The FNAF games are colossal, survival horror juggernauts that have been dominating the gaming landscape for nearly a decade – and there are plenty of them to explore. Below, we list all Five Nights at Freddy’s games in order of release, then highlight each of them in chronological order too, as well as any upcoming or spin-off projects.
Note that this guide only features official Five Nights at Freddy’s games, as we have a separate list of the best FNAF fan games. If you want to dive even further into the lore of FNAF beyond the Five Nights at Freddy’s jumpscares, be sure to check out our guides to all the FNAF characters.
Here’s everything in our guide to all FNAF games:
All FNAF games in order of release
Five Nights at Freddy’s 1
Initial release date: August 2014
The little experience that kicked off the massive franchise, Five Nights at Freddy’s 1 still stands up today as one of the most iconic horror games of all time. A classic, indie point and click game with survival horror elements, the first game takes place sometime in the early 1990s (likely around 1993), and puts you in the shoes of a night security guard called Mike Shmidt as you attempt to make it through his first few days on the job at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza.
While starting a new job can be tough, this one really takes the (cup)cake. Terrifying animatronics roam the restaurant, and they’re hungry for more than pizza. Your main goal is to survive the whole shift without getting chomped and to do this, you must keep an eye on the security cameras, manage your power, and slam the doors shut whenever one of those awful animatronics gets too close.
FNAF 1 is available on the following platforms:
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2
Initial release date: November 2014
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is very similar to its predecessor, only set in the ‘new and improved’ version of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza during November of 1987. Now, a new cast of ‘kid-friendly’ characters joins the old and ageing animatronics, equipped with the latest in facial recognition technology, tied into local criminal databases – meaning they can supposedly spot a bad guy from a mile away. Unfortunately for you, you look like quite the bad guy, and those aforementioned ‘ageing animatronics’ have it out for you as well.
Once again, your task is to act as the new night security guard, monitoring cameras and making sure nothing goes wrong after-hours. However, instead of doors to keep those pesky bots out, you’re now equipped with only a Freddy Fazbear head, which you can slip on in order to trick the characters into leaving you alone if they should ‘accidentally’ enter your office.
FNAF 2 is available on the following platforms:
Five Nights at Freddy’s 3
Initial release date: March 2015
Set three decades after Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza closed down (around 2023), Five Nights at Freddy’s 3 sees the owners of an entertainment company, Fazbear’s Fright: The Horror Attraction, purchase the now-defunct restaurant in hopes of reviving the legends that revolve around the place, and transform it into a house of horrors-style dark attraction. The Fazbear’s Fright: The Horror Attraction team is now going to great lengths to salvage anything that may have survived the decades of neglect and ruin, and they uncover one crowning jewel among the debris – one sole animatronic.
Another mutation of the classic FNAF gameplay loop, FNAF 3 once again places you in the shoes of a night security guard, and your key goal is to survive. Due to the decayed state of the place, there are no doors or lights, meaning you must rely on playing audio and sealing off vents to survive, while also using the maintenance panel to reboot any systems that go offline.
This time, there’s only one animatronic capable of bringing you to a grizzly end, but there are a total of six phantoms, which can both scare you and attract the awful animatronic prowling the halls.
FNAF 3 is available on the following platforms:
Five Nights at Freddy’s 4
Initial release date: July 2015
Set way back in 1983, Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 is a prequel to FNAF 2 and departs quite dramatically from the original format of the previous games – though the gameplay loop remains quite similar. This time, the terror has followed you home, and it’s time for you to face the monster under the bed.
Instead of a security guard, you play as a child, hiding in your bedroom late at night as you ward off twisted, monstrous versions of the familiar characters. Equipped with only a trusty flashlight, you must check the doors, closet, and bed, shining your light to repel the nightmare animatronics. Keep a level head, and be sure to tune your ear to those audio cues, as one wrong move and it’s game over.
FNAF 4 is available on the following platforms:
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location
Initial release date: December 2016
We’re not in Fazbear’s anymore, Toto. As the name suggests, Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location is set in, well, a sister location called Circus Baby’s Pizza World, ‘where family fun and interactivity go beyond anything you’ve seen at those other pizza places’ with ‘cutting-edge animatronic entertainers that will knock your kids’ socks off’.
You join the Circus Baby Entertainment family as a late-night technician in response to an ad, listing the requirements as ‘must enjoy cramped spaces and be comfortable around active machinery’. Oh, and there’s also a disclaimer highlighting that the company isn’t responsible for death or dismemberment. Not concerning at all.
Rather than keeping you locked in one room like the previous games, Sister Location affords you a certain level of ‘free roam’, and, beyond surviving, your main task is to move from room to room completing a list of bi-nightly objectives. Of course, in true FNAF fashion, there are plenty of abhorrent animatronics for you to ward off, and there are also a variety of secrets, from minigames to alternate endings, for you to unlock.
FNAF: Sister Location is available on the following platforms:
Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator
Initial release date: June 2017
Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator is a weird one, but still very important to the overall lore of the series. Its save-data file is titled ‘FNAF6’, meaning it does, indeed, fall in the canonical line-up of games.
The game is split into a few different gameplay segments. The first is an 8-bit style minigame, in which your main focus in the game is to run a pizzeria and ensure that it’s a safe environment. If you fail, you may end up getting sued, or even blacklisted if you make too many mistakes. You serve pizzas, fill your pizzeria with items that improve atmosphere, safety, and entertainment, and avoid any liabilities.
Then, there’s the other side of the game, where you find yourself sitting in a dimly lit office with a computer displaying a list of tasks. From here, you must salvage a variety of mangled and damaged animatronics, completing the tasks on the computer and earning revenue. However, you also need to keep an eye out for any of the animatronics loose in the pizzeria, toggling the computer fans, shining your flashlight into the vents, and playing music elsewhere in the building to lure them away.
Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator is available on the following platforms:
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted
Initial release date: May 2019
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted, also known as FNAF VR, is a collection of classic and original minigames set in the FNAF universe. While it is a VR-compatible game, you don’t need a VR headset to play – so don’t worry if you’ve not got the cash to fork out for an Oculus.
Help Wanted features a total of 40 playable minigames based around all your favourite killer animatronics. After you complete the minigames, you can replay them again in nightmare mode to crank up the difficulty, and, after fully completing the game, you also get to enjoy an intriguing end game that expands upon the already hefty FNAF lore.
FNAF: Help Wanted is available on the following platforms:
- PC
- Android
- iOS
- Oculus Quest
- PlayStation 4
- Xbox One
- Nintendo Switch
Five Nights at Freddy’s AR: Special Delivery
Initial release date: November 2019
Five Nights at Freddy’s AR: Special Delivery is an alternate reality mobile game that invites you to confront malfunctioning animatronics in the real world. You subscribe to Fazbear Entertainment’s brand new ‘Fazbear Funtime Service’, which allows you to order your favourite animatronics on-demand – meaning you never have to be alone again! Isn’t that just lovely?
However, due to some… unfortunate circumstances, these visiting animatronics end up suffering a couple of malfunctions, causing them to attack subscribers instead of entertaining them. As such, you must confront an endless stream of hostile animatronics that follow you wherever you go. With a host of handy equipment, including a flashlight, a Freddy Fazbear mask, and the ability to deploy controlled shocks to deactivate those murderous monsters, your main goal is, once again, to simply survive. But the animatronics have a couple of tricks up their fur-suit-coated sleeves, too, so you better watch out.
FNAF AR: Special Delivery is available on the following platforms:
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach
Initial release date: December 2021
Compared to the other FNAF games, especially the first mainline titles, Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach is a horse (or bunny, I guess) of a completely different colour. While it maintains its roots in the survival genre, Security Breach is a free-roam, triple-A-style game, featuring flashy graphics, 3D models, and a whole heap of horrors for you to encounter. For the most part, it also sheds the grungy, decaying aesthetic of its predecessors and instead takes place in a sleek, almost futuristic mall inhabited by the highly advanced Glamrock animatronics.
Oh, and while there is a security guard called Vanessa present, like FNAF 4, you once again take the role of a child – FNAF’s Gregory. As Gregory, you find yourself trapped overnight in Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex, forming an alliance with Glamrock Freddy (who has been hacked and is therefore in ‘safe mode’, explaining why he appears much more benevolent than his previous forms).
It’s a good thing you’ve got good old Freddy on your side, too, as, when night descends, and the nighttime protocols activate, the other animatronics relentlessly pursue all intruders. You must hop inside Freddy’s suit, duck in and out of hiding spots, access the building’s security cameras to plan your route, toss objects to distract your pursuers, and much more if you want to survive. There are also heaps of collectables, tidbits or lore, and unique environments to explore within the Pizzaplex – that is, if you can keep out of the Glamrock gang’s sights for long enough to have a browse.
FNAF: Security Breach is available on the following platforms:
FNAF games in chronological order
Okay, so we’ve listed all the games in order of release above, but you may have noticed that the timeline jumps all over the place. For example, FNAF 1 takes place around 1993, whereas FNAF 2 is set in 1987. If you know just about anything about this series, you’re likely aware that the timeline and lore is a very messy web to untangle. So, to make things clearer, here are all the FNAF games in chronological order.
- Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 (set in 1983)
- Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (set in 1987)
- Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location (set between the late 1980’s and early 1990’s)
- Five Nights at Freddy’s 1 (set in 1993)
- Five Nights at Freddy’s 3 (set in 2023)
- Five Nights at Freddy’s Pizzeria Simulator (set in 2023)
- Five Nights at Freddy’s Help Wanted
- Five Nights at Freddy’s: Special Delivery
- Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach (set sometime between 2024 and 2029)
Spin-off FNAF games and DLC
FNAF World
Initial release date: January 2016
FNAF World is a bit of an odd one. This seemingly sunny, fantasy RPG features the entire cast from the FNAF series, allowing you to control your favourite animatronics as you embark on an ‘epic animated adventure’. Explore a ‘world beneath worlds’ which reflects the actions and deeds of the ‘flipside’, where things have started growing increasingly more distorted and broken. You must dive deeper and deeper to discover the source of these glitches and monsters, so you can restore the land back to its original state as a safe haven for all who inhabit it.
There’s a total of 48 playable characters, a bunch of different endings, and the option to either play on hard or normal mode, depending on how much of a challenge you want. You begin by forming two teams with four characters each, and you unlock more characters along the way. The gameplay mostly consists of exploring the game world and accessing new areas, then taking part in turn-based random encounters and a variety of boss battles. You earn experience points and Faz Tokens when you defeat enemies, the latter of which you can use to buy upgrades to aid you later in the game.
Scott Cawthon originally released FNAF World as a premium game on Steam, but after encountering many issues and backlash over its unfinished state, he took it down and refunded everyone who bought a copy. He later re-released it for free through Game Jolt.
Ultimate Custom Night
Initial release date: June 2018
Describing itself as the ‘ultimate FNAF mashup’, Ultimate Custom Night is a customisable, mix-and-match game that features 50 selectable animatronics spanning seven FNAF games. You’re once again trapped alone in an office fending off killer animatronics, but this time you get to choose which baddies you’re up against, the difficulty settings, and what challenge mode you fancy – the horror is in your hands.
Keep your eyes on the two side doors, two vents, and two hoses – all of which lead directly into your office – as you master an arsenal of tools to make it through the night. If you want to complete the ultimate challenges, you need to make good use of the heater, air conditioning unit, global music box, power generator, and more to keep those baddies at bay. And, to make things even more exciting, you can also set up laser traps in the vents and collect Faz-Coins to purchase items from the prize counter. Also, as always, be sure to keep a close eye on those Pirate Cove curtains – you should never underestimate the cunning of a pirate.
Ultimate Custom Night features a challenge menu with 16 themed challenges, full voice acting, and a bunch of unlockables, including office skins and cutscenes. So, you can rest assured that, despite this being a spin-off title, there’s still plenty of lore for you to dig up.
Ultimate Custom Night is available on the following platforms.
- PC
- Android
- iOS
- Oculus Quest
- PlayStation 4
- Xbox One
- Nintendo Switch
Curse of Dreadbear (Help Wanted DLC)
Initial release date: October 2019
A Halloween-themed DLC for Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted, Curse of Dreadbear features several brand-new animatronics, the return of several popular nightmare animatronics, a fresh hub for Halloween-themed minigames, and an enticing new ending for you to enjoy. Join Dreadbear, Grimm Foxy, and Dreadbear, as you get into the spooky season spirit with festive minigames including Trick or Treat, Mangle Repair, Corn Maze, the Plushkin-Patch, Cap’n Foxy’s Pirate Adventure dark ride, and more.
Freddy In Space 2
Initial release date: December 2019
A sequel to FNAF World’s minigame, FNAF 57: Freddy in Space, Freddy in Space 2 is a side-scrolling shoot-’em-up, featuring sprites drawn by Claudia Schröder. Revolving around a classically campy space story about hacked lunar bases, brainwashing, and more, it’s a fun little romp that Scott Cawthon originally released to bring awareness to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital fundraiser.
Freddy in Space 2 is available on PC through Game Jolt.
Youtooz Presents: Five Nights at Freddy’s
Initial release date: April 2022
An augmented reality mobile game from Youtooz, Youtooz Presents: Five Nights at Freddy’s came out on Augmio in April 29, 2022, to coincide with the release of Youtooz’s Security Branch wave. It’s essentially a fun parody of the original FNAF formula, with you taking the role of a Youtooz employee, temporarily housing the new line of Youtooz collectibles. You receive a phone call from another employee explaining the fact that the collectables are upgraded to the point of becoming miniature animatronics, and warning you that they may climb out of their boxes, but you can lure them back in using their light sensors.
You face off against Glamrock Chica, Dawko, Glamrock Freddy, Vanny, Roxanne Wolf, and Montgomery Gator, and must use your dwindling power supply to survive until 6AM when someone is scheduled to pick up the toys.
FNAF Ruin
Release date: July 25, 2023
Ruin is a DLC for Five Nights at Freddy’s Security Breach. We first heard of it in early 2022, at which time it was codenamed as ‘Chowda’, but Steel Wool Studios officially announced it on May 30, 2022, along with a teaser trailer.
It follows the story of a brand new protagonist called Cassie attempting to save Gregory, who is trapped in the now-abandoned Pizzaplex. Can you save your friend, yourself, and the Pizzaplex? Find out in this exciting, free DLC.
Five Nights at Freddy’s (movie)
Release date: October 27, 2023
Though not a FNAF game, the FNAF movie is still an exciting project in the Five Nights at Freddy’s universe, even more so when you consider the fact it’s by Blumhouse and stars Matthew Lillard as William Afton. It features lots of references to the overall lore of the game, as well as cameos from lots of big FNAF content creators like Game Theorists’ MatPat.
Upcoming FNAF games and projects
We don’t know of any upcoming FNAF games just yet, but we’re sure there’s always something in the works.
That’s all we’ve got on the FNAF games for now, but, of course, we’ll add any new info on fresh releases or upcoming titles in the future. In the meantime, go ahead and check out our list of the best horror games on Switch and mobile. Or, if you want a break from the animatronics and sentient, bloodthirsty toys are more your thing, check out our Poppy Playtime characters guide.