Behind the scenes of F.N.A.F. Games

Five Nights at Freddy's

The idea for Five Nights at Freddy's stems from the negative reception towards Scott Cawthon's previous game, the family friendly Chipper & Sons Lumber Co., as players commented that the main character (a young beaver) as well as the rest of the characters looked like "a scary animatronic animal", with reviewer Jim Sterling calling the game unintentionally "terrifying". Although initially discouraged by the poor reception to Chipper & Sons, Cawthon, who had previously mainly developed Christian-oriented games, eventually used it to inspire himself to make something intentionally scarier. In the game, the animatronics themselves are rarely seen moving. This was revealed to be a deliberate choice on Cawthon's part, as he believes that in real life, such robots are scarier this way, telling Indie Gamer Mag "it’s when they are turned off that the veil is lifted, and you realize that they were never alive. They are, and always have been, dead." Cawthon used Clickteam Fusion 2.5 to develop the game and Autodesk 3ds Max to model and render the 3D graphics, and the game took six months to create.

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Shortly after the release of Five Nights at Freddy's, developer Cawthon began to confirm rumors of a sequel to the game. Just one month after the original game's release, Cawthon posted a teaser of a sequel on his webpage, and continued to post teasers until the game's release. A trailer for the game was released in October 2014. Five Nights at Freddy's 2 was first released for Microsoft Windows on November 10, 2014, earlier of its planned release of December 25, 2014. Ports for Android and iOS were released on November 13 and 20 of the same year.

Five Nights at Freddy's 3

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.

Five Nights at Freddy's 4

Beginning April 27, 2015, Cawthon posted images on his website teasing at another game in the series, originally known as Five Nights at Freddy's: The Final Chapter. The images, featuring the characters from the hies, cryptically teased at a release on Halloween. A trailer was released on July 13, 2015, hinting that the game took place in the main character's house. The subtitle, The Final Chapter, was dropped. A demo for the game was released to select YouTubers on July 21, 2015, with the full game being released on July 23, 2015. The game was released for Android devices on July 25, 2015, and for iOS devices on August 3, 2015. On October 31, 2015, two updates for the game were released. One consists of a set of cheat options, challenge modes, and an altered version of the "Fun with Plushtrap" minigame that uses a nightmare version of the character Balloon Boy (from Five Nights at Freddy's 2) in place of Plushtrap. The second is a "Halloween Edition" that makes cosmetic changes to Nightmare Bonnie and Nightmare Chica, and introduces nightmare versions of the second game's characters Mangle and The Puppet, the former replacing Nightmare Foxy and the latter replacing Nightmare. Nightmare Cupcake is also replaced with a jack-o-lantern.

Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location

In April 2016, Cawthon released a teaser image of the game on his website, entitled Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location, featuring a clown-like animatronic, revealed to be named "Circus Baby". Several teaser images followed, revealing different characters and hints at their origins. The trailer for the game was released on Cawthon's official YouTube page featuring new animatronics and a new location. The release date was later confirmed to be 7 October 2016. In August, a teaser image was posted on Cawthon's website with the words "Cancelled. Due to Leaks." This was initially taken to indicate that the game itself had been cancelled, due to one of the game's animatronics' voices being leaked, namely Ballora's. However, it was quickly revealed to be a part of the story line, as a fictional news article was found when the image was brightened, discussing how the in-game location had been closed due to "gas" leaks. On 4 October 2016, Cawthon posted on the Steam Community forums, stating that the game has a very dark story line, and that it might not be kid-friendly. For this, he said that he might work on the game for several more months, to make the game and its story more suitable for younger players, which, however, turned out to be a hoax. The game was released on 7 October 2016. On 17 October 2016, Cawthon announced on his website and the game's Steam page that a non-canon Custom Night will be added to the game in December, and that an update for it will be released prior to its original version. It was released on 1 December 2016.

Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator

In June 2017, Cawthon hinted towards the development of a sixth main game in the series, with a teaser on "scottgames" showing a picture that appeared to be Circus Baby from Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location, but later announced his decision to cancel the game and instead develop a separate installment similar to FNaF World such as a "pizzeria tycoon". Teasers for a new game began appearing on Cawthon's website in late 2017. On December 4, 2017, Cawthon released Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator on Steam as freeware, which fans presumed to be the game he had referred to previously.

In February 2018, Cawthon announced on 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” for Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator, which, as revealed on his website, has about 57 animatronics from the game and all other games in the Five Nights at Freddy’s series attacking the player. The custom night is due for release on June 29, 2018. However, in an article Scott made on Steam on June 22nd, Scott revealed that he was going to release the game early, on the 22nd, but because he had promised YouTuber Lewis Dawkins (AKA "Dawko") that he would not release it before he came back from vacation, he would wait until June 27th to release the game, the day that Lewis comes back from vacation.