There are eleven core Five Nights at Freddy’s horror games so far. The series runs from the original Five Nights at Freddy’s in August 2014 to Steel Wool Studios’ Secret of the Mimic in June 2025, with a DLC, an RPG and a handful of smaller spin-offs around them. Below we list every FNAF game in release order, then the story order (behind a spoiler box), then our honest ranking of which ones are worth your nights.
How many FNAF games are there?
Fans count FNAF video games differently, so here is how we did it. We count eleven core horror entries: the four numbered games, Sister Location, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator, Ultimate Custom Night, the two Help Wanted VR games, Security Breach and Secret of the Mimic.
Around those sit the extras. Security Breach: Ruin is a DLC. FNaF World is a goofy RPG. Into the Pit is a pixel-art adventure adapted from one of the Fazbear Frights books. Then there are the tiny freebies like the Freddy in Space arcade games, plus a mobile AR title. If a friend tells you there are “about 20 games,” they are counting all of that. They are not wrong. They are just counting the little stuff too.
One more thing to clear up. Scott Cawthon made the first seven games mostly by himself, then announced his retirement from public development in 2021. Since Help Wanted in 2019, Steel Wool Studios has handled the big entries, with other studios brought in for spin-offs. The brand still belongs to Cawthon, but the studio making the game you are playing matters for what it feels like.
Every FNAF game in release order
This table covers the core games plus the spin-offs worth knowing about. The scare levels are ours, rated out of 5 from actually playing these, not from the store pages.
| Title | Year | Subgenre | Scare level | Where to play |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Five Nights at Freddy’s | 2014 | Point-and-click survival | 4/5 | PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, mobile |
| Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 | 2014 | Point-and-click survival | 4/5 | PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, mobile |
| Five Nights at Freddy’s 3 | 2015 | Point-and-click survival | 3/5 | PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, mobile |
| Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 | 2015 | Audio-based survival | 5/5 | PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, mobile |
| FNaF World | 2016 | Comedy RPG | 1/5 | PC (free on Game Jolt) |
| Sister Location | 2016 | Story-driven survival | 4/5 | PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, mobile |
| Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator | 2017 | Tycoon plus survival | 3/5 | PC (free), consoles |
| Ultimate Custom Night | 2018 | Custom-difficulty survival | 3/5 | PC (free), consoles |
| Help Wanted | 2019 | VR minigame collection | 5/5 in VR | PC VR, PSVR, Quest, flat on consoles |
| Security Breach | 2021 | Free-roam stealth | 2/5 | PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox, Switch |
| Security Breach: Ruin (DLC) | 2023 | Linear stealth horror | 3/5 | Same as Security Breach |
| Help Wanted 2 | 2023 | VR minigame collection | 3/5 | PSVR2, PC VR, Quest |
| Into the Pit | 2024 | Pixel-art adventure | 2/5 | PC, consoles |
| Secret of the Mimic | 2025 | First-person exploration horror | 4/5 | PC, PS5 |
Every entry below stays spoiler-free. The twists live in the story order section further down.
Five Nights at Freddy’s (2014)
The one that started it all. You are Mike Schmidt, a night security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, stuck in an office with two doors, a camera feed and a power meter that drains every time you use either. Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy wander the building at night, and if one reaches your office you get the scream. That is the whole game, and it works because it makes you choose between watching and protecting yourself.
This is the right first FNAF for nearly everyone. A full run is short, a few hours if you are stubborn about Night 5, and the phone calls from Phone Guy do a lot of quiet worldbuilding. It is also the best pick for anyone who wants to understand why the “five night game” format took over YouTube in 2014. The animatronics barely move on screen, so your imagination does all the heavy lifting.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (2014)
Released only three months after the original, FNAF 2 takes away your doors and hands you an empty Freddy mask and a music box you have to keep wound for the Puppet. There are far more animatronics active at once, including the shiny “Toy” versions and the battered originals, and the vents put threats right next to you. It is harder and more frantic than the first game, and plenty of fans still call it the scariest of the classic four.
Pick this one second, never first. The difficulty spike on Night 4 onward is real, and juggling the flashlight, mask and music box is a skill you build over many deaths. The retro minigames that pop up after some deaths are where the series lore starts getting genuinely dark. If you run into FNAF 2 PC problems on modern Windows setups, we cover the setup side separately.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 3 (2015)
Set thirty years after the original pizzeria shut down, FNAF 3 moves to Fazbear’s Fright, a cheap horror attraction built from salvaged Freddy’s junk. There is really only one animatronic that can kill you, Springtrap, while the others are “phantoms” that cause hallucinations and system failures. You spend the night rebooting audio, cameras and ventilation while luring Springtrap away with sound.
It is the least scary of the first four but one of the most important for the story. The minigames tie the whole early saga together and reward players who are paying attention. Play it for the mystery and the creeping atmosphere rather than the scares.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 (2015)
FNAF 4 drops the security office entirely. You play a young child in a bedroom, with a flashlight, two doors, a closet and the bed behind you. The cameras are gone, so you survive by listening at the doors for breathing. Nightmare versions of the animatronics are huge, toothy and much more grotesque than anything earlier in the series.
This is the scariest of the Cawthon-era games for us, and we will defend that. Relying on audio makes it genuinely tense, and the jump scares are loud and sudden in a way that rattles even veterans. It is also a terrible game to play on laptop speakers. Use headphones or don’t bother. If you can’t handle sound-based dread, skip it and read the plot summary later.
FNaF World (2016)
A turn-based RPG with chibi versions of the animatronics wandering a colorful overworld. It launched rough on Steam, Cawthon pulled it and made it free, then patched it up and released it on Game Jolt. It is weird, funny and extremely self-referential.
This is the pick for kids who love the characters but would be traumatized by the main games. It has no horror at all, though there are a couple of strange endings that hint at the larger lore.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location (2016)
Sister Location breaks the formula on purpose. You work for Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental, and each night gives you different tasks in different rooms: crawling through vents, fixing animatronics, hiding under a desk. A cheerful AI voice called HandUnit guides you, and new animatronics like Circus Baby, Ballora, Funtime Freddy and Funtime Foxy are sleeker and creepier than the old cast.
It is the most narrative-heavy of the classic games and the voice acting stands out. The variety makes it far more replayable than the earlier entries. A couple of scenes are more disturbing than gory, with body horror strongly implied. Older teens and adults who want story with their scares should start here after the original.
Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator (2017)
It starts as a tiny pizza-making joke, then becomes a restaurant tycoon game, then turns into a survival game at night where you work through checklists in the office while damaged animatronics try to reach you. You decide whether to accept salvaged animatronics into your pizzeria, which pays off in money and danger in equal measure.
Pizzeria Simulator is free on Steam, which makes it an easy recommendation. It also wraps up the first big story arc of the series. The night shifts rely on careful listening and resource management rather than constant screaming, so it is scary in a slower, sneakier way.
Ultimate Custom Night (2018)
Ultimate Custom Night puts 50 characters from the first six games into one office and lets you set each one’s difficulty from 0 to 20. You manage doors, vents, a heater, a music box and more, all at the same time. Challenges unlock voice lines and secret cutscenes.
It is more stressful than scary, a skill test rather than a horror game. Brand-new players will get overwhelmed in seconds. Fans who have finished the earlier games will spend dozens of hours chasing the famous “50/20” run. It is also free on Steam.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted (2019)
Help Wanted is Steel Wool Studios’ first FNAF game and the best way to experience the classics in 2025. It rebuilds levels from the first few games in virtual reality, then adds repair minigames, vent crawling and a hidden story about Fazbear Entertainment trying to clean up its image. Having Foxy sprint at your face in VR is a different experience entirely than seeing him on a monitor.
A flat-screen mode exists on consoles, and it is fine, but the scare level drops a full point or two without the headset. In VR this is one of the scariest games on any platform. If you are new to VR and new to horror, start with the gentler minigames before jumping into the classic nights.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach (2021)
Security Breach throws out the office. You play Gregory, a young boy stuck overnight in the Mega Pizzaplex, a gigantic neon mall-sized entertainment center. Glamrock Freddy helps you hide, while Glamrock Chica, Roxanne Wolf and Montgomery Gator hunt you down, along with a strange figure named Vanny. You explore freely, collect items and hide from patrols.
It launched with a lot of bugs, and patches have since fixed a big chunk of them. The Pizzaplex is fun to explore, but the free-roam design makes it much less scary than the claustrophobic earlier games. It works best as a starter horror game for younger teens who love the characters, and less well for veterans hoping to be terrified. The game launched on PlayStation and PC and later came to Xbox and Switch.
Security Breach: Ruin (2023)
Ruin is a free DLC where you play Cassie, a girl searching for Gregory in a Pizzaplex that has fallen apart. It is more linear and tightly paced than the base game, with an AR headset mechanic that switches between the “real” ruined building and a cheerful digital version. Most fans agree it is creepier and better made than Security Breach itself. Play it after the main game, since it relies on knowing that world.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted 2 (2023)
The second VR collection mixes Security Breach characters with classic content. You hit the Pizzaplex’s employee training simulations: makeup sessions with Roxy, stage repairs, security shifts and plenty of minigames with real escalation. Steel Wool also put in a lot of quick, almost comedic ones next to the scary levels.
It is a bit lighter and more varied than the first Help Wanted, which makes it a solid entry point for VR newcomers. Hardcore fans will want to dig through the hidden collectibles for lore. On its own, it isn’t as frightening as the first one.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit (2024)
Into the Pit comes from Mega Cat Studios and adapts the story of the same name from the first Fazbear Frights book. You play Oswald, a kid who finds that a ball pit in a run-down pizzeria sends him back to 1985. The game mixes exploration, puzzles and hiding sequences in a pixel-art style that echoes the old FNAF minigames.
It is a great pick for anyone who loves the books or prefers adventure games to survival tests. The pixel style softens the scares without removing them, and the story stands on its own without needing a lore deep-dive.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Secret of the Mimic (2025)
Steel Wool’s newest game, released in June 2025, moves the series into first-person exploration horror. You investigate a creepy costume manor and the endoskeleton tech behind it, piecing together where the Mimic came from. The Mimic, an animatronic that copies people and other machines, had already shown up in Ruin and the Tales from the Pizzaplex books. Here it gets a full game.
The atmosphere is heavier and more patient than Security Breach, built more on tension than neon spectacle, and we think it is the scariest Steel Wool game outside VR. It’s a good choice for older players who drifted away after Security Breach. At launch it was on PC and PS5.
The smaller spin-offs
These are mainly for completists, so they don’t get full write-ups.
- FNaF 57: Freddy in Space (2017): a free side-scrolling shooter linked to Pizzeria Simulator.
- Freddy in Space 2 (2019): another free arcade game, made for a charity livestream. A third entry, Freddy in Space 3: Chica in Space, followed later.
- Five Nights at Freddy’s AR: Special Delivery (2019): a free-to-play mobile AR game by Illumix where animatronics “visit” your real home. Check your app store for current availability before planning around it.
None of these is scary. They are worth a quick laugh if you love the characters.
FNAF games in story order
Spoiler warning
This section reveals the series timeline, major twists in FNAF 3, FNAF 4, Sister Location and Pizzeria Simulator, and who the series villain is.
Scott Cawthon never published a full official timeline. What follows is the order most of the community agrees on, built from in-game dates, newspaper clippings, minigames and the companion books. Where a placement is still argued about, we say so.
| Story order | Game | Rough setting | How sure fans are |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Secret of the Mimic | The Mimic’s origins, earliest era | Fairly confident |
| 2 | Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 | 1983, Fredbear’s Family Diner | Very confident |
| 3 | Into the Pit (flashbacks) | 1985 | Confident |
| 4 | Sister Location (main nights) | Mid-to-late 1980s | Debated |
| 5 | Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 | 1987 | Very confident |
| 6 | Five Nights at Freddy’s | Early 1990s, often dated 1993 | Confident |
| 7 | Five Nights at Freddy’s 3 | 30 years after the pizzeria closed | Very confident |
| 8 | Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator | Shortly after FNAF 3 | Very confident |
| 9 | Ultimate Custom Night | Outside time, an afterlife | Intentionally vague |
| 10 | Help Wanted | Modern day | Confident |
| 11 | Security Breach and Ruin | After Help Wanted | Confident |
| 12 | Help Wanted 2 | Pizzeria era of Security Breach | Debated |
The Afton saga (FNAF 1 to Ultimate Custom Night)
The first seven games tell one story. William Afton, co-founder of Fazbear Entertainment with Henry Emily, murders children whose souls end up haunting the animatronics. FNAF 4’s minigames show the “Bite of ’83” at Fredbear’s Family Diner, where Afton’s youngest son is fatally injured during a cruel prank by his older brother.
Sister Location reveals Afton built the Funtime animatronics for Circus Baby’s Pizza World, and that his daughter died there. FNAF 2 and FNAF 1 show the hauntings spreading through the Freddy Fazbear’s locations. FNAF 3 reveals that Springtrap is Afton himself, trapped in a spring-lock suit he used while hiding from the ghosts.
Pizzeria Simulator is the finale. Henry Emily builds a fake pizzeria to lure every remaining haunted animatronic, including Afton, into one place and burn it down. His closing speech is the series’ most famous moment. Ultimate Custom Night then appears to show Afton trapped in a personal afterlife, facing everything he created.
The Steel Wool era
Help Wanted brings things into the present. Fazbear Entertainment makes a VR game to convince the public the old stories were made up, but a fragment of Afton’s code, Glitchtrap, hides inside it. In Security Breach, that infection reaches the Mega Pizzaplex through Vanny, and Gregory’s story ends with a confrontation with what remains of Afton, called Burntrap. Ruin continues straight from there.
Help Wanted 2 is the shakiest piece. It clearly connects to the Pizzaplex era, but exactly where it fits is still argued over on fan forums. Secret of the Mimic goes the other way and fills in how the Mimic came to be, which recasts some of what happens in Ruin.
Our ranking: the best FNAF video games
Ranked purely on how well they hold up today, mixing scares, design and how much fun they are to replay.
- Five Nights at Freddy’s 4: the scariest of the classics and the cleverest use of sound.
- Help Wanted (in VR): the best way to play the classic nights, full stop.
- Sister Location: the best story, best variety and best cast of the Cawthon era.
- Five Nights at Freddy’s: short, simple and still effective a decade later.
- Five Nights at Freddy’s 2: harder and messier than the first, with incredible tension.
- Secret of the Mimic: the best Steel Wool flat-screen game and a strong return to real dread.
- Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator: inventive, free and a fantastic payoff for the lore.
- Security Breach: Ruin: a short DLC that improves on the base game.
- Five Nights at Freddy’s 3: important for the story, thin as a horror game.
- Ultimate Custom Night: brilliant for veterans, useless for beginners.
- Help Wanted 2: fun VR toybox, lighter scares.
- Into the Pit: charming, but a gentle ride.
- Security Breach: a great setting let down by soft scares and a messy launch.
Which FNAF game should you play first?
Different players need different starting points. Here is who each pick suits.
- Your first horror game ever: Into the Pit or Security Breach. Both are gentle enough to build confidence, and both still have real tension.
- New to FNAF, comfortable with horror: start with the original Five Nights at Freddy’s. It teaches the series language in a couple of hours.
- Story fans: play Sister Location after the original, then Pizzeria Simulator. That gives you most of the Afton plot without the hardest difficulty spikes.
- You own a VR headset: Help Wanted, no question. Play it after a couple of the flat games so you recognize the levels it is remixing.
- Can’t handle jump scares at all: FNaF World. Seriously, this series is built on jump scares, and almost every other entry relies on them.
- Playing on Switch or Xbox: the classic games, Sister Location, Pizzeria Simulator, Ultimate Custom Night and Security Breach are all on both, so you have plenty to choose from.
- Want to play with friends: FNAF is solo-only. Pass the controller around on a party night with the original game, or check our cooperative survival horror games list for real co-op.
A note for parents: none of the main games is graphically gory, but FNAF 4, Sister Location and Help Wanted contain intense scares and dark themes involving harm to children. We’d suggest older kids and teens, depending on the kid.
Is there a Fredbear’s Family Diner game?
No, not an official standalone one. Fredbear’s Family Diner is the first restaurant in the FNAF story, and it appears officially in the Atari-style minigames between nights in Five Nights at Freddy’s 4. That is where you see the diner’s two founding animatronics, Fredbear and Spring Bonnie, and the events leading up to the Bite of ’83.
The game that people find when they search for a Fredbear’s Family Diner game is usually a fan project. There are many fan-made games under that name, of very mixed quality. Stick to well-known storefronts if you try one, and never download “unlocked” or “full” versions from random sites, since that’s an easy way to pick up malware.
Fan games and the Fazbear Fanverse
The FNAF community has made thousands of games about Five Nights at Freddy’s, from tiny Game Jolt experiments to polished projects with their own fandoms. Cawthon eventually started the Fazbear Fanverse initiative, which helps selected fan games get official support and console releases. Projects like One Night at Flumpty’s 3 and The Joy of Creation are part of it.
These aren’t official canon, so they don’t affect the story order. Several are excellent horror games in their own right, especially for fans who’ve finished the main series and want more of the same tension.
The Five Nights at Freddy’s movies
Blumhouse released the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie in 2023, directed by Emma Tammi and starring Josh Hutcherson as a security guard at an abandoned Freddy Fazbear’s. Matthew Lillard plays the villain, and his casting thrilled longtime fans. The animatronics were built as real puppets by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, which helps a lot. A sequel, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, followed in December 2025.
The films loosely follow the games without matching any single one. You don’t need to have played anything to watch them, and playing the games won’t spoil the movies’ twists completely. If the movies were your entry point, the original game and FNAF 2 are the natural next steps.
If you liked this
Poppy Playtime: toy-factory horror with a similar mascot-gone-wrong vibe and lighter scares.
Fears to Fathom: short, first-person “graveyard shift” stories with the same lonely-job dread as FNAF’s night watches.
Alien: Isolation: a masterclass in being hunted by one unstoppable thing, for when you outgrow animatronics.
FNAF entries often show up among horror games on sale for Halloween, and they make easy additions to any list of scary games to play on Halloween. The originals also run on almost any machine, which makes them perfect for laptops that struggle with heavier PC horror games.
FAQ
How many Five Nights at Freddy’s games are there?
We count eleven core horror games from 2014 to 2025, ending with Secret of the Mimic. Add Security Breach: Ruin, FNaF World, Into the Pit, the Freddy in Space games and the AR mobile game, and the total is closer to twenty.
What is the first FNAF game?
Five Nights at Freddy’s, released on PC in August 2014. Scott Cawthon made it, and it later came to mobile, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Switch.
What is the newest FNAF game?
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Secret of the Mimic, released in June 2025 by Steel Wool Studios for PC and PS5.
Should I play FNAF in release order or story order?
Release order, for your first time through. The games reveal the mystery piece by piece, and story order would spoil twists in FNAF 3, FNAF 4 and Sister Location. Use the story order as a lore guide after you’ve played them.
What is the scariest FNAF game?
In VR, Help Wanted, easily. On a normal screen, our pick is Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 because of its audio-based gameplay and brutal jump scares, with FNAF 2 and Secret of the Mimic close behind.
Are FNAF games OK for kids?
It depends on the kid and the game. FNaF World and Into the Pit are the gentlest. Security Breach suits most younger teens. The classic games and Help Wanted rely on intense jump scares and dark themes, so we’d hold those for older teens.
Can you play FNAF games on Xbox and Switch?
Yes. The first four games, Sister Location, Pizzeria Simulator, Ultimate Custom Night and Security Breach are all available on both, and Help Wanted has a flat-screen mode on consoles. Secret of the Mimic launched on PC and PS5 only.