If the player hears breathing at the side doors, they close the door and wait for the animatronics to walk away. The PlayStation 4 port was released in Europe and North America on July 21 and July 22, 2020, respectively. Every game in the main series contains jump scares, which end a game in defeat as the animatronics are implied to attack the player off-screen. Clay then bursts through the brick walls with a sledgehammer, finding the group standing together and the animatronics frozen in place nearby.

Five Nights at Freddy's was released for Microsoft Windows on August 8, 2014, followed by ports for Android and iOS on August 27 and September 11, respectively.

Nadia Oxford of Gamezebo gave it 4 out of 5 stars in her review praising it for its intense environment, creepy sounds and graphics, and jumpscares. Since then, the franchise has gained popularity and spawned the creation of the Five Nights at Freddy's book series. While playing an impulsive game of hide-and-seek with John, Charlie encounters one of the animatronics, Foxy the Pirate, who she was terrified of as a child.

The game is a business-simulation game in which the player runs a pizzeria, but frequently shifts into the survival-horror vein of the series' other games. As they delve deeper into the mystery of the restaurant, they uncover a dark secret that threatens to destroy them all.The horror mystery novel trilogy written by Scott Cawthon and Kira Breed-Wrisley, based on Cawthon's bestselling horror video-game series Five Nights at Freddy's, is considered by Cawthon to be separate-canon to the events that occurred in the game series. On January 22, 2024, an adaptation of the Fazbear Frights: Into the Pit anthology novel was leaked to be in development in an upcoming slate of new novels to be released in 2024. The animatronics were originally intended for Circus Baby's Pizza World, which never opened due to a gas leak. Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights come to life in these pulse-pounding graphic novel stories! Several elements from The Silver Eyes (and its sequels) were adopted by the video games, including mentions of Hurricane, Utah in Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator in the lawsuit segments.