Woah, it's been a year already?

Over a year actually, 3 months over. But the game has been in the public eye for a year now! (and 12 days, so sorry this took so long to get posted!) This post won't be as much of a devlog as it is kinda a year in recap and update on what I've been up to lately. Plus I've seen an odd amount of devlogs lately? But we have a good reason being here!

Now the game officially started development December 27th of 2024 when I Dm'd @/Dylan_FNAF and said "I'm tired of Fep, let's do him again but bigger and better!". For context, if some off y'all still don't know this game is a rebirth of an old unfinished fangame "Five Nights at Fep's" I had been working on for 3 years, most things are very very similar but the games are just different enough. But then we made some concepts, planned to release the game page with a trailer, I w.i.p(ed) up some gameplay concepts and I modeled the main 3 + Doggo in about a month.

Here's some photos I could find from around that time!

The game is still in all active parts of development all at once, which is a very bad system I admit, but it somewhat works. So as I'm making gameplay and models, I'm writing lore, writing what the gameplay should be.

So it may or may not surprise you but the first trailer is now very VERY outdated. The models are completely different, the Cynthodroid Technologies convention really doesn't have as much importance now, character drawings are outdated, and I didn't even know what happened in 1963 when making that trailer! Of course I do now but, pretty odd I made a whole trailer teasing events that happened one year when I didn't even know at the time. Therefor the title of the trailer here and on YouTube has been updated to "'1963'-Trailer 1 (Outdated)" and once I have a new trailer to replace that one, it will be unlisted.
But what did I do in the past year that I'll actually keep?

Pretty shortly after conceptualizing the game, I worked on the main office gameplay. All basic mechanics in that segment (e.g. cams, doors, hiding under desk) are done. And Fep, Miffy, and Radder's "attack" mechanics have been implemented. Although no movement has been programmed for them with a press of a button they can appear in your office/door and kill you!

The main menu is done however I will be making some tweaks/just completely recoding it if I feel like it because I want to redesign it to be more polished and convenient to replay the game.

The pre-night basic setup is implemented, like the scrolling and movement. (Although those might be changed too, not sure)

And You can talk to this guy.

Although a bunch of this stuff has been done in the past year, I've more recently completely redid many things mentioned here, as I thought they needed some cleaning up. Nonetheless they're still the old year round code, just a bit more cleaned up.

I've realized I've been so secretive about this game it's kind of become a problem, not many of y'all know what this game contains do y'all?
The basic information from this game's description sets up everything.

You are Gabriella Roberts, the only living child of the Roberts family. Your family built an amazing magical place many years ago, only for it to all disappear along with them too. You are desperate to find out more.

Although the diner and everything in it is seemingly abandoned, it's still legally owned by the parent company, Cynthodroid Technologies. So to get in, you pick up a job as a security guard. You are required to be there for 5 nights until the place gets demolished that next Monday. You are warned heavily though by the previous manager, that there is more than meets the eye in there and to be cautious.

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Between each night, you are greeted by a small familiar looking rabbit who introduces himself as "your hippocampus". He hands you a photo album and tells you to put anything that could recover any memory of your family in there. When returning the next night, whatever is put in that photo album will appear in your mind in a new form.

Think of this section to play out like The Barrens in Jr's, except new things are added (and there's importance to it.

When making it to the diner you have a chance to search around the building for anything of interest, items also mysteriously appear and disappear each night. However you can search the diner both before and after each shift.

Your shift lasts 6 hours from 12am to 6am. But just like any good FNAF game/fangame you aren't entirely alone.

After your main shift however, you are told to go down into the lower floor of the diner and complete some kind of maintenance task. But again, like upstairs you aren't entirely alone. However even when nothing seems particularly threatening, you are still being watched by some body who is everybody
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Now that might just be an expanded version of what the game description but I want to emphasize that this is another Five Nights at Freddy's fan game. But you won't be playing this game just only for the 12am-6am gameplay.

I do still like being secretive on stuff but I'll say a little bit more on what to expect apart from the recap.

The dream sequences will be fully 3D thanks to the votes from that poll a few months ago. Although how things are laid out is likely gonna change because this game needs to work for other people! And not just me.
I am planning to make the dream sequence accessible from the main menu at any time. It serves as a hub to further investigate collected items. If you collected a film reel from the diner you may view it in the dream, how does that work from a in-universe standpoint? I dunno. Or maybe you find a missing poster, and an animatronic might appear in the dream, who knows!

The pre-shift "technically" doesn't have a reason to exist, for now until I can think of some unique stuff. You will be able to do the same things in the pre-shift as you do in the post-shift (before and after your specified task). But nonetheless I will still keep it whether it's unique or not because it's a calm area to explore before your stressful night.

The main gameplay has 12 characters, 3 introduced on night 1, 2 introduced on night 2, another 2 introduced on night 3, 3 introduced on night 4, and the last 2 introduced on night 5. And I try to have each of them have their own lore relevance, mechanics, and reason to be there other than people trying to beat the Custom Night 12/20. But those won't really be told before the game release.

The tasks to do after each night, the post-shift, will be different every night. These segments will be a "finish the task" objective rather than waiting on a timer like the regular office segments. And of course apart from the tasks, there will be threats. And, I will leave that at that. I don't like saying stuff without much to show for it, and because I have just about 0% of stuff made for the post shifts, you will hear more about the post shifts in the coming months.

So what's the big idea! It's been a year and we're still getting told there's MORE waiting? (and a lot of it)

I am one man! Aside from me working on 5 other projects, and school, and living. This game is also very big! This game is just about as close as you can get to ambitious before it becomes impossible. I am also doing just about all of this on my own. It gets hard drawing, modeling, coding, and writing solo.
I'm almost positive no one following this game page has this complaint and I am very thankful for that. But in case y'all are wondering, it's pretty hard to make a game like this by yourself (and in Clickteam!!!)
Modeling the environments is usually what takes me the longest (which is what I am partially doing now). And I still need to finish up character mechanics in the office and stuff. Maybe 3 more characters need a bit of refining in their character models, but one other character will take a very long time to model. Funnily enough I had more written here but I actually already did those things in my 12 day lateness like making the door a pullable lever and refining the computer system.
This game will be releasing eventually, I am absolutely sure of that, it'll take a very long time, but it'll be here one day!

So, how's the progress been lately? This is a devlog after all! Well you just saw the progress! And maybe even in the post before this one!

The main 4/5 (Fep, Miffy, Parker, and Zach) all got some tweaking to their models, the tweaks varying greatly in scale, like Zach just getting some new glasses, or like Fep and Parker getting full on entire remodels from the ears down.

So have a look at those!

And do you wonder why I remake everything every year?

Just look at this difference in quality between these posters (mainly the renders) from 2026 vs. 2025!

Alongside the modeling/rendering part of the game, every render in the office was redone as seen in the video. I didn't intend on doing that but something modified the texturing of the diner walls, meaning I'd have to re-render everything for images to blend seamlessly. And on top of that I edited the cam images and interface to look more accurate to an Apple II.

And another side effect to these re-renders is that now the levers work as levers instead of something you click, similar to something like FNACECR (except the door is still a 2 state door)

I also added night UI back into the game, something that got removed a year ago just about right when it was added in!

Now something else I think is pretty cool, is as I realize the scale of this game. I decided adding separate saves would be a cool feature to this game. In the form of photo album's, which is a big symbol of this game. (I had to code it twice because darn Clickteam didn't save the first time)

(Please note that in the file it says there are 20 trophies and 20 memories, that is just a placeholder and are not accurate to the final game. You also can't play on night 0.)

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I think that's all I have to show for now, wouldn't want to delay this devlog any further! I thank everyone so much for keeping up with this game for (over) a year now!

And for anyone who even cared enough to scroll all the way down! I'll end this devlog with a small Q&A if anyone has any questions!