Hey all, this is Sean. It’s been a looooong time since the last bit of interaction from me on this game page. Sorry about that.

I figured that after over a year of nothing, I should finally lay this to rest and talk about what happened to WAKE_UP.

The short version, I got burned out on developing Five Nights at Freddy’s games and had no ambition to work on the reboot.

Going in, I was really excited to have the opportunity to work on what I thought would be the best version of the game. But as time went on and development progressed, I slowly started losing my fire. Mechanics were getting implemented much more slowly, and there were some days that I just didn’t work on the game at all.

It didn’t take too terribly long for me to realize that I wasn’t going to be able to finish the game. I moved on, and for a few months I didn’t touch WAKE_UP at all.

But, as most of you know, I eventually teased a sequel. I’m sorry to say that I was really foolish with teasing that so early. I honestly didn’t have much beyond the title screen and a semi-working office. It was doomed from the start, really.

That’s kinda where WAKE_UP died. The original released game was a buggy, unfinished mess held together with glue and duct tape. It was heavily unoptimized and there was an entire ending that you couldn’t access because of my shitty coding. Overhaul Edition faced similar issues.

It honestly breaks my heart knowing that a lot of people expected this to be a good game, and it just… wasn’t. I’m genuinely sorry that I was foolish enough to release such a mess.

Honestly, WAKE_UP kind of killed game development for me for a while. Come 2017, I had a monster of a PC that would allow me to develop just about anything. But I just didn’t. I would start something, show off some bad in-development images on Twitter, and then bam. It’d be wiped off of my hard drive, never to be heard from again.

I was honestly more sad than I had ever been in 2017. I was just depressed. Life was incredibly monotonous and boring, I didn’t have very many friends, and I wasn’t working towards bettering my education. I honestly fucking hated it.

Starting in September of last year, me and my family moved into an old Toyota Dolphin RV and started traveling the US. I left my PC and old lifestyle behind. And honestly, as not-very-glamorous as that sounds, I’m so much healthier, both mentally and physically.

I’m still programming and playing video games, but on top of that I’ve also picked up skateboarding as a regular exercise and I’ve been actively trying to improve my math abilities, which in turn has improved how I code and develop games.

Taking a long break from programming helped, I think. It was non-stop all of 2017, but once we left my hometown, I took a break for nearly 6 months. It killed me at first, but I think I’ve come back better than I was before. I actively want to create stuff now.

I like to think that I’ve improved as a person, and I hope that my games will reflect that.

I genuinely thank every single person who supported me when I was just starting out. I’ve met so many awesome people through the FNAF community, and I don’t think I would be as into game development as I am now if it weren’t for this game, and you guys.

Thank you all.

—Sean