What can you do when the next game that released later turns out to be gone for good now? Remember it for five nights... get it? Because Five Nights To Remember.

Now, similar to Fnaf VR, I had no idea of this games existence. But I was checking out Scottgames Website frequently to make sure to keep myself up to date, of course, there was Freddy In Space 2 teasers which were... indeed a thing. I'll get more into the Freddy In Space games later, it's not that I don't have a lot to say about those, they are just... interesting games to say the least. And before we started getting teasers for Fetch and the new books (which I was a big fan of at the time, but more on that next review), we got this.

Fnaf AR: Special Delivery. AR? ...Automated Reality? Afton Reality? Abbreviation Reality? No fucking clue what AR was so I decided to do a google search on Illumix, a company that similar to Steel Wool, I had no idea who they were. Doing my google search led me down the rabbit hole of Augmented Reality, which I only knew of from that one 3DS game I'm sure no one played where you had to get cards. I never played those games but it's Fnaf, I love Fnaf. But the problem was similar to Fnaf VR... except worse because I did have a phone, but it was a shitty iPhone 4 at the time. Nowadays, I still think I have the iPhone 12. Anyway, I had to get Fnaf AR much later and by that time... the game was basically still in a state where people cared but also hated the game.

I'll get to that later but I still want to talk about teasers and trailers because oh my god I remember being so hyped for this game back when it was coming out. I still remember subscribing and watching the trailers for this game.

https://youtu.be/Af2PqVuzexg?si=nyBVKpg9MMGKCQZb

Now obviously, very short announcement trailer but apart of me thought this was so cool, Freddy chasing you around the house, Springtrap in the closet, Baby's voice at the end of the trailer. It was great, I was interested to all hell about the gameplay of this game. I have barely any experience with AR games aside from the aforementioned 3DS AR game that I played like... once. Of course, there were other teasers, but I remember watching the announcement trailer the most.

https://youtu.be/2nExS-E7M8c?si=f6geqBYPNT1b9ZFv

https://youtu.be/-uOxrU6vw9I?si=KZMGeyRfDImui_yl

Oh and this is the first time Freddy talked, he is voiced by the guy who voiced Nightmare Freddy in Ultimate Custom Night, who is Tim Simmons. This was the first time Classic Freddy had gotten a voice and... I actually think it's great. A deep, somewhat friendly and menacing voice does fit Freddy in my opinion. Though, I do like the Showtime voice as well. Showtime is from VR and I didn't mention it in the review because... it was scrapped and I don't really like going over scrapped content much. I'll make an exception for this game because my fucking GOD there is so much scrapped content.

https://youtu.be/yxz5Lo-5ec4?si=f02tZgR_qhC5bhra

When the official trailer dropped, I freaked out because they got Markiplier to do it. Markiplier also played the game on his channel... for two videos. Eh, it doesn't matter. Markiplier was in the trailer and call me crazy, I think this is one of the better Fnaf trailers. This introduced us to the story of the game, at least on the surface level, and I gotta say... this is honestly the coolest shit ever. The Fazbear Funtime Service, a service where you can order animatronics from Fazbear's past and have them come to your house to entertain you. Sounds great. Imagine that in real life, you can order Chuck E. Cheese or Helen Hen to come to your house. That would be kickass. Anyway, the concept was cool, but there was no gameplay!!! And then I realized that the game was out, which meant I had to watch YTubers play... again. There was some early access given to the big YTuber's of Fnaf. I got to watch all of Dawko's playthroughs and got to watch him scream at Springtrap for being unfair (just wait till you get to the health bar update Dawko). I eventually got myself a better phone and was able to play the game during it's update where they removed the animatronics coming to your house and got to play the update where you just tapped the screen and choose if you want to encounter the animatronic. I was there for the health bar system though... more on that later.

I was there for a lot of the character and skin reveals, there were some I loved, some I didn't, and then there was Sunken Toy Bonnie, more on him later as well. You know, this ramble may be longer than I want it to be because oh my god I have yearned for talking about this game and now I have a platform of 206 followers to ramble about it too (Thank you for following by the way : D).

Fnaf AR does mean a lot to me. I played this game religiously a lot of the time, at one point, it beat out SL for my favorite Fnaf game. That was a crazy time but my undying love for SL always continued to persist. When the game announced it was about to pull the plug on itself, I was actually kinda sad. While I knew this was a lie, I hoped that they were tinkering away to basically rebuild the game from the ground up, but no, they just left it to die and then pulled the plug. I'm pretty sure that might be illegal or something but what do I know... not much surprisingly.

Fnaf AR, in a way, was similar to TRTF for me. During a dark period of my life, it was there to fill a void that I had lost, and because of it, there has been this love for it ever since. Maybe not as strong as TRTF because that was there during my youth but still, AR does mean a lot to me. I could easily, very easily, skip this game, call it a cash grab, call it slop, and move on to Security Breach, a review I think people are itching to look at and read just because Security Breach is Security Breach. That in itself is a controversial game for a lot of reasons. AR could be swept under the rug, but with how much AR means to me, I really do want to talk about this game and how much wasted potential it is. It basically carried the Fnaf fandom through skins and characters alone during the era when SB had no release date and we were hungry for this game. So yes, I do think it would be a bit of a disservice to not talk about AR and just calling it slop. Not many people care about this game, but I do. And while I don't think everyone wants to see this ramble/review/call it whatever, I think it deserves to be talked about and remembered.

Gameplay:

Okay, so you are fending yourself from the comfort of your own home. No office and no hub... well kind of.

You had this little map of the area you lived in. You also had an icon that you could customize with different characters or 3D icons that would move around. The map would be of your actual irl location and back then, it had unknown animatronics coming to your house, marked by the red bear with the question mark on you. Then you would be thrust into the encounters. You had a few tools at your disposal, a flashlight and shocker. Your goal was to find the static around your room or outside or wherever you were and follow it. The static shows you where the animatronic is. The flashlight allows you to see the static better and for harder characters, you would need that flashlight on all the time.

Now, characters will try to charge at you and you would need to wait for them to decloak from their animstealth module. Now, I won't bring this up ever again because it's not lore important and is only here to serve gameplay but uh... that advanced technology right? I get that at this point, it's past Fnaf 3 and Pizza Sim so we would be on to more high tech shit, but what the fuck is an animstealth module? Fazbear Entertainment should just work for the government like holy fuck. I guess the only lore reason I can think of is that the animstealth module is used so that people aren't horrified of Freddy Fazbear walking down the street to a subscriber of the Fazbear Funtime Services House. It's just... wow. Anyway, once they fully decloak, shock em with the taser and they will deactivate, causing you to win the fight. Sounds easy right? Well, as you start winning, the characters will become more harder, rushing at you, more, not decloaking more, and basically being faster. You also get harder characters and the easier difficulties become slightly more aggressive. You also have to worry about haywiring, where you can't look at the animatronic when they do this or they will kill you. Shocking when nothing is there will cause battery drain and shocking when haywiring is an insta kill. Allowing the cloaked animatronic to run at you is also an insta kill.

Now, this is a mobile game, there's a shop right? Of course there is!

Waste some real money getting Toy Bonnie or Faz Coins, Dawko was Illumix's biggest cash cow. Yeah, there's micro transactions. It's a mobile game, I expect nothing less. I never paid out except like once with an Apple Gift Card. That was back when I was really young. I simply grinded... miserably. Yeah, just like most mobile games of these types, the drop rates are horrendous. You could be grinding for days and could still not get a CPU or Plush Suit.

The shop is your shop, use the in game currency like Parts or Faz Coins to buy things to help with dealing with characters easier, finding characters you want to fight, or getting extra batteries for your shocker and flashlight. They all run on one battery so you probably need a lot of them. There are three in game currencies, Parts, Faz Coins, and Remnant. Parts can be used to get certain abilities for the hub world, such as a remnant collector that allows you to get more remnant in the remnant sections (more on that later) Faz coins which allow you to buy batteries as well as buy plush suits for the workshop, more on that real soon. Or you could also use actual money to buy Faz coins... yeah. Remnant is interesting, yeah, remnant is here. It's the only time it will ever be a game mechanic.

Now the aforementioned workshop.

The workshop is actually pretty cool. You can buy plushsuits in the main shop or earn them by grinding and defeating the characters. And when you put them in the workshop, well, you can see them do fun little animations. The animations may be basic, or you can get some really cool ones. Skins can sometimes have unique animations as well.

I like how fluid and stretchy Bon-Bon is. Yeah sure, it doesn't make sense but I don't care, they were having fun with it.

I don't know why, but the way Springtrap moves here is just... mesmerizing... and really cool for some reason. I like Springtrap in this game for a lot of reasons.

This animation would be reused for Melted Chocolate Bonnie, this is the only reason I put it here because I can mention Melted Chocolate Bonnie before I get to the skins section of the ramblings of a mad man who likes Fnaf probably way too much for someone who is about to be 20.

The workshop also allows you to attack your friends, send your animatronics out to salvage, and just mess around with the characters. You can get CPU's as well, allowing you to basically have Springtrap act like Toy Bonnie for some reason. This only worked for encounters with friends though, and you use the remnant to make your animatronics more aggressive when attacking your friends... though I don't think it made a difference in the gameplay. You had mods to the animatronics that made them harder as well but once again, I don't know if it ever made a difference. There were many slots you could use in your workshop to have different characters on display.

There's also a photo booth... it self explanatory. You take photos of the animatronics and... yeah. They had contests but I have no fucking clue how that worked or if the people actually got their prizes, knowing Illumix they probably didn't. Alright, let's get to the meet and potatoes.

Animatronic encounters are interesting. So like, you can do certain things in the map that can help you locate certain enemies, get more remnant, get more parts. But before the cool tapping map, animatronics would simply enter your house when they felt like it... I prefer basically launch AR over the updates AR later got with the map if I'm being honest. The whole point was that animatronics are coming to you, why do I need to choose to encounter the animatronic. I get that it might be to avoid long encounters and the animatronics getting tired and moving on, but I don't know, the old way was just so much better. Anyway, the gameplay I mentioned before is the same, you wait for the animatronic to decloak and you shock em, simple as that.

"BUT JESSICA!!!" I hear the one AR fan scream at the top of their lungs. "Are you not going to talk about the characters and how they work?" Indeed I will... and they get their own section this time, crazy huh?

Characters:

This is probably a one time thing, but I have a lot to say about the characters, models, and other things about them.

Let's start with the base roster on release, and the easiest character in the game: Endo 01.

I actually like how accurate this guy is, it's insane the attention to detail on these models. He's easy to spot and makes a ton of static and can take a while to run at you. If you lose to Endo 01... I hope you feel bad for losing to Endo 01.

The big bear himself, Freddy Fazbear!

You know what I'm gonna say it. The shiny material used on the classics and Springtrap that caused a massive uproar is like Sonic in Sonic 4 having green eyes. Yeah, the materials are weird, but I always pictured it as Fazbear Ent just not giving a crap about their authenticity to older generations. As for the real reason, I guess it might have just been easier on Illumix to make metal instead of fur for some characters. I really don't mind, but some of them do. Freddy acts like Endo 01, except he has a toreador march and he finally has a voice. I commented on the voice earlier, it's honestly great. I can see it working with Freddy here and he has some good lines.

But yeah, he's like Endo 01, I think it might be harder to see the static I'm not sure.

Now we have Bonnie!

The rabbit of the hour is here and he's back to his usual Fnaf 1 coloring. Outside of the material, he looks ripped straight out of Fnaf 1. Gotta hand it to Illumix, they made some good models... for the most part. His guitar is missing but who cares. Bonnie doesn't have a voice, he instead has the Fnaf 1 moaning and groaning. Bonnie also has slightly harder static to see so it's hard to tell where he is while he moves around. He's the hardest out of the main four in my opinion at least. Or I just suck at the game, one of the two.

The fun loving chicken Chica!!!

Once again, feels ripped straight out of Fnaf 1. Even Mr. Cupcake is here, she's somehow easier than Endo 01 and Freddy I find. I don't know how... she's just easier. But she follows the same mechanic as the others... I don't have much to say about her honestly. She doesn't have a voice, she's the same as Bonnie. Although, Bonnie had an ambiance to him, Chica doesn't for some reason.

Foxy The Pirate is here!!

Meet the man himself, Foxy. He's the hardest out of the main four and Endo 01, he walks and runs pretty fast, and he haywires more often then the others I find. Foxy's ruthless. Chris is back to voice Foxy like he did in UCN and HW (Captain Foxy's Pirate Ride) and he's got some good voice lines honestly. He's more on the scary side with stuff like "Me bird's keepin an eye on ya." but erm, Illumix, Classic Foxy doesn't have a bird.

Taking a break from Fnaf 1, we make a pit stop at Fnaf 2 with Balloon Boy!!

See, now we get an interesting mechanic for this guy... kinda. BB doesn't make footsteps, he moreso puffs up his balloon and deflates it. He moves around that way. When the Balloon fully deflates, he runs at you, but it's the same deal really. Wait for decloak and shock. Nothing special honestly. But it is weird that BB is in the game before any of the other Toys, they would be coming soon though.

Next up, we skip Fnaf 4 and go to Sister Location with Circus Baby!!!

Like with the others, she looks ripped straight out of SL, maybe a few hints of Help Wanted Baby though... maybe. Anyway, she has the same mechanic as the others, and you can hear her footsteps, she's just harder and faster. Heather Masters comes back to voice Baby and she's great here. It kinda feels like lines that Baby would say during SL. "If you are very, very quiet, maybe I will not find you." goes hard as a line for some reason. But yeah, it's Baby, nothing much to say about her. She's cool.

I skipped Fnaf 3 because I saved the best for last... he's also bullshit. Springtrap!!!

Honestly, I think the shiny material works better here. It's Springtrap, back to the original after the model that was HW Springtrap. He looks great, his voice is great, and the lines he has all surround his ego and lines from UCN. I don't know what this means lore wise so I won't be talking about it, though I will mention it in the story section. Anyway, Springtrap is fucking BULLSHIT. So, he works like everyone else, he charges, moves around, you shock him and you win. But... he's basically a boss fight in a way. What you have to do is when he haywires, you have to look at him. I know right, the game up to this point has taught you to look away, but you need to keep an eye on him. If he has white eyes, stare at him. If he has red eyes, look away. He can sometimes change from white to red so be on guard, but he can't change from red to white. Also, he might just kill you instantly when haywiring so be on the look out, RNG the boss is back.

He can haywire in chains to, which fucking SUCKS. But the model and voice are great, so I like those, but his encounter sucks.

And, that's the base roster.

But, since this is a mobile game, the game got updated with brand new characters with their own unique stories and emails as it went on. Let's start off with the seasonal character and considering the month, this is the perfect time to talk about em. I am of course referring to Freddy Frostbear.

Technically the first skin but he actually has slightly different code from skins so that makes him a character : D. He's basically a harder version of Freddy but instead of static, he actually freezes your screen. I should mention unless the static fully takes over, you can still use the shocker if you can see it, iirc if the static fully takes over your screen, your shocker is disabled. Here, it's an instant disabling of the shocker so quickly shake your screen or shake it when you are standing still. He doesn't have a voice but he's got a badass design for something so simple.

That's not all, we soon got the Toys into the game, which then introduced the mask mechanic.

Toy Chica is your usual character, you wear the mask and look directly at her. Her voice is the same as in UCN and she has that friendly, scary, seductive vibe to her as usual. She's a cool character and the first of the Toys to be added to the game. She and Frostbear even got their own emails when added for story purposes.

With a giant gap in his teeth gone, Toy Bonnie returns to the masses, now with a Springtrap mechanic involving the mask. When his eyes are white, look at him, when his eyes are red, look away. He's significantly easier than Springtrap though, and he's not entirely bullshit so that's good. He's honestly one of the easier enemies because he can just rush and decloak at the beginning of the encounter. So Toy Bonnie gets a pass... and yes, I like his voice. I don't care if he sounds like a character from Alvin and the Chimpmunks, he's awesome.

Toy Freddy returns out of retirement, no longer a gamer and now a corporate sellout with his patented jingles. He's honestly one of my favorite characters. Not too hard, but not too easy either. He's easier than Toy Chica but can drain your battery so you need to wear the mask when your battery starts to drain. His voice actor returns from UCN and the lines and delivery are all great.

Mangle also makes a come back. An email also states that they tried to replicate the originals ceiling and wall crawling but they never could. This means that the Toys are possessed back then. Anyway, Mangle is an interesting character, no shocker. They also have red eyes all the time, it's more of a boss battle. They will drop a part and you need to get it before a timer runs out. It can be hiding anywhere around your room on the floor. Mangle will then rush at you when you collect the part, quickly find them and put on your mask. They will decloak when doing this but they won't die right away. You have to do it three or four times and then Mangle will be fully defeated. The first of the brand new mechanics and it's honestly very cool.

Now after this, characters kinda took a backseat for a bit. Outside of 8-bit Baby I guess.

Yeah, another character that looks like it should be a skin, slightly different code that makes it a character. She's basically Baby but maybe a bit harder and different colored haywire. She doesn't have a mechanic and when you defeat her, she blows up. She's pretty cool and you hear the SL minigame music in the background.

After that, it was mostly skins for a while, more on those later. But then, we got some brand new characters after a bit with the ballerina herself, Ballora!

She was planned to have a voice but for some reason it was cut, thanks Illumix. Anyway, what to say about Ballora? It's Ballora, she's cool. She also doesn't use the shocker, instead you have a noise meter. Similar to Mangle, you have to go around looking for Minireena's, but you can't be too fast. Being fast means your being loud, be too loud and you die. Instead of static, minireenas will climb up on you and you have to shake them off. Don't shake too violently, because that also makes noise. It's alright I suppose. I have nothing against the mechanic but it had been a while since a new character joined.

We then got two brand new characters that mostly work the same, Jack-o Bonnie and Chica!

Imo, they honestly look really good. I think the more shiny material works for them. Jack-o Chica has a voice while Jack-o Bonnie is completely silent. They are more aggressive versions of the main cast on launch basically. Though, I actually find them to be really easy. They can have smoke instead of static which is nice and Jack-o Chica's voice actor reprises her role and she actually has good voice lines that reference UCN while also talk about pumpkins because yknow... pumpkin. Anyway, they're fine, it's weird how they showed up before the Nightmares.

Next is the one, the only, Plushtrap!

You can see every single stitch on this mf, it's honestly insane. This is actually one of my favorite models out of the bunch, he looks insanely detailed and in the workshop, you can see him on a chair which is splendid. His gameplay is... huh?

The fuck is this shit?

Yeah, entirely augmented. It's honestly pretty cool. Though, I have no idea where this is or what it's meant to be. You go around and charge up generators into the green and try to keep them in the green while looking at Plushtrap to stall him slightly. Once he is in front of you, you zap him while the generators are in the green to send him backing. And that's it. Plushtrap had been in a lot of the promotional material but never appeared in the game himself until Halloween which is weird. I think there was miscommunication issues. There were a whole slue of characters planned, the Nightmares, Scrap Baby, Lefty (who was mostly complete until he was scrapped for later for some reason, even had an animation for the workshop finished), and Funtime Freddy, who did get added.

Next up, Golden Freddy.

Yeah that's right, you wanted cool characters? FUCK YOU! GOLDEN FREDDY'S TEETH ARE YELLOW!!! I actually really like Golden Freddy, he's tied with Scrap Baby as my favorite Fnaf character in the series. So I was really excited to see the character and to find out he was a full blown boss fight. Harder than Springtrap, you have to use multiple mechanics to find Golden Freddy, Mangle's mechanic, the regular mechanic, and Ballora's mechanic. You have to shock him three times and try to guess the mechanic, sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it isn't. He's a hard boss fight but I still find him to be pretty fun and overall the best character in the game.

Finally, the final character in the game is... Funtime Freddy!!!

Funtime Freddy is the only new character to function with the healthbar system. Funtime Freddy works like the others, look away when Haywiring, shock him to deplete his heath bar when he decloacks. Funtime Freddy is pretty easy, but Bon Bon can give you trouble. They're a two for one package. Bon Bon can be a bit of an energy drainer and hops along the floor while charging at you. But it's the same, except they don't haywire... I think. Shock Bon Bon and it's all done.

That's all the characters... and I think I rambled enough for one post. See you all in Part 2!!!