The NEW Most UNDERRATED FNAF Fan Game

hello you crazy kids and slightly older people just a quick reminder that the Titan Sun's charity co-charity event is happening this Saturday it would have been last Saturday but I had to survive in an IRL six day FNAF 1 power outage hope to see you all there the most underrated FNAF fan game is the concept that can truly never have a definitive answer put to it I tried doing it a couple months back with Pike and Son's lumberco which while it had a lot of attention early on from Big creators ended up not having as big of an impact as I thought it should have we are now many months removed from my first hike and Sons video and I don't want to say I saved the game or anything but I definitely pulled it out of the weird underrated pit it was stuck in for so long however if Titan Sons is no longer the most underrated FNAF fan game what would be the new most underrated FNAF fan game after a bit of digging around and playing some smaller games I eventually found it the game we're going to talk about is Mary's arcade by Sunday released around a year ago Mary's arcade does some really refreshing and interesting things with the typical FNAF formula that are genuinely fun and challenging unlike most other FNAF fan games that tend to rely on Fast reaction times and quick reflexes juggling a lot of things at once Mary's arcade takes a much slower approach to gameplay that's all about planning ahead and preparing for the threats that are making their way to your office it's such a creative and interesting game that has sadly been largely ignored by the bigger FNAF content creator Community I kind of get it from the perspective of a YouTuber maybe the game just doesn't look that interesting from a surface level but one run through the game will completely change that opinion honestly if I were to get anything out of doing this video having some other big FNAF content creators cover this game finally would be really cool but I guess a more realistic wish here would be for you all at home to hear me out listen to why I think this game is so underrated and then go play it for yourself as always the link to the game will be in the description well at this point you're probably just dying to hear what makes this game so sick and I'm dying to finally talk about it after teasing it my fan game direct video let's not waste any more time here it's time to talk about one of the most refreshing FNAF fan game I have ever played Mary's arcade where to even begin with this there is a lot to go over here even if Mary's arcade is relatively short and simple compared to a lot of other FNAF fan games I still somehow have a million things to talk about I guess you could say that it's that good the game opens up with a screen that lets you name your character does this really have an impact on the game no but it does help you feel slightly more immersed into the world you're not just playing as a random security guard you're playing as you or anyone else you want to play as but probably you the game even makes fun of your name later which only happens after you beat the fifth Knight so realistically you forgot to even enter the name at that point and it catches you super off guard good stuff one more thing before I talk about the actual game the menus in this game are all based on the Windows XP UI which is a really cool design choice that adds a lot of personality to the game this old school computer aesthetic even carries over to the cameras during the night sections speaking of enough stalling it's time to get into the actual game the office has two doors on each side and one door in the middle the middle doors closing isn't important right now but the two side doors are linked to the core of Mary's arcade's gameplay loop I think that the office looks pretty nice it's probably the weakest of the areas in the location when it comes to visuals but that's not entirely its own fault the camera rooms have the upper hand here simply for how they were handled in this game unlike pretty much every other FNAF game ever with cameras Mary's arcade does not use the traditional TV static to make the feet and the cameras look lower quality instead some really clever visuals are used that enhance the cameras in ways that many other FNAF fan games just don't the cameras will choppily move from side to side with the occasional hiccup ruining the feed such as parts of the feed getting glitchy or extended and warped this game absolutely Nails how an old shitty camera system would probably actually be like to use and it does it without sacrificing any of the creepy elements each and every room has props in it that work well to flush out the entire location from this Eerie Jungle Gym looking area to the exit camera that you can see a little peak of the outside world from each camera is set up in a way that makes each area both visually distinct and interesting from one another even the two cameras right outside the office look very different with one being a more close-up shot and the other being a farther out shot that looks to be some kind of staff room you can even see the arcade peeking out the door next to the fridge these fantastic creepy room renders mixed with the great camera effects make this location a joy to just look around and trust me in this game you'll be doing that a lot so I'm glad they nailed that aspect a couple more things to note here like any typical FNAF game you can use the mouse to click on each of the different cameras but a really great addition in this game is the ability to use the arrow keys to move around the location Mary's arcade's building is kind of set up like a circle so you can easily move the cameras in a circle back and forth with the left and right arrow keys on top of that the scroll wheel on the mouse also works to go through the cameras which is also pretty satisfying to use but is sometimes a little too fast so I like to stick with the arrow keys this isn't really a feature that's like a must-have for every FNAF game going forward but it works really well in this game and is my third way to use the cameras we'll get into why later but trust me it flows perfectly into how you play this game however we aren't there yet I'm only getting started with this game's visuals well the office and especially the camera locations look amazing the animatronics here really steal the show in terms of impressiveness but first a quick side tangent I swear this will all make sense when we're done okay let's think back to the very first FNAF game I think it's the most fair comparison for Mary's arcade since both games share a lot in common simple location very unsettling environments that shouldn't be that unsettling and pretty basic animatronic designs here's a hot take I'm sure you all love those I think the FNAF one cast looks pretty lame these designs really have only gotten worse over the many years since this game came out and better versions of them were introduced in future installments especially the Wither designs which I think look much better than the FNAF 1 versions but when I talk about the FNAF 1 cast like this I'm strictly talking about how they look in promotional renders and stuff like that when we move over to the actual game it it's a completely different story The Way Scott coffin used the camera environment and lighting to make these simple animatronic designs so creepy is probably my favorite aspect of FNAF 1. I think the show stage is a great example of this I always felt like the animatronics looked very different here than how they normally look and it really works to make the player feel a little uneasy very harsh Shadows cover up a lot of the key features on the designs and it worked so well mixed with the security camera quality and all that anyway what I'm trying to get at here is that even the most basic or boring designs can be made significantly more interesting when given creepier renders from the cameras the animatronic designs in Mary's arcade are also pretty simple just being some woodland animals wearing clothes being real they look pretty uninteresting in renders such as this one however just like FNAF 1 the camera renders take this cast to a whole other level starting with Mary she has pretty much never seen directly looking at the camera and the very few times she is looking at the camera it's usually because her head is turned all the way around which is absolutely terrifying Fine Mary will often say voice lines during the nights as well which is such a clever evolution of things like Freddy's laugh in the first game these are animatronics after all realistically they would have a couple built-in voice lines to say Rascal is the raccoon character and he straight up has some of my favorite renders in this entire game he wears a brown jacket and carries around a briefcase and just look at this render something about this render just looks so goddamn good I get really heavy FNAF 1 camera vibes from it which is probably why I love it so much but it gets even better this Rascal render actually has an alternative version that is just him staring directly into the camera it's the little things like that that add a whole lot of soul to a game oh I think now would be a good time to say that these characters can actually camera stack in this game which is a really good addition that a lot of early FNAF games just don't have finally we have Scarlet Scarlett is often harder to see on the cameras compared to the other characters this is because of her gameplay mechanic but I do like that at least one character is more in the background not only does it help to not clutter the screen of a lot of animatronics are in one place but it makes it even more unsettling to see her up close when she gets near the office or in the kitchen anyway now I'm going to talk about clothes for a bit animatronic bands or characters wearing clothes is a pretty common thing in the real world when it comes to animatronics just recently I became a bit more interested in actual animatronics and ended up falling down a rabbit hole of all these different cool characters and yeah most actual animatronic characters wear clothes of some kind with that in mind the FNAF 1 cast not wearing closes kind of odd like we're really only used to the FNAF characters not wearing clothes because it's just been a staple of the series for so long with a few exceptions it really gives me a lot more appreciation for the FNAF Plus designs to be honest the decision to make the cast of Mary's arcade were closed was actually a really good one in my opinion because I think it makes these characters a whole lot more creepy compared to if they were just naked I guess especially Scarlet her get up is really unsettling to me for some reason anyway while these designs may be a little boring in renders outside of the game inside of the game they have fantastic renders that work with the lighting of the environments perfectly that really call back to how things looked in FNAF 1. hell some of the best renders of these characters the game are actually the ones of the characters peeking into the office through the doorway the way their big ass eyes light up look amazing and when you shine your light on them the renders just look fantastic I love that Mary who pretty much never looks at the cameras is finally looking directly at you when she reaches the door it's just so out of place for her and I love it just a few more points about the visuals and then I'll move on to the gameplay like I talked about earlier the camera UI is trying to look like an old computer UI which is very fitting since the camera system here is actually on a laptop you can see the top of the laptop while you're in the office as well which is a very cool touch this detail even affects the gameplay a bit since you can actually hear certain sound cues from the cameras while the laptop is down because technically it's still right there in front of you this encourages having the cameras down a lot since you're not missing much in the audio department even when it's down why would you even want your cameras down you ask one of the gameplay mechanics in Mary's arcade is that when you have the camera down the time moves ever so slightly faster this encourages you to try to have it down as much as possible possible so you can end the knights faster which I think is a really cool risk reward mechanic so much important stuff happens on the cameras in this game that you really have to balance keeping an eye on them while also making the time go faster being in the office anyway it's about time we go over the gameplay I guess I kind of got a bit of a head start there talking with the time mechanics but trust me this game has a ton of fresh new ideas that make it one of my favorite FNAF fan games of all time we're really just only getting started as established earlier this game plays a little bit differently compared to your typical FNAF game people often like to compare FNAF to Tower Defense games which I kinda see a little bit but this game takes that comparison to a completely different level if you remember from the last section I mentioned that this location is kind of set up like a circle each camera directly links it to another one behind it and in front of it there is a very specific reason the building is set up like this the animatronics in Mary's arcade move only in a circular formation around the building Mary Moves In One Direction and Rascal moves in the other direction they will never go back backwards on the cameras only forwards this is already pretty different from most other FNAF games which usually have the animatronics going back and forth between cameras stalling for time and waiting here you already have a 100 guarantee where each of these two animatronics will go next which makes tracking them the camera a piece of cake however there is a bit of a problem for uh uh yeah here the doorways in the office are actually more like a hallway that connect the two to each other and that hallway is directly in the path of both Mary and Rascal so yeah these two uncanny ass robots need to walk directly in front of me if they want to continue walking in a circle around the building there's a bit of a catch though Marion Rascal won't move to the next room unless they hear a noise that distract them from the security guard and that's where the PA system comes into play on the camera you're given two different tools you can use to survive the night at Mary's arcade the PA system is pretty self-explanatory if you play the noise in the room directly ahead of an animatronic they will automatically go to that room and continue their circle from there the goal is to to use this PA system when an animatronic is in the doorway of your office to make them leave you alone and allow them to continue walking in a circle but it's not that easy it's never that easy both of the tools you have come with long ass recharge times that force you to wait a bit before you can use them again so what if you get in a situation where both animatronics are really close to your office what do you do then that's where the second tool comes into play the buzzer allows a player to freeze marry and Rascal in place if they're on the camera you use said buzzer on you can use this to stall one of them while the PA system is recharging or to catch both animatronics on the same camera to buy yourself a little more time the way you use the PA system in buzzer is up to you and it involves a lot of strategy to figure out the most optimal way to go about using both of them it creates this extremely fun gameplay Loop where you're constantly planning ahead to try and best the animatronics spinning in circles around the building Merrick's arcade almost feels like a puzzle game in the sense that there are a handful of solutions for each night that you need to trial and error pieced together to complete the game it's such a a cool idea for a game and playing it for the first time really caught me off guard it made me play a FNAF game in a way I had really never done before most FNAF games I end up being reactive to everything going around me but here I had to be proactive about every move I made making sure I wouldn't get myself into unwinnable situations by playing my cards right the camera tools are not everything you have at your disposal a limited flashlight is also included in the kit this flashlight is used in the office only and allows you to stall any animatronic at the doorway while you're waiting for the PA system to recharge playing this game will get you into situations like this a lot so get used to using the flashlight I'm not 100 sure how this aspect of the game works but I'll try and explain it the best I can okay so when you're using the flashlight to stall in animatronic not only is there a limited amount of power on it but you can sometimes randomly have your light broken by animatronic I can't really say what triggers this it seems to just happen randomly but realistically it's probably just if you have your light on an animatronic for too long regardless of what causes it it's easily the most confusing mechanic in the game there's already a battery for the flashlight that goes down pretty dang fast seems almost unfair to have an animatronic break the light when it's not even empty the actual worst part about this is that if the light break happens it's game over and you get jump scared it kind of does the whole FNAF one Freddy power out thing but instead of just doing it at the end of the night when you run out of power it's every single time the light breaks so even when you know you're 100 going to lose you have to sit through this really long animation every single time it happens it's cool at first but once you start reaching harder challenges it just becomes kind of annoying I think a pretty simple fix for this is to only have this longer animation play if it's at least 5 AM since if it plays anytime before 5am that extra bit of time the animation gives you won't even matter and just slows down the pace of the game to a crawl for a second kind of on the same topic is the death mini games occasionally when you die you'll have a shot at completing a death minigame which is pretty neat it involves doing a series of challenges with cookies that can bounce off walls your goal is to kill all the enemies and make it to the end I'm not really good at it personally but I won't let that take away from being pretty cool my issue arises when the death mini game shows up during the harder nights of the game the death minigame is pretty long to just skip since you have multiple lives in it and since this game is so trial and Airy you'll be seeing this minigame at least a couple times I think an easy solution for this would it just be either decrease how much it can appear by a tiny bit or make it so it can't spawn unlike Knight 5 onward the game straight up gives you the ability to play the minigame from the menu after you beat night 5 anyway so it's not like it'll be impossible to play if these changes were put in place neither of these more negative points are super big deals and don't take away from my love of the game very much but they did annoy me a bit while going through it and I feel like I should at least mention them to be as transparent as possible about my thoughts and feelings because going forward everything else is pretty much entirely positive but one more sour spot before we go back to the good the jump scares in this game are pretty lame they feel less impactful than the FNAF 1 jump scares which should be the bare minimum for a game that's taking so much inspiration from it the sound effect used for them is really settling though great work picking that one out it's a blood curdling scream sound that did get me a few times going through it anyway the jump scare animations here are pretty much just characters awkwardly wobbling back and forth or jumping at you from a black PNG background depending on the circumstances fnaf1 did a pretty good job with the jump scare animations since a lot of the movement in them was a vertical chomping rather than horizontal swaying although the blackout jump scares are clearly inspired by Freddy's blackout jump scare maybe making the animation a little shorter would help improve the impact of the jump scares but I'm not entirely sure anyway moving on from the negative stuff there's still one final animatronic in the main cast I have yet to talk about and that's Scarlet Scarlett is introduced during the middle of the game once she's active she continues to be active for the remainder of the knights her mechanic works completely differently from Marion Rascal while your goal for them is to stall and lead them through the building your goal with Scarlet is to repel her away from the office Scarlett will show up on one of the two sides of the building making her way to your location all you have to do is find her on the cameras look at her long enough and she'll move back a camera keep doing this until she completely leaves the hallway and you'll buy yourself a bit more time that you won't have to deal with her I really enjoy the addition of this mechanic to the gameplay Loop while Mary and Rascal work on their own as a challenge Scarlett raises the stress of each night by a bit and keeps you on your toes making sure she doesn't get too close to you Scarlett can enter the office using the door at the front of the room even if your cameras are down so it's important to keep track of her as much as possible here's where an advantage of being able to hear the laptop's sound cues even when it's down comes into play when Scarlett is at either of her final cameras before jump scaring you a distinct sound will play letting you know she's close by you can use this to your advantage to make sure she doesn't get into your office but it's usually better to just chase her away camera by camera so you can deal with the other animatronics without being too worried for a little bit even if the cast is small this game is definitely challenging and will force you to really think hard about each move you make and each tool you use one of the best things about the game is that each night the animatronics have the ability to start at different places on the map early on in the game the cast starts at the show stage and slowly makes their way around the location but the farther you get into the game the more insane the placements get by the time Knight 6 rolls around scarlet and Rascal are already on their final cameras at the start of the night and Mary is one camera away from her final camera yeah insane stuff the start of night setups really force you to think fast and devise the best way to go about picking off each very close threat one by one I mentioned that Mary talks a bit on the cameras before and there are some actual gameplay ramifications because of this occasionally she'll do a magic trick and black out a bunch of your cameras to be Audio Only which is pretty annoying for a game that is so heavily camera focused it's not super unfair or anything though since sometimes rooms will have distinct sound cues if an animatronic is in them and because since most characters move in a circle you can usually figure out what's going on at all times sometimes random musical play from cameras as well which is always super unsettling it's like this old-timey song and every time it happens it makes my stress go way up even though it means pretty much nothing speaking of cool in-game events like that Mary's arcade has one of the most interesting additions to a fan a fan game I have ever seen that being scripted events what I mean by that is during the game a couple scripted sequences happen that are used to completely catch the player off guard two really good examples of this are the bait merry jump scare and the Knight 5 blackout at the end of night 3 a blackout happens and everything goes dark some noises can be heard from the background before Boom the lights spring back on and Mary is directly in front of you and still moving she goes in for the kill and then right before she can get you it hits 6am and she Powers down I was super surprised by this simple scripted sequences like this can really add a lot to an overall game experience especially when you're doing the same gameplay for the entire thing it's such a cool moment that I'll probably never forget and things like that help leave a lasting impact on me as the player the other standout scripted moment for me was during the last hour of night 5 when it hits 5 am every single camera goes out and you have to beat the Knight without any visual aid from the cameras I totally got confused the first time I made it here on night five and ended up losing but I was pretty quickly able to figure out the best way to go about it after that and beat the main campaign these cool scripted moments add a lot to the game and make me even more upset that it kind of went under the radar just for reference here my video talking about fan game direct where I go over what we know about Mary's arcade 2 is technically the most viewed Mary's arcade related video on all of YouTube crazy right such a phenomenal game with fantastic visuals and game design just slipped under the radar for pretty much every major English-speaking FNAF YouTuber Titan sons was maybe a bit of a stretch to call underrated it already had multiple videos with millions of views I still stand by my opinion that at the time I made my video on it tyken sons was underrated because of how fantastic it is and how little I saw people talk about it but Mary's arcade is a very different type of underrated this game seriously deserves way way more love I've been going on about it for this long already and there's still more to talk about a fantastic menu with tons of cool an extra hard nightmare mode that will really challenge your knowledge of the game and its mechanics a customer that adds even more animatronics which you all know is one of my favorite things in FNAF fan games don't worry though someone has already beaten the max mode so no 14 22 situation here there's also lots of Easter eggs just like the classic FNAF games such as golden Mary which I was sadly not lucky enough to encounter myself but they still made it in the thumbnail a but seriously if this video made you at all interested in the game I highly recommend you go and play it for yourself if you can the mechanics may be a little hard to get used to at first but I promise you stick with it and you'll find one of the most hidden gems in all of FNAF fan games Mary's arcade is getting a sequel as well so make sure to go show that some love going into this game I never expected to like it so much on the outside it really is one of the more simple looking FNAF fan games and in some ways it still is no big over-the-top flashy models or cut scenes or whatever but this game has passion soul and straw wrong mechanics and at the end of the day those are really the only things you need to make a solid FNAF fan game I've been oh yeah and I'll see you all next time [Music]

Channel: uhyeah

Views: 1,101,035

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Id: v5Hfe6xSZRA

Length: 22min 38sec (1358 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 07 2022