Ultimate Custom Night

Ultimate Custom Night
File:Ultimatecustomnight.jpg Steam storefront header
Developer(s)	Scott Cawthon
Publisher(s)	Scott Cawthon (PC) Clickteam LLC USA (Console and Mobile)
Composer(s)	Leon Riskin
Series	Five Nights at Freddy's
Engine	Clickteam Fusion 2.5
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows iOS Android PlayStation 4 Xbox One Nintendo Switch
Release	Microsoft Windows WW: June 27, 2018 iOS, Android WW: April 28, 2020 PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch WW: April 30, 2021
Genre(s)	Survival horror, point-and-click, strategy
Mode(s)	Single-player

Ultimate Custom Night is a point-and-click survival horror video game created by Scott Cawthon. It is a spinoff game to the Five Nights at Freddy's video game series. The game was released on June 27, 2018 for free on Steam and Game Jolt. A mobile port for iOS and Android was released on April 28, 2020, with console ports released on April 30, 2021. The game was originally intended to be DLC for Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator, but was later developed into its own separate game. A sequel, Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted, was released on May 28, 2019.

Gameplay

The game allows the player to choose from 50 characters from the first six main Five Nights at Freddy's games and FNaF World, and set their difficulty levels for the night from a minimum of "0" to a maximum of "20". During the night, the player must keep track of several mechanics, such as doors, ventilation systems, and air duct systems to avoid being attacked by the animatronics. The player can earn "Faz-Coins" to buy power-ups, plushies to stop certain animatronics, and a "Death Coin" to eliminate an animatronic of the player's choice from the current night. The player is also able to select the office setting, choose power-ups that may help them during the night, and select 16 challenges available to them. The objective is to survive from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m., with each hour in-game lasting 45 seconds. In the final release, 59 characters from the franchise were included, with some appearing without the player's choice. Of these extra nine, Dee Dee from FNaF World, has the ability to randomly spawn and summon either a character that isn't currently active or one of six that are unavailable to the player, with a new form of her named XOR being able to summon all of the extra six. An Easter egg involving using the Death Coin on Golden Freddy when he's the only active character on a night and set to "1" difficulty triggers a jumpscare from Fredbear, the earlier incarnation of Golden Freddy who had previously only appeared in minigames.

Plot

Although the game is most likely non-canon to the franchise, some people have come up with theories as to how the game may fit into the series' timeline. As such, the following is mostly speculation.

Taking place after the previous installment. After the player dies by certain characters, they speak certain lines that suggest that the player character is actually William Afton, who was killed in a fire at the end of the sixth game and his soul is now trapped in a purgatory-like state, tortured by various animatronics as consequences of his actions. Some of the speaking antagonists mention an unknown entity, referred to as "the one you should not have killed", who is thought to stay with Afton to torture him. The entity is widely regarded to be the spirit living inside Golden Freddy because, after unlocking every intermission cutscene, a cutscene of Golden Freddy, twitching and surrounded by darkness, is shown. Golden Freddy is also the only character that will kill you upon attempting to use the death coin on him (only if he is set to "1"). A rare screen also shows an obscured face of a small, grinning child thought to be the "vengeful spirit", whose voice is rarely heard through a few of the characters. During the night, if Old Man Consequences is set to "1" and all other characters are inactive, then, after catching a fish, a scene from FNaF World will be shown, with you taking control of a bear sprite (possibly Golden Freddy), and Old Man Consequences telling you to leave the "demon" (Afton) to his own demons and for you to rest their own soul. The game closes upon drowning yourself in the lake.

However, the anthology novel series Fazbear Frights implies that the game is actually Afton's repeating nightmare, and not hell or purgatory. This comes from the fifth book, Bunny Call, which has a story called "The Man in Room 1280" where a burned man is kept alive by a shadow child despite the fact that he should be dead and suffers nightmares. In the following book, Blackbird, the epilogue confirms that the man is actually William Afton. Although it was never confirmed if the Fazbear Frights series is canon or not, Cawthon confirmed that it's supposed to reveal mysteries from the previous games.

Development

In February 2018, after the release of Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator, Cawthon announced in a Steam post that he would think about gaining help from larger publishers in making future games. In an edited version of the same post, he added that he would be developing an "ultimate custom night" add-on for Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator, which, as revealed on his website, would have more than 50 animatronics from the entire series attacking the player. After realizing the size of the update, Cawthon decided to make it its own separate game. As he was programming the characters in the game, he would update the "progress bar" on his website, along with a brief description of the characters on a Steam post. The game was due for release on June 29, 2018. However, on June 22, in a Steam post by Cawthon, he revealed that he had planned to release the game on that day, but he had promised YouTuber Lewis Dawkins (a.k.a. "Dawko") that he would not release it before he came back from a cruise vacation, so he would wait until Dawkins returned from vacation on June 27 to release the game.

Reception

Rock Paper Shotgun deemed the game "an intriguing mess", with PC Gamer calling it "a neat, customisable take on the classic survival horror formula". Lawod explained that they found the game fun with the words “with fifty characters, FNaF Custom Night offers a great deal of fun to its players”.