PREAMBLE

Ok so before I officially begin with the review itself, let me just clarify: This is my first time EVER publicly reviewing a FNAF fangame, so I apologize if I miss some things, if the format's not good, go on accidental tangents, or if I'm just not as meticulous as professional reviewers. I'm a FNAF artist more than I'm a FNAF fangame reviewer you know? I also wanna clarify that yes, I know the game's technically already been out for more than 2 weeks if you joined the FNAF World Refreshed Discord server, but I'm a patient guy so I waited until the game was PUBLICLY available on Gamejolt to actually play it, so sorry if I'm late to the party and everyone has already "experienced the magic", but I move at my own pace. An additional thing I wanna make clear is that everything I talk about in this review pertains SOLELY TO PART 1 OF FNAF WORLD REFRESHED. The devs have confirmed that things like new areas and characters are gonna get added in a future update called "Part 2", so this is just me reviewing FNAF World Refreshed as it stands CURRENTLY. Last thing I wanna make clear is that EVERYTHING I SAY IN THIS REVIEW IS COMPLETELY SUBJECTIVE. If you liked something about the game that I didn't like, or vice versa, that's totally fine! You don't have to agree with me at all. This is meant to just be a funny little review, I don't want people thinking I'm the end-all be-all of video game opinions. With all that being said, let's begin!

CONTEXT: WHAT'S FNAF WORLD REFRESHED?

FNAF World Refreshed is a FNAF World fangame directed and programmed by Pyturret, a guy who's actually got a good amount of history with FNAF World long before Refreshed started development. He's made full-blown web ports for FNAF World mods, AND he also made a fully-functional Android port of FNAF World Simulator, so the dude knows his stuff when it comes to programming!

FNAF World Refreshed is designed to be a complete overhaul/revamp of the original FNAF World. Now, when I first found out about the project, I was let's just say "cautiously optimistic". As much as I love FNAF World, I've gotten used to FNAF World-themed fangames either being cancelled (like FNAF World Resprited) or being so insanely ambitious that they basically take an ETERNITY to come out (like with FNAF World: The Resurrection). So at first, I was worried that this fangame was gonna suffer either of those fates. But like everything in life, sometimes you just gotta be patient and let them cook. And boy did these motherfuckers cook.

THE POSITIVES: IMMEDIATE FIRST IMPRESSIONS

From the very moment you boot up the game for the first time, you can ALREADY tell there's been a quality boost. Even beyond just the cool little extra glitchy effects at the beginning cutscene (which I appreciate)...

FNAF World Refreshed does something pretty awesome: IT GIVES US AN ACTUAL MENU, WITH DESCRIPTIONS?! And there's these cool little animations of the characters every time we click on something?! AND we even get a whole-ass EXTRAS menu, with behind-the-scenes pictures?! AND WE GET ANOTHER SAVE FILE?!

I can't stress enough how much better this looks and feels compared to OG FNAF World's "best we can do is a purple button"-ass menu. It just feels so much more comfortable to use, if that makes sense? Like just for reference, THIS is OG FNAF World's menu. Yikes bruh.

Initial praise aside, let's talk about the rest of the game's UI and visuals!

HOW'S THE VISUALS?

FNAF World Refreshed's menus aren't the only thing that got a major glow-up compared to the original FNAF World. The game's entire interface as a whole has been COMPLETELY revamped/improved upon. For reference, this is OG FNAF World's character select screen...

And THIS is FNAF World Refreshed’s character select screen. ZAMN!!!

Once again I’m saving all the gameplay-related talk for later, but I legit LOVE how this new character select looks. You get to see attack descriptions, see which game the character highlighted debuted in, and it doesn’t feel too crunched up like OG FNAF World. Just like Foxy in UCN, it’s so much more spacious in here!

Even the LOADING SCREENS got a glow-up! Not only are they INSANELY fast compared to OG FNAF World’s loading screens, but characters now animate in them and the background swaps between different areas in the game. Animdude, Mr. Chipper, and Coffee even have ACTUAL loading screen quotes now, instead of the NOTHING they got in the original game. This is such a small thing but I absolutely ADORE how characters in the loading screens (and in the menu) get a Bubble Breath bubble on their heads whenever the background changes to the Geist Lair, that’s some INSANE attention to detail!

The overworld, as you can imagine, also got a similar revamp. For starters, FREDDY ACTUALLY HAS GOOD OVERWORLD SPRITES NOW!!! Gone are the days of big-headed Freddy without any eyebrows! He also has fully-rendered angles for different directions than just up, down, left, and right! I know this may seem super small in the grand scheme of things but I legit ALWAYS hated how Freddy looked in OG FNAF World's overworld, so this is just MUCH better to see!

Even small stuff like the Bytes and Chips menu look completely upgraded, with the background changing depending on what area you're in!

Another detail I like is that during battle, the backgrounds actually better resemble their overworld counterparts, like with Dusting Fields snowing and Blacktomb Yard having a darkness effect. That's one thing I seriously love about this game: The devs legit didn't need to add all these little things, but they did and that's WHY it's so cool, because it shows that they're really passionate about this kind of stuff (like me!).

Some smaller visual stuff I also wanna gush about is how the Part 2 characters look. Although you can't play as them (since Part 2 isn't here yet), you can still occasionally see them on the loading screen, and they look fantastic! Aside from Helpy's weird dance animation, everyone else legit looks like Scott Cawthon made them himself. Even the newly-added Halloween Backstage-exclusive Tox Bytes look pretty official!

There's six more visual-related things I wanna point out that I thought were pretty neat. First is the fact that when you play as Fredbear, he has a noticeably altered shade of purple, presumably to make him different from NPC Fredbear.

Secondly, the arena you fight Scott in has this really cool-looking wireframe background, which I'm pretty sure is actually taken from The Desolate Hope (a game Scott made before FNAF)!

Third (and this is something I absolutely ADORE), whenever you fight against a new challenger, they have a glitchy/pixelated look to them.

At first, this seems weird, UNTIL you realize that this completely recontextualizes a thing Fredbear mentions to you in Choppy's Woods.

In OG FNAF World, this whole plotline of "your friends becoming affected due to the Flipside" meant ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. It was just something Scott put in as a flimsy in-universe excuse to unlock other characters. So the fact that this game actually took that one-off quote and made it make sense in the context of the story is just beautiful. That's the type of stuff I wouldn't even think about!

Fourth, the moments where you talk to 8-Bit Fredbear and go through the Flipside have this extra layer of distortion to them, making them look MUCH cooler.

Fifth, Coffee finally has a drop shadow, something he was lacking in OG FNAF World.

Lastly, Funtime Foxy has been renamed to Toy Foxy, most likely because Funtime Foxy (from Sister Location) is gonna be a character added in Part 2 and they didn't wanna cause confusion.

I think that's all I have to say about the graphics. At its core, it still looks just like OG FNAF World, but that's not a bad thing at all! I actually like that they kept the original artstyle and just basically tweaked it to look more presentable. If it ain't broke, don't fix it! Now that I've talked about the graphics, let's get into the stuff you've been waiting for: THE GAMEPLAY!!!

THE GAMEPLAY: AN ABSOLUTE QOL ADVENTURE

Since this game is meant to be a revamped version of OG FNAF World, I personally expected there to be a BUNCH of changes to how fights work, how enemy encounters work, how bosses work, etc. Well... Let's just say I got everything I ever wanted and THEN some. I'm gonna start out by listing some smaller QOL changes and then work my way up to the BIG changes, but everything will (for the most part) be in order of when I discovered it. First things first, the game now has a dedicated Nuzlocke mode that functions exactly like you'd expect.

There's now an Easy Mode, so if you're a game journalist, this one's for you! ;)

Lolbit and Mendo are now inside these little tents you can visit, and the menu to buy the Bytes and armor has been COMPLETELY altered (don't worry, we'll talk about what happened to Dee Dee a bit later)!

The game's map has been MASSIVELY updated to not only be more encompassing, but you can now also walk around with the map still open without holding the button! You can even view the Geist Lair's layout!

Enemies now have fully dedicated health bars, and they can even come in different formations, unlike in OG FNAF World where you would only ever fight the same enemy in a group!

There are five new Red Chips for you to unlock, but I don't wanna spoil their locations so you just gotta play the game yourself! Actually, I'll give you a hint for ONE of them: It's where the secret entrance to OG FNAF World's Halloween Backstage was. ;)

In the cave in Dusting Fields, you can find a lantern that makes it MUCH easier to see in the dark, and it can even be used in the Geist Lair too! I'm pretty sure this was directly inspired by FNAF World Simulator since that game ALSO had an unlockable lantern!

Don't worry Dee Dee fans, she's still in the game! She's just been moved to where Lilygear Lake is (which honestly makes sense realistically)! She now charges you 30 Faz Tokens to fish, and the previously unused turtle has been brought back!

You can now manually start a fight whenever you feel like it by clicking the giant "FIGHT!" button on the top-right of the screen!

Lastly, you can now skip MOST cutscenes by pressing this orange arrow button on the far-right side of the screen.

That seems to be all the small improvements I noticed, but now let's get into the REALLY cool stuff, starting with... THE BATTLE SYSTEM!!!

HERE'S THE PART WHERE IT GETS REALLY, REALLY GOOD!

Every character now has FOUR attacks to use instead of OG FNAF World's three, and some characters straight-up have new attacks completely unique to FNAF World Refreshed!

Characters now have fully dedicated "READY!" bars showing when it's their turn to attack.

Alongside the switch button, there's now a "skip" button that basically lets you skip a character's turn and use the next character in the party's line-up (so for example, if it was Freddy's turn to attack, I could just skip Freddy's turn and have Bonnie go instead).

This next addition only applies if you're playing Hard Mode, but enemies will now have Bytes OF THEIR OWN. They function the exact same way as YOUR Bytes do, so Reapers can one-shot you and Medpods can heal them (they can't use the new Tox Bytes though). However, they can only attack the specific target they're assigned to (so a Reaper that's attacking Phantom Freddy will ONLY attack Phantom Freddy), and they'll never switch targets, so keep that in mind and use it to your advantage!

Every time you hit an enemy, there's a chance for your attack to be a critical hit, doing double the damage (as also indicated by the red numbers)! The chances of this happening are also increased whenever you debuff an enemy, so if you're lucky you can get some REAL damage done! Honestly I really like this feature 'cause it makes FNAF World play and feel more like a traditional RPG!

Without a doubt, this next feature is what (in my personal opinion) MAKES FNAF World Refreshed so good. Let me introduce y'all to Faz-Powers.

WHAT THE HECK ARE FAZ-POWERS?

Every character in the game is assigned a Faz-Power. Let's look at Bonnie for example.

Bonnie's Faz-Power is called Buffer, and it has a 1-star rating. The more stars a Faz-Power has, the stronger its effects/potential are. There are a total of five Faz-Powers: Buffer, Damager, Healer, Debuffer, and Toxic. How Faz-Powers work is that every time you're in battle and you attack an enemy, this orange bar on the top-right of the screen will go up.

When it completely fills up, the next character you have in battle that's ready to attack will gain an additional SUPER move. This super move basically acts as an OP version of an existing attack, so to go back to Bonnie (ignore the Omega Bite, it's just the result of a Red Chip)...

He gains the move Party Services, which is basically a never-ending version of Party Favours! This is exactly why his Faz-Power is called Buffer, 'cause he BUFFS your team! As I mentioned earlier, every character in the game has their own Faz-Power, and how strong it is depends on how many stars they have on their character profile. Words can't describe how much I LOVE this new mechanic, it gives lower-tier characters a well-needed buff and it makes higher-tier characters an absolute GODSEND.

There's another big mechanic that I wanna bring attention to, and it single-handedly changes how you level up and spend money. Everyone, meet the Time Bonus!

WHAT THE HECK IS A TIME BONUS?

Every time you get into a fight, there's a set of numbers on the bottom-right side of the screen next to a piece of text that says "Time Bonus".

This number will change depending on how many enemies you're fighting/how strong the boss you're fighting is. Nearly every second you're in battle, the number will go down, but after you win the fight, the number will stop decreasing and what's left of it will be counted towards your EXP and Faz Token payout.

So for example, if I were fighting an enemy that was worth 50 Tokens and 1000 EXP, and my final Time Bonus at the end of the fight was worth 700, I would get 750 Tokens and 1700 EXP. I think you can see why this is such a game-changer. Battles are now influenced by how fast you can beat the enemy/boss you're facing, and it creates a sense of tension that I REALLY rock with. Of course, even if the Time Bonus's number reaches zero, you'll still GET the normal amount of Tokens and EXP left behind by the enemies themselves, but it incentivizes you to keep things moving you know? As a result of the extra Token payout, buying stuff from Lolbit and Mendo's shop has never been easier! Even with their increased prices, you'll most definitely have enough Faz Tokens to buy everything in the game twice over! Ok, so now that we've got those BIG things out of the way, let's talk about some LESS big features.

&*___TWRE: FNAF WORLD FROM HELL

&*___TWRE is now an even MORE dangerous area to be in due to 3 new things. First, the entire map gets mirrored whenever you enter it, so if you're not familiar with the new layout it can definitely confuse you.

Secondly, the battles there are COMPLETELY outta whack. Enemies are now on the right instead of the left, numbers are reversed, and YOUR ATTACK BUTTONS WILL FLY ALL OVER THE SCREEN.

Lastly, and this is something that legit jumpscared me when I had it happen to me: YOU CAN RANDOMLY COME ACROSS BOSSES HERE. They're absolute menaces with the health of a tank and the power of Conquest. You can't even run away if you encounter them, you're FORCED to fight! Deadass, don't go here unless you're strong or stupid enough to risk it all.

NEW AND REVAMPED GUARDIAN BOSSES

The bosses in &*___TWRE aren't the only new faces around here, there's also straight-up entirely new bosses! The first one you'll encounter is near the end of Choppy's Woods, and he's called Totecap. He wasn't too challenging, but I love his design!

The next all-new boss we've got is this living tombstone called... The Living Tombstone. Ha ha.

These next 2 aren't really "unique and original" bosses so to speak, they're more so just newly implemented "harder versions of earlier bosses". The first of these is a souped-up version of Auto Chipper called Super Grinder...

And the other is a souped-up version of Eyesore called Lazy-Eye.

As for the guardian bosses themselves, they've been redesigned a bit to actually have unique colors (like Overclock being bronze-colored, Snowcone having a yellow hat, Supergoon looking like he got dipped in piss, etc)!

There's also one additional secret boss that actively made my jaw drop. I don't wanna spoil it, so I'll just say this: Don't let two characters coexist in the same place at the same time. ;)

COMPLETLY NEW HALLOWEEN BACKSTAGE

The Halloween Backstage has gotten a MASSIVE glow-up since the last time I visited! For starters, it now has its own warp button, so you can instantly travel there instead of ALWAYS having to go back to Fazbear Hills to enter the portal.

Perhaps the two biggest changes to the Halloween Backstage are the inclusion of enemy encounters and the Tox Bytes! Not only do the enemies here look really unique and cool, but as you can probably imagine, they have a TON of health and hit HARD. As for the Tox Bytes, they're exclusively found in an orange tent right by the Foxy Fighters portal and surprisingly don't cost that much to get (also hi Grimm Foxy)!

As for the minigames in Halloween Backstage, they're basically completely unchanged, although Foxy.EXE DOES have ONE small difference: There's now a number on the top-right side of the screen showing how many hits you have left until you die, which is neat I guess?

But yeah, I think that covers just about every new feature of the game! However, as much as I thoroughly enjoyed my playthrough of FNAF World Refreshed, I must admit that it DOES indeed have flaws/bugs that I personally think need some improvement. This next segment is PURELY for constructive criticism's sake, and I TRULY don't mean to sound rude or ungrateful by bringing these up. I just simply want this game to be the best it can be, and by doing this, I feel like it'll reach that peak even sooner.

THE NEGATIVES: FLAWS AND BUGS

Perhaps the only REAL gameplay flaw I have with FNAF World Refreshed is, funnily enough, the Time Bonus. Although I previously gushed about the new Time Bonus feature and how it makes grinding for Bytes WAY easier, it also ends up creating a whole new problem. Because of how many Faz Tokens you end up getting from battles now, there's gonna be a point in the game where you have NOTHING to actually spend them on since you already bought everything there was to buy. By the time I ended my playthrough, I deadass had over 100,000 Faz Tokens. The number was so big it went PAST the UI. I think an easy way to fix this is to make the skins coming soon to Part 2 cost Faz Tokens to get, and since every character will have 4 skins, make them expensive so the money will go to an actual place.

(Side note: Toy Foxy's mistakenly named Funtime Foxy in the Extras menu.)

Admittedly I don't know whether this next issue counts as a gameplay-related flaw, a bug with Clickteam as a whole (I also don't really have a way of showing proof of this in-game), or just an issue on my part, but I SWEAR there were times when the game would constantly swap between my computer mouse and the custom mouse used in FNAF World EXTREMELY quickly, and it caused the entire game to lag just from TRYING to move it around. The only way to fix it was to turn off the game and boot it up again. This also seemed to ALWAYS happen whenever I fought Scott. Hopefully I wasn't alone in dealing with this.

These next few critiques aren't DIRECTLY gameplay-related flaws and are more so just some bugs/oversights/visual goofs.

When I was fighting Scott, I noticed that my characters would seemingly just "disappear" from battle, but they wouldn't actually "die" so to speak. Like look at this picture: Notice how Nightmare's Gift Box is still there despite the fact that Nightmare himself isn't present. Thankfully this bug eventually fixed itself, but still, weird.

While visiting Dee Dee's Fishing Hole, I noticed there was some conflicting information in the description of the minigame. The description states that it costs 10 Faz Tokens to play, but on the right, it then says the entry ticket costs 30 Faz Tokens. So... Which is it?

While in the Halloween Backstage, I tried using the lantern to help me see better, but it didn't do anything. The only reason I bring this up as a possible oversight is because the Deep-Metal Mine, Mysterious Mine, AND Geist Lair are affected by the lantern, so I don't exactly see why the Halloween Backstage can't get that same bonus.

Even though I unlocked every character in the game, I noticed that I haven't gotten the Fan as a trophy/Byte. If this is intentional, is there an alternate way of getting it? If yes, then the game didn't really make that clear.

This is ESPECIALLY small (if not borderline a nitpick) but it lowkey urked the hell out of me: There's no apostrophe when the character select screen displays which game the highlighted character debuted in. It's Freddy's, not Freddys!

One other small thing I noticed is that in the Bytes menu, the BossDrain01 and BossDrain02 Bytes are wrongly named. The first one should be called BossDrain01, and the second one should be called BossDrain02.

Lastly, I noticed that the characters in the Halloween Backstage tend to repeat themselves when talking to them. Like they'll say one thing, then say something different, and then just repeat their initial statement like they didn't already say it? Take this conversation with Scott for example (I numbered it for convenience): He starts off by saying "So, we meet again" and talks about his code being used for the Chica's Magic Rainbow minigame, only to then REPEAT that same exact statement one line later.

Other Halloween Backstage oddities include Nightmarionne's unlock description being so long it isn't fully visible, and Coffee not having proper apostrophes in his sentences (assuming that's unintentional).

Honestly, most of these issues are pretty small in the grand scheme of things (except for the mouse bug, that's legit annoying), but I still personally think they should at least be fixed. As for suggestions to make the game even better, I actually have quite a few, though once again I wanna make it clear that THIS IS ALL COMPLETELY SUBJECTIVE, and the devs don't have to listen to me at ALL. But still, it doesn't hurt to try.

SUGGESTIONS: WHAT COULD BE ADDED?

I'm just gonna blaze through these suggestions since I've honestly written MORE THAN ENOUGH at this point. Hell, I'm surprised if you've even made it this far into the review!

• Toggleable music and sound effects?

• Toggleable Fan and Pearl Bytes?

• Toggleable Mendo armor?

• Having a full team with the same character?

• Create a party with fewer than 8 characters?

• Customizable difficulty?

• Select more than 4 Chips and Bytes?

• More Faz-Powers?

• Unused Mini Browbow enemy reimplemented?

• Bringing back JJ's unused Foxy Fighters line?

• Trophies for buying every Byte and Chip?

• Playable Lolbit, Dee Dee, and Mendo? (PLEASE SPEED I NEED THIS!!!)

• Playable Virtua-Freddy?

• Dedicated tutorial and training room?

Ok, FOR REAL THIS TIME, I think that's everything I wanted to say.

FINAL THOUGHTS & SCORE

Well that was a yap session and a half, but now I just wanna take the time and say: Thank you, devs. I genuinely can't put into words how much I love this game, I went into it thinking I was just gonna get some gold but I got some grade-A platinum instead. I don't think it's hyperbole or glazing to say that this is the best FNAF World remake I've ever seen and played (yes, it's even better than FNAF World Redacted, no hate for that game though). It has a bunch of QOL changes, it massively expands on the gameplay without being too overbearing, the new Faz-Power and Time Bonus mechanics absolutely ROCK, and it just feels like an ACTUAL RPG now! Honest to God, even if the game were to hypothetically never get updated again and this is how it was ON ITS OWN without any Part 2, it would STILL be a high 9/10 in my eyes! Everyone who worked on this game, I want you to know this:

I love you, and I'm so deeply grateful for the amount of work you've all put into this project. Thank you for making me feel like a kid again. In the words of that one Kratos meme, my life is yours.

Actually, fuck it, I'm giving my flowers to EVERYONE right here and now!

• Thank you @Pyturret for directing and programming such a masterpiece!

• Thank you @malkmalk for your wonderful UI work!

• Thank you @plushcabinet for your awesome programming prowess and art (also shout-out to FNAF World Fixed, y'all should go check that out!)!

• Thank you @MrFreddy64 for your additional programming contributions (also shout-out to your FNAF Deluxe games, they're PEAK too!)!

• Thank you @Fraeya for your FANTASTIC modeling skills (good luck with FNAF World Retold!)!

• Thank you @dELTA_valory for your GREAT modeling skills AND your great art!

• Thank you @MsAmyJones for playtesting this game, you're the reason it feels so insanely polished!

• Thank you @K-C_rwq for your additional coding help (also shout-out to your FNAF World mods, they're HELLA peak!)!

• Thank you @BennetJL and @samlovesmath for providing the team with your character packs and models (you guys are giving Scott a run for his money at this point!)!

• Thank you A_A_RonHD for allowing the team to use your BANGER remix of Stone Cold!

• Thank you @ZX7_official for making the game's loading screen quotes, they were really funny and I like your sense of humor!

• Finally, thank you @lightcatdev for your prior contributions to FNAF World Refreshed. I know you left the development team a good while ago, but I'll never forget the work you did during your time there. Even beyond the game itself, you're just a great friend in general. You got SO much potential, and I can't wait to see what you cook up next (maybe you can continue working on that FW Mod, who knows?)!

  To the devs and contributors I pinged, I'm really sorry if you didn't wanna be pinged in this post, I just wanted y'all to see the fruits of your labor be fully recognized and appreciated. Let me know if you want your @ removed from this post, I'll gladly edit it if needed!

  I hope everyone loved my review of FNAF World Refreshed. Sorry that it was SO insanely long, but I just REALLY wanted to gush about the game! And so, my final ranking of FNAF World Refreshed (Part 1) is...

  A+ (9/10)!

  Y'all should REALLY give some support to the team, they MORE than deserve it! Here's the link to FNAF World Refreshed's game page, have a wonderful day everybody! https://gamejolt.com/games/FWrefreshed/946129.