Five Nights at Freddy's 3

Gameplay

The gameplay deviates from the previous games in the series slightly. In keeping with the first two installments, players are once again tasked with surviving a week of night shifts, lasting from 12 AM to 6 AM (4 minutes of real time), the difference this time being that there is only a single animatronic present who can end the playthrough, although some of the animatronics from earlier games return as "phantoms", who can impede the player's efforts to survive but cannot harm them directly. The game takes place in a horror attraction named Fazbear's Fright, which is referred to in-game as residing on the site of a former Fazbear Entertainment restaurant. The attraction aims to capitalize on the previous incidents that occurred at the various restaurants formerly operated by Fazbear Entertainment. However, players must now monitor two different camera systems (security cameras within the building, and cameras within the ventilation system) and three subsystems: Audio (which is used to lure the animatronic away from the player's office), Security Cameras (used to observe and track the animatronic's position), and Ventilation (which the player is told must be kept running in order to avoid seeing hallucinations during the shift). The subsystems can, and will, fail periodically, and must be rebooted as quickly as possible so as to avoid undesirable effects. Failure to defend oneself from the animatronic will result in a jumpscare, ending the game.

The game consists of five nights, increasing in difficulty, and completing all five unlocks an even more challenging "Nightmare" night. Between nights, the player is able to play one of several low-resolution minigames as the animatronics from the first game, with several vague hints scattered around the minigames for players to decipher. Players who decipher these hints and complete all of the following minigames will unlock the "good ending", as well as bonus content like a cheat menu.

If the player completes the "Nightmare" night, they will unlock the cheat menu. The cheat menu offers a range of options including a mode to make the animatronics act more aggressive and therefore, make the game harder, depending on the player's skills. Other cheats include a radar and the ability to make nights faster

Plot

Five Nights at Freddy's 3 is set thirty years after the events of the first game. The player assumes the role of a newly hired employee at Fazbear's Fright, a horror-themed attraction based on the unsolved mysteries of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, constructed using paraphernalia salvaged from the original restaurants. During the week before the attraction is scheduled to open to the public, the player must watch over the facility from the security office during their shift (12:00 am to 6:00 am game time), using a network of surveillance cameras placed in the rooms and air vents. In addition, the player must monitor the status of three operating systems - cameras, audio, and ventilation - and reboot them whenever they begin to malfunction. Camera problems cause the video feeds, already poorly lit and distorted, to become totally obscured by static. If the ventilation fails, the player begins to hallucinate and to see phantoms of animatronics from the previous games, which may cause additional malfunctions. Audio malfunctions prevent player from using sound to lure the animatronic away.

After the first night, the staff at Fazbear's Fright uncover an older deteriorated, rabbit-like animatronic, which they refer to as Springtrap. The player must now prevent it from entering the office and attacking; if this happens, the game ends. The player can seal off the air vents at certain points to block its progress, but cannot seal the door or air vent that lead directly into the office. The audio system can be used to play sound effects that draw it away from the office.

Hallucinations of the previous games' animatronics can appear in the player's office if ventilation systems fail in Five Nights at Freddy's 3.

As the nights progress, the player hears a series of instructional cassette tapes, similar to the telephone calls from the first two games, that instruct employees how to operate the "Spring Bonnie" suit, which can be worn by both humans and animatronic endoskeletons. However, later tapes discourage usage of the suit by employees due to a series of fatal accidents involving the failure of the suit's spring-lock mechanism. Low-resolution minigames between nights hint at the restaurant's troubled past, with the first four nights' minigames depicting the original animatronics following a dark purple animatronic before being violently disassembled by a purple-colored man, referred to as 'Purple Guy', previously seen in the minigames of Five Nights at Freddy's 2 as the man responsible for the various murders that occurred throughout the franchise's fictional history. In the fifth night's minigame, the ghosts of the five children who inhabited the animatronics corner the 'Purple Guy', who attempts to protect himself by hiding in the "Spring Bonnie" suit. However, the suit's faulty spring-lock mechanism fails, and the 'Purple Guy' is crushed as the children fade away, leaving their killer to bleed to death.

Unlike the previous entries, Five Nights at Freddy's 3 contains two endings, depending on whether the player has found and completed all of the hidden minigames within the main game. Some of these are only available on specific nights, while others can be accessed during any night. The "bad ending" is attained from completing the game without completing all the hidden minigames, and shows a screen depicting the heads of the five animatronics from the first game with lit-up eyes, implying that the animatronics are still possessed. Completing all the hidden minigames before completing the game earns the "good ending", which is the same screen as described previously but with the animatronics' heads turned off, with one head disappearing, presumably Golden Freddy. This implies that the children's souls have finally been put to rest.

Completing all five nights unlocks a bonus night, "Nightmare", which boosts the game's difficulty, similar to "Night 6" in the previous titles. While playing the mode, an archived recording states that all Freddy Fazbear Pizza locations' safe rooms, an additional emergency room not recorded in the animatronics' AI or security systems, will be permanently sealed, instructing employees to tell no one of their existence. When this night is completed, a newspaper clipping reveals that Fazbear's Fright is destroyed in a fire shortly after the events of the game, and that any salvageable pieces from the attraction are to be auctioned off. However, brightening the image reveals Springtrap in the background, which suggests he somehow survived, leaving his fate unknown.

Development

In January 2015, a new image was uploaded to Scott Cawthon's website, teasing a third entry in the series. A short while later, a second image was released, depicting the redesigned animatronics from the second game apparently scrapped. Various teaser images followed, before a trailer was released on January 26, 2015. The game was posted (and later accepted) onto Steam Greenlight the same day.

A demo for the game was released to selected YouTubers on March 1, 2015, with the full game being released hours later on March 2, 2015. On March 7, 2015, a mobile port was released for Android devices, and for iOS on March 12, 2015.

Reception

Metacritic's aggregate reviews for Five Nights at Freddy's 3 has received an average score of 71 out of 100, whereas GameRankings gave the game's PC version a 72.00% based on 4 reviews, and the IOS version an 80%.

Omri Petitte from PC Gamer gave Five Nights at Freddy's 3 a score of 77 out of 100, praising the reworked camera system, but commented on how the jumpscares from the other animatronics "felt a little stale by the third night." In a more critical review, Nic Rowen from Destructoid gave the game a 6.5 out of 10, saying that even though the game is "by far the most technically proficient and mechanically satisfying installment yet," he criticized Springtrap and Fazbear's Fright for lacking the "charm of the original cast and locations."