I am about a month late for this, and I apologize, I'm not good at all with dates. This will be a long read,, so take your time and read this at your own pace if you wish.

TLDR: Thank you all for following the development of Ultimate Freddyverse, I am beyond happy for the success this game has gotten. I never expected to get nearly 8k views on my game, and even if the process has been slow, I am incredibly glad with what I've achieved.

On September 10th 2024, I released version 1.0.0 of Ultimate Freddyverse on Gamejolt oficially. The game was in development for longer than I would have liked, as many of the old FNaF clickteam games, and old FNaF fangames had very quick development times, due to the simplicity of the games, and Ultimate Freddyverse, whilst large for a Scratch Game, is a very simple game all things considered. According to Gamejolt, Ultimate Freddyverse was first put in the platform about 3 years ago, in an unfinished state, at that time, the game looked much different than nowadays, as shown on old builds, or videos, like the first Gameplay Footage I released on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMrMEt9biKE

I am sadly unable to view the exact creation day of the project, as it was first started on Scratch, and the original Scratch project on my old account is now lost, but I would say that the original project was created about 4 years ago on 2021, and put on Gamejolt in 2022. This means that the game took 4 years to release. If I had to give a reason for this, it would likely be because this project was merely for fun, and I developed it on my free time, when I was inspired to develop it and had good ideas to implement, things such as school, personal life and mental health have also played into the development time. I am currently in college, and started this game when I was in my last year of high school, so I would like to apologize for making you all wait 3 years for this game to be completed.

But more importantly, I'd like to thank you all for following the development of this passion project. I read all your comments, see all my new follows, check youtube for any new videos on my game, and check the leaderboards on the game to see if people are still playing and uploading their scores. I know several usernames of people who have consistently followed this game's development through all this time, and greatly appreciate them. I also have tried my best to add as many suggestions as possible, in the forms of characters, challenges, references, easter eggs, etc. If I have not added an idea of yours, I either added it, but in a minor way, didn't think it'd be a good fit for the game, or somehow missed the suggestion. Even for the suggestions that I have not added, I greatly thank you for your continued support.

Ever since I was a child I've wanted to create my own FNaF game. I remember first discovering FNaF fangames, and looking up on google how to create games, as well as first discovering roblox and playing FNaF roleplay games, to make my own stories and such. My research on how to create a FNaF fangame lead me to Scratch; at the time, I already knew what Scratch was, but hadn't tried dipping my toes into coding on it. I put a tutorial, and started developing my own FNaF fangame on Scratch, based on an idea for one I had thought of, which became the first video game I ever made. The game is called "Five Nights at Sugar", and it's available on Scratch to this day, it's what you'd expect from a kid's first attempt of a video game, with gameplay that is somewhat functional thanks to the tutorial I watched, but rough around the edges, and unfinished.

At the time I intended to finish it, but I got overconfident, and tried continuing development without the tutorial, which ended in failure, and abandonment of the project. I still intend to one day remake this game and properly finish it, and have an idea for a new name: "A Spoonful of Sugar", but I have not started development, nor do I know when I'll start development on it, as I have long forgotten my original ideas for the story (aside from the fact that they were not very good ideas), so I cannot promise anything, or show any content for it. Ideally it'll be developed in a proper game engine, as I wanna graduate from Scratch. If you'd like to play the original unfinished version, here's a link: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1044922696/

For the next few years, I abandoned the idea of making a FNaF fangame totally, and made other projects on Scratch (a lot of which I'd wanna keep hidden because they make me cringe). In 2020, when the pandemic had started, I spent a lot more time on Scratch due to the abundance of free time I found myself with, and returned back to the idea of making a FNaF fangame. I decided to try and make a game, now with more experience, to see if I could create a FNaF fangame after years of getting more experience on Scratch, this game was released to Scratch on June 27th, 2020, and was named "One Night at Fidget Spinner" (previously One Night at Fidget Spinner), the theme was about Fidget Spinners because previously on Scratch I had made several Fidget Spinner themed games. The game was functional, albeit a direct copy of FNaF 1's gameplay. It was an actual functioning game you could beat, and I liked it enough to update it, eventually adding enough nights, and decided to rename it to what it is today. This game baited for a sequel in its final update, and had lore of its own, which I don't know if anyone has solved or cares for... And the sequel is on development hell to this day.

After I finished Five Nights at Fidget Spinner, I wanted to try making a better FNaF fangame, and thought of ideas. Whilst I could finally make Five Nights at Sugar, I wanted to wait to get more experience, so I could do the original idea from my childhood justice, and thus, the idea came to me; a fangame which was making an Ultimate Custom Night inspired game, which combined the original FNaF roster with characters from the fangame community, as a sort of celebration of the whole community. After getting these ideas, I created a copy of Five Nights at Fidget Spinner, and got to work transforming it into another game. I reached a point where I had a game with 6 characters, and for a while I stopped development due to me prioritizing other projects at the time, and thankfully, by the time I came back to the project I had discovered Turbowarp, and continued development there, which allowed me to keep the old Scratch build of Ultimate Freddyverse, and eventually make this old build public as Ultimate Freddyverse 0.0.1. The link is here: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1044927951/

After moving to Turbowarp, I was able to take the project more seriously, making it fullscreen, and surpassing several of Scratch's limits, most prominently the kid friendly limitation on their projects. On Scratch, project with themes of horror and violence are often removed, or blacklisted, I totally understand this limitation as Scratch is a platform for all ages, but it also meant I couldn't make the exact game I wanted, and release it on the platform, because I wanted the game to include mature themes, and be faithful to the source materials I included. For example, Springtrap had no signs of human corpse parts in the original Scratch version. I eventually learned how to package Turbowarps projects, so they could run in other sites, and as downloadable games. As I learned as a developer and continued to make the game, I realized that this game could actually become a serious project, as I previously saw it as another unserious project, due to the limitations of Scratch and restrictions on the website, but a more powerful version of the engine, being able to publish the game on other platforms and my better programming capabilities let me take this game beyond the scope of my previous projects.

From then, I put Ultimate Freddyverse up on Gamejolt and Itch.io, and the rest is pretty much history. Ever since I uploaded the game on Gamejolt, people have been able to publicly follow development, as I kept them updated, and released several beta builds with limited features, and less characters than planned on release. While this project was mostly a one person project, I managed to get others to help me in development, mainly the game's co creator @Montanoooxz , who is also my real world cousin. He helped me with making assets in the game, such as 2d vector art for the characters, as well as with most of the playtesting, and several ideas for the game. He is the reason characters like Shadow Tubby, and Bon made it in, as I am not personally a fan of Slendytubbies or The Walten Files. I also received help from my boyfriend @izanso , as well as others such as @Tagger38 with playtesting, as well as suggestions from several other people both in Gamejolt, and other places, which are all credited in the game itself.

The game took way longer than I expected, as previously stated, which was because I didn't work on it consistently. I spent perios of time where I didn't touch the game for weeks or months, and then periods where I'd hyperfocus on development for a week straight, or more time. I worked on Ultimate Freddyverse when I was inspired, because I believe that if I had worked on the game when I wasn't, I'd create something that didn't meet my own expectations. This game had many scrapped and unused ideas that mostly came from me forcing myself to work on the game. I definitely couldn't have released the game when I did if I didn't have so many suggestions from other people, there were times when I wanted to implement a character but had 0 ideas, and got stressed over it, and someone else gave me great suggestions to come up with these mechanics.

When the game finally released, I was relieved, and somewhat emptied, I felt as if I didn't know what to do now, since the game was now finished, and it was something commonly on my mind before, but my mind was quickly occupied by the rough release of the game. It was incredibly buggy, even though I got a lot of help with beta testing and bug finding, it wasn't nearly as much as I probably needed, as I was excited to release the game and assumed there were no more major bugs... Things such as DeeDee showing up in the tutorial, several mechanics being completely broken, incluiding a character who was completely non functional for months (whoops). Not only this, but I also went through a stressful period where the game was down because I was in the process of updating it, and Gamejolt decided to not let me upload the new build due to some sort of sever issue. Not only this, but I have also continued to add to the game even after initial release, adding things like more secret characters, office skins, bug fixes, quality of life changes, and easter eggs, changes which also came with their own share of bugs. I even realized my game was stolen by a free games website, which felt like a sort of honor that some random people thought my game was good enough to put on their website. Do not support these people though, they steal games, and put them on their website for profit via advertisements, and even through stealing data with potential malware.

The game is definitely slowing down in views and dowloads, which is to be expected, but I still find myself grateful for everyone who has played and interacted with this game, especially those who helped with suggestions, and playtesting of the early builds of the project. Whilst I wish I could have released it sooner, the game is released, and one year (and a month) old officially. I will continue to update this game for some time until I feel it has reached a satisfying amount of extra content, and is stable enough. I have had ideas for a version 2.0.0, which would add 5 more characters so the game reaches a total of 60 characters, plus the extra characters summoned by DeeDee, as well as expanding on the story, polishing the game some more, and adding other things, but I'm not sure I will actually commit to making a version 2.0.0, so while there is a possibility I make it, please do not take it for granted, as there's a pretty likely chance I don't do it for my own personal reasons.

After this game, I plan on continuing on my journey as a gamedev. I plan on making more Scratch/Turbowarp games, many of which are already in development, and eventually graduate from Scratch and make games in other engines, such as Unity, Unreal Engine or Gamemaker. I would love to do this for a living, it's what I'm currently studying in college, and one of my dream jobs. I also have other things I wanna do profesionally, such as art, becoming an influencer, creating comics, animation, and starting to deep my feet inside other forms of horror like digital horror. For the time being however, I will continue updating Ultimate Freddyverse, making more Steve Adventure games, other silly unrelated projects, and striving to better myself.

Thank you for following the development of Ultimate Freddyverse. <3