Plot:

There have been many Freddy's locations, and each tried to emulate the methods of what transpired at Hurricane, Utah.

Whilst most have closed, the location in Chicago, Illinois, is still open, despite being noted as the failure of the bunch.

With a living phone guy, a reluctant purple man who may or may not now be colluding with the police, and a focus on electrical ghosts rather than remnant, this location was quite frankly deemed a mess, and now as the 10 year anniversary of this locations missing children incident approaches, the location cannot stay open any longer.

For the last week, the night guard on shift is Phone 'Krasnyy' Guy. As it approaches the 10 year anniversary of the missing children incident, the 4 year anniversary of almost getting murdered by Vincent Taylor on his 4th night also draws close, as well as it having been a few months since the animatronics made him their ‘voice’ (which entails him having to do as the animatronics command, since the animatronics realised that having a teammate not confined by circuitry would speed up the process of finding their killer).

The story in my AU

It's a fangame set within my own AU, the Renegade AU. There is a lot of stuff that happens in the Renegade AU that I referenced within the game, meaning that if this is anyone's first dig into my AU, things probably will be confusing. I probably should have explained stuff more during the game, but that probably would have inflated the amount of text exposition from "a lot" to "way too much."

I just hope that it makes coherent sense enough for people to bother to complete it.

Also I included the TH link for the characters in the game's description (because they're all AU characters, such as Krasnyy Guy, Vincent Taylor, and Gerald Taylor), so hopefully if someone is confused, they'll read them and it'll make some sense.

The code

I'll be fair; the code is a mess. Getting the arcade cabinet to work was a nest of 'if' statements, and the office was worse. One of the collect missions (the 3 item one) may say 'that's everything' after grabbing the 2nd item, but at least trying to progress reiterates what you need and where it's from. It's only one of the boxes where you pick stuff up from, so it's not detrimental, just a bit confusing.

It was a mess, but it kept me on my toes, and it was more of a 'keep my skills up over the summer' project that I did to see if I could (and because that summer, RPG maker had a heavy discount in the Steam Summer Sale).

Also, the shortcut included in the game won't work because it was made on my computer, and the one included is more of an aide to making the shortcut than anything. A tutorial for finding the .exe is in the ReadMe.

Development took about 120 hours.

That's not including the time taken to draw the portraits and the images used as CGs.

The Images.

The portraits for everyone EXCEPT the arcade characters were drawn by me.

I watermarked this one as whilst I uploaded the individual portraits, I never uploaded this full image showing they were done on the same page. Also, if you've played the game, you'd notice that Krasnyy has a different portrait. I didn't like the one here, so made a new one.

He looks a bit better here.

The girl in the arcade machine was made using the in-engine character creator, and the Old man and Monster were the bundled-with-engine ones.

I also used the in-engine character creator to make the game sprites for all the characters, because pixel art is not my forte.

The scenery was also made with the resources provided by the game engine. Trying to make a pizzeria out of the stuff provided was a fun challenge.

Also, the CGs? They look hand drawn, and, They were! By me!

Also, a few of the CGs were redrawn between when I drew them in 2021 and its release in 2022. These drawings were made in the month running up to the day that I decided I would release the game on (that being my 21'st birthday). Also BOTH of those re-drawn CGs were the two that are for gameplay. The ending CGs were never re-drawn.

The Twist

Spoilers.

The main twist is that the arcade machine...

is being run by the ghosts of dead guards.

So it's more of a digital puppet show than an actual arcade game. Also the arcade's story is very corny and cheesy, but that's because I used my first pass of it. Kinda fits, seeing as the ghost guards would have been improving it on the fly.

This kinda wholesome twist is also why I gave it a name that has a similar vibe to the titles of Professor Layton games.

The endings

Spoilers.

There's only one true ending, and it's the good one.

The path to get it is pretty clear (grab the 2 plushies, talk to your colleague, defeat Golden Freddy). I'm a bit worried I didn't make it clear enough, but it may be the only clear thing in the game.

Also there are 2 bad endings, one's a secret ending you get for trying to leave the building 50 times, the other is from not completing the requirements. They are a glorified game over and are not cannon.

The true ending is the good ending, which is the one that uses the CG I included above.

I also included a guide in the read-me (I state early that 'There's a guide here, if you want to play blind, don't read), and it's the equivalent of clicking 'hint' in a puzzle game, really. BECAUSE I DON'T TRUST MYSELF TO MAKE ANYTHING EVEN VAUGELY COHERENT. It's something I need to work on.

End notes.

I uploaded all the art I made for my fangame to my Deviantart, so all images I used here are also there:

https://www.deviantart.com/paigelts05/gallery/83638855/the-haunted-watch

Also, the AU characters are here:

https://toyhou.se/PaigeLTS05/characters/folder:2404365

Only a small portion of them show up, but it should help anyone new to my AU understand what the hell is going on.