FNAF 6, AKA Pizzeria Simulator, has you becoming a franchisee tasked with managing your very own Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria.  In addition to the usual five nights of keeping animatronics from murdering you, you’ll also be able to buy far more docile animatronics to entertain your guests, playtest games that will earn you bonus revenue, and…get sued when it all goes horribly wrong!

The gameplay of FNAf 6 follows this pattern: buy items from the catalog and decorate your pizzeria, complete tasks in your office while keeping away the animatronics roaming the vents, and salvage.  I’m personally the most interested in the first part, as it requires the least amount of stress.  The more you buy, the more catalogs open up with more expensive, but more interesting, items.  Just be wary of items with liability, as this could lead to lawsuits, and discounted items, as a hostile animatronic could be hiding inside.  In addition to placing animatronics on stage, you can also playtest various games and attractions.  Some of these games are simply tests of your timing as you attempt to make Helpy land in the ballpit or throw basketballs through hoops, while Fruity Maze and Midnight Motorist are arcade games with hidden secrets.  And let’s not forget those sponsorships, which grant you a huge cash bonus, but will make the office section more difficult…

The office segments are the closest we get to classic FNAF gameplay.  If you let in any dangerous animatronics through the salvage sections (which we’ll get to shortly) or by purchasing sketchy, discounted items, you’ll need to keep them away as you get work done on your computer.  Honestly, this part of the game was incredibly confusing to me.  You can’t make too much noise or the animatronics will be drawn to your location.  For example, ads will play if you accepted sponsorships, and they’re especially loud.  I think the worst thing is not being able to see the animatronics like in past games (not until the jumpscare, anyway).  Instead, you have a motion detector, which shows movement in the vents, and you can play audio to distract them.

For me, this was easily the most confusing FNAF game I’ve ever played.  Even if I wasn’t always very good at it, I at least knew what I was doing in FNAF 1-4.  But I never fully grasped the mechanics behind how FNAF 6 worked.  Although I was able to scrape by with three animatronics in the vents, I could not survive the night with four.  It’s just so disorienting trying to deal with largely invisible foes, and I feel like I usually just survived through luck rather than any sort of actual skill or understanding of what the heck I was doing.

Then there’s the salvage sections, which are also confusing.  You must play several audio cues at various animatronics found in the back alley and see if they respond.  For some reason.  Though I don’t think your responses on the provided form matter.  You must shock them with a teaser if you think they’re about to attack, but if you do this too many times, they’ll start to lose value.  I guess the animatronics make very subtle changes in position, so if you learn what they look like when they’re just about to jumpscare you, I guess you shock them at that point?  Jumpscares don’t actually kill you in this section, though you do forfeit a pretty hefty sum of money if this happens.  Whatever the outcome, they will then become a threat the next time an office section rolls around.

Fortunately, if you’d rather just play it safe, you can simply refuse to salvage any animatronics at all.  By leaving them in the back alley (unless you buy an item with something hiding inside), you can just focus on decorating your pizzeria with whatever revenue you earn.  Keep in mind that the game does have multiple endings, and you won’t get a good one this way.  The office sections also become way easier, but also a lot more boring, as you’ll merely be clicking on various tasks and waiting for them to finish.  Guess this is a good time to catch up on emails…

One more thing that I want to point out is that, like FNAF 5, the humor is pretty good here, as well.  The minigames with Helpy can be rather amusing (such as watching Helpy go crunch before lying stunned on the floor after missing the ballpit), and I’d definitely recommend trying to get some lawsuits, as they can be pretty absurd, as well.  For example, one of these claimed that a child broke 100 bones while visiting my establishment.  An injury they didn’t even notice until they got home.  Hmm, something seems suspicious to me…

For me, the most interesting part of FNAF 6 was the pizzeria sim section, and it would be nice if a more fleshed-out version of this was released, as what’s present here is pretty barebones, even if it’s entertaining.  With that said, FNAF 6 was definitely a more unique entry in the series during those early years, though my confusion over the office segments in particular made the game less enjoyable for me than it could have been.  FNAF 6 is available for $7.99 on all modern consoles, $2.99 on mobile, and…wow, for free on PC?!  That’s not bad for a game with six endings!