Five Nights at Freddy’s Night of Frights! Game Review

Funko Games are known for their high fun factor, fan service, and complexity. Night of Frights delivers in all categories. The graphic design of the game hits you immediately with the convincing pizza box and familiar title font. Inside, details like the game board and player pieces are carefully crafted with nice nods to the source material, but with some cheeky embellishments as well, like the character cards having a child-like coloring page aesthetic. So the visuals are there, but how about the game itself?

In a very interesting reversal of the traditional perspective of the video games, you play as Freddie, Bonnie, Chicka, or Foxy as you try to capture the security guard. Each character has a unique perk that references minor game lore about their individual behavior, like Foxy’s sprinting and Chika’s connection to Mr. Cupcake. To capture the guard, you must increase your scariness by collecting items and spending them to raise your meter. Each player takes their turn using action tokens to either Move rooms, Pick Up items, Play an Action Card, or Try to Capture the Guard. Action Cards mix up gameplay by allowing you to draw an item, swap places with another player, or steal an item. Spend items accordingly in respective marked rooms to increase how scary you are. The higher your scariness, the greater your chance of capturing the guard. Capturing requires you to blindly pick from a bag of tokens, only one of which is the guard. You can pick more tokens the scarier you are. If you have large hands, be careful not to damage the bag, you only get one. If a player captures the guard, they win the game. If you fail to capture the guard, draw new action cards and lower your scariness. If all action card are used before the guard is captured, the shift ends, the guard escapes, and all players lose.

There are a few sub mechanics we haven’t covered, like the security camera which only lets you move while inhabiting the same room, but if we covered everything, this review would be quite long. Needless to say, read the instructions a couple times, then jump in, you’ll get the hang of it quickly.