For a lot of people, myself included, frightening animatronics are sickening. While a few other people, including the few thousands who played any of the Five Nights at Freddy’s games, seem to be, at the least, capable of tolerating them. But that just may not be the situation with the series’ latest installment, Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location, as the lead designer, Scott Cawthon, is genuinely worried that it goes too far.
It’s not even funny how worried this man is with his own game’s content. So much so that he may delay it, despite its announced October 8 release date. In an official statement on Steam, Cawthon elaborates on his concerns.
I wanted to post an announcement that this game might be postponed, and I’m not really sure when it [will] be released, there are certain plot elements that are very dark, to the point where I sometimes feel sick.
There would be no easy fix to this. I either release it Friday as it is, or I delay it by several months to completely rework the plot into something kid-friendly.
Making a video game that is about murderous electronic cuddly animals “kid-friendly” seems like a real challenge, to say the least, but Cawthon probably knows his target audience better than I do. As of now, he’s still unsure about whether to delay the game or not, and the statement doesn’t give a slight clue about what the offending content might even contain(makes me all the more curious!). If it has got anything to do even remotely with animatronics romance, I may just agree that it’s a step too far.
Scott Cawthon is generally well known to act on whims: he released the official RPG spinoff of Five Nights at Freddy’s World several months early last year, which was before removing the game with the admission that it wasn’t up to the mark. That game is currently available for free on Gamejolt.