your right and requiring you to hide under a desk, and an endoskeleton only appears on one camera and must be pushed back with a light. The camera deactivation mechanic works well here for one main reason, that being when the animatronics reach your office, they don't make their presence immediately known to you. You're actually in a state of worry when you're forced to deactivate cameras, because the cameras are the most accurate way of knowing if the animatronics are about to attack without turning to your right and interrupting your task. Five Nights at Treasure Island (2020), however, is pretty much the opposite of this. Not only do all of the enemies make themselves obviously present right in front of you in the office, but you are actively discouraged from using the cameras by the above average power drain. Even if you'd like to check the cameras to feel extra safe about the arrival of each character, that's very difficult due to the tough power conservation requirements (at least from my experience). So deactivating cameras doesn't affect gameplay at all, because you should never be using them. This means this mechanic usually just has you deactivating each camera in rows, rather than any sort of strategized gameplay having you shut down the least important cameras. You never run into any trouble with camera deactivation unless you accidentally skip cameras in the order you've decided and end up running into cameras you can't reactivate yet. Certain characters actually play into this mechanic well; those being Willy and Pete, who can have you lose track of your camera order, and Hourglass, the only character who requires you to track their movement on the cameras. However, none of these characters are seen in the main five nights of gameplay, meaning the majority of the game doesn't take creative advantage of the cameras, which is disappointing.

I'd also like to mention the Pirate Caverns, which are an interesting and fun shake-up from the main office gameplay. I always love extra gameplay styles in fangames, they're one of my favourite things, but unfortunately this didn't entirely fulfil my wants either. My main issue is that there's only one Pirate Caverns section with enemies throughout the entire game. That section itself is pretty fun and creepy, but it's a huge missed opportunity to not do it again. I get a single segment of Pirate Caverns is some sort of staple in Treasure Island's long history of game versions, but that's not really an excuse honestly. They could have even added enemies to the Pirate Caverns segment after Night 6, and I'd be fine with that. Two is better than one, and it doesn't drastically change the story so that the protagonist is coming back to Pirate Caverns over and over again for no reason.

Overall, the gameplay is definitely fun, but has big letdowns and missed potential. As for the visual aspects of the game though, I really love them, and there's little that doesn't satisfy me! Firstly, the character designs are all great; it's very impressive how the team has taken the classic Five Nights at Treasure Island (2014) designs which are already based on rather unscary Disney characters and turned them into these molten abominations. My personal favourites are Oswald, Undying, and honestly Pluto even though he doesn't do anything. Although the camera renders of characters are rarely seen, they're very well done, and can even make Classic Photo-Negative Mickey look really unnerving when placed in that environment. And speaking of the environments, they're incredibly well detailed! Pirate Caverns does a really good job of displaying all the work that was put into the room models for this game. The game is visually beautiful (and it seems everyone's saying Oblitus Casa is gonna look a lot better, so that's exciting). It all adds to the tone of the game, which does an excellent job at providing a creepy atmosphere. This atmosphere is built upon with great sound design, from the characters' voices to the array of creaks and thuds they make when they move. The light in the room that begins to flicker as the night progresses also makes the environment feel really oppressive (which is a compliment).

Now, I've never known much about the lore of the Treasure Island universe. Again, I had only read Abandoned By Disney many years ago, and was never exposed to any Treasure Island content since then. That being said, playing through this game I was fully satisfied with how the story unfolded. An important thing to note is the lack of any clear explanation for the existence of the Toons, which could leave some people feeling confused, but I am a big fan of the mystery and subtle clues to the origin of these creatures. I'm not sure if this is something that's just explained by looking at other Treasure Island media like stories connected to Abandoned by Disney, but for someone who only knows of this game's story it works just fine. I'm also a fan of our protagonistic group of humans; I'm a real sucker for supernatural investigators, and this group is very likeable and interesting. (Lisa is the best.) The slowburn as you find out what's happening through the calls and start investigating the caverns is really engaging, and it all builds up to a conclusion that is vague and abrupt but feels like it works a lot better than any sort of big finale. Quite honestly the only thing I'd like more is more story. Besides what the player character goes through, the only big event that is referenced is what happens to Henry. It'd be really cool if the game had more stuff like that.

Lastly I'd like to mention the size of the game's contents, which is really really impressive. It's got the standard five nights, plus a boss night, plus the Pirate Caverns sections, plus a custom night with unlockable characters (VERY fun concept), plus the Classic Mode which is a part that makes me really really love the game. I know a lot of people aren't happy with the Classic Mode, but I think it's really neat Not to mention all the rare events, I don't even know all of them… A huge game, where all of its hugeness is actually quality! It's very nice to see.

Five Nights at Treasure Island (2020) is a great final release of the most infamous unreleased fangame ever. While the gameplay could be a bit better, every other aspect of the experience is either perfectly satisfying or excels in quality, and has me very excited for the sequel.