God damn, this post took way too long to make, but hopefully it will be worth it as I have a lot of stuff to share!

THE SCRAPPED PROTOTYPE BUILD

I've talked about this in my last monthly update post, but for those that are just seeing posts about this project for the first time, I've been working on thig game for about 9 months now, and I used to work on it using godot 3.5. I later transferred it over to an (at the time) latest version of godot with godot 4.1, and the conversion was a bit of a mess.

This build was scrapped not only because it had a poor conversion over to the newer engine, but it was just a poor representation of my vision for the final product, and I was slowly starting to worry about how the current assets would effect the game's atmosphere, even if I made some "small changes" here and there.

The scrapped build was recorded and preserved in this video here

SCRAPPED MULTIPLE ENDINGS

I’m not gonna say what the endings were as that could spoil the game’s story.  However the game was gonna have multiple endings depending on how often the player used the taser mechanic. There were going to be 3 endings in total, but only one of them remains.  The multiple endings were scrapped as it was ultimately pointless in regards to the story of the games as a whole.  Not to mention, using the taser on its own already punished the player enough, but I won’t go too into detail about it here.

SCRAPPED LOOP IDEA

In the game, the final night would’ve been locked behind collectibles and giving those collectibles to each of the animatronic in order to unlock the final night.  If the player failed to do so, they would be forced back to the menu screen where they can select any night where they missed a collectible and complete the game before unlocking the final night.  This was scrapped as, obviously, it would have made the game really tedious, and this idea stuck around for an embarrassingly long amount of time.  The collectibles are still in the game and serve a purpose to the story still, but it’s no longer mandatory to find them and have them tied to progression

ORIGINAL SUSIE DEATH

Susie, the child whose soul would possess Chica, was meant to die in a different way, and at a different time, something that I won’t detail for how graphic it was and for potentially spoiling the final game’s story.  This was ultimately scrapped as I later realized that it would be inconsistent with what the game was trying to do, inaccurate to FNAF lore, and gorey for the sake of being gorey.

HELPY PHANTOM

I joke about Helpy not being in the game in my monthly updates, but he was meant to be in the game at one point as a phantom, serving as a sort of phone guy.  This was scrapped for the purpose of replay value, so it wouldn’t be tedious to listen to him and have to skip him every time.  I also cut Helpy due to realizing that the mechanics can be conveyed much more quickly, and clearly to the player, and his existence just didn’t make much sense. (The Helpy Phantom was the second concept I worked on for this game, but as he was scrapped early on, his concept art was left unfinished. Also while he's fully opaque here, he would have been transparent in game.)

PURGATORY BALLOON BOY

An idea for a Purgatory Balloon Boy’s gameplay was planned, but was scrapped before he was ever conceptualized visually.  Hell he was scrapped before I was able to write down his mechanics in the design document, that’s how early he was scrapped.  However I do remember that he would sneak to various rooms and mess with the systems the player would use to push back animatronics.  This was scrapped really early as I quickly realized he was an unnecessary addition. (Below isn't concept art, this was a quick sketch that I made specifically for this post, of what I remember I wanted him to look like)

DORMITABIS EASTER EGG

Getting this out of the way now, I really hate Dormitabis, not just for the developer, but the game itself commits a lot of design sins, that being it was ugly, needlessly edgy and gorey, and tells us more than it shows.  In fact Dormitabis inspired the making of this project because I hated it that much, so I wanted to include an easter egg that absolutely just mocks that game.  I scrapped it though because the idea behind it was too harsh and unnecessary. (Below was the easter egg in a test version of the notepad)

ORIGINAL PURGATORY FREDDY DESIGN

I had ideas on all of the animatronics, except for Freddy himself.  So I hastily whipped up something that I’m rather ashamed of and I’m planning on adding it as a joke easter egg.  It was absolutely terrible and flat out ugly.  I tried making it just a kid with a Freddy head on to indicate how this is supposed to be weak, and not as aggressive as the others, but it just came out horribly.  Since the designs are supposed to visually represent how the children died without having to tell the player, I ended up becoming very worried about this design.  I couldn’t scrap it immediately though as I had no better ideas for how to design him.  I eventually did though, and thankfully was able to replace him with something better.

SCRAPPED CHILD DEATH ANIMATIONS

This also took an embarrassingly long time to scrap.  These were going to be included to really emphasize how terrible William Afton’s actions were, but honestly it wasn’t needed.  What was the breaking point for why these were scrapped was because of an analog horror series called “UrbanSPOOK”.  If you haven’t heard of it UrbanSPOOK is a terrible series that's just graphic for the sake of it, and seeing it for the first time, along with many other fnaf fan games being gorey for the sake of it, really made me question of how I want to express the story of this game.  I never wanted to make a gorey game just because gore = scarier, I want to make a gorey game to establish the mood, and convey a story without much dialogue.  However I was and still am concerned that it might still be misunderstood as a game that relies on shock value.  So because of how unnecessary these were, and my concerns with how this game might be perceived, I scrapped these death scenes.

ORIGINAL NIGHT 9 IDEA

This is the big one, and the grand finale to this post.  The game still takes over the course of 9 nights.  However what is currently planned for Night 9 was not the first idea for it.  I won’t spoil much about the current night 9, but I will share plenty about the original Night 9 here, even though the original has some similarities.  In the original version of night 9, after beating the first 8 nights, Golden Freddy would be frustrated with you and go berserk.  This would cause purgatory to start changing visually into the original Fredbear’s location.  You would have been held up in a Parts and Service room, in front of you would be a monitor, and in front of that would be Fredbear with Evan Afton in his mouth.  Behind you would have been Spring Bonnie in another area within Parts and Service.  You would've been introduced to a "original" character in this night, and they still are in the current Night 9. SO to avoid spoiling the game, they will be called "Molten" for now.

The player would switch between the cameras and a maintenance panel, and could look behind themselves and activate a camera flash. The goal for the player was to get Evan Afton out of the jaws of Fredbear so William could try and fix him. Of course the other animatronics would have tried to stop you. Golden Freddy would corrupt either your maintenance panel and make Fredbear more hostile, or corrupt your camera feed and make "Molten" more hostile. Fredbear would've attacked the player if they haven't used the maintenance panel for a while. Spring Bonnie would have slowly approached the player, and would've stopped temporarily when flashed. The player could not send Spring Bonnie back, so the player would've needed to focus on maintaining Fredbear, and keep checking on Spring Bonnie in order to avoid him entirely. "Molten" would've roamed around Fredbear's Family Diner, and the player needed to push them back by scaring them on the camera's with sirens.

Only one piece of concept art was made for this original version of Night 9, but I'll only show it after the game is released as it involves "Molten" who still appears in the final game.

This whole night was scrapped due to over ambition as I have to draw so much for this game already. I can hardly draw one location at the moment so another location with a ton of different unique rooms would have been too much.

AAAAAAnnddd that's all, this was a long ass post, but I hope y'all enjoyed looking at the pieces of what possibly could have been included. See you in the next post!

-Casey :P