Five Nights: Aerscam Mansion is a horror game created by JapoZero using the RPG Maker MV engine. It attempts to recreate the jumpscares of Five Nights at Freddy's whilst also adding a story in order to make the experience more interesting as a whole. Does it work?


In a word, no. Not really. Why not?

To begin with, the story is rather fragmented. You get no real idea as to who the main character is and what their aim is beyond staying the night in an abandoned mansion. There is no hint as to why they need to do so, nor how they tie into the story of the mansion, which seems to have taken place a year before her visit.

The story parts of the game are much preferable to the other parts, however, as they are, at least, interesting and hold your attention much more than the tried-and-troped gameplay of the first 'Freddy' game.

The gameplay outside of the FNAF knock-off parts are pretty standard for the maker - you walk around (as a ghost) and follow a few clues through the mansion you keep an eye on at night. It's not terribly thrilling but I did like the idea of just floating through furniture as a ghost would. There were some nonsensical parts where you couldn't float through (the pieces that could be interacted with - they could easily have been set below player instead, to keep the feel of incorporeality.) which broke the feel of being a ghost.

The rest of the gameplay consisted of controlling a 'camera' to see the different rooms of the house and scrolling left and right in a room in order to click lights on and off. Honestly, it did scroll smoothly and worked quite well. It's just a pity that it wasn't engaging enough to keep one's interest.

For one, there was the management aspect missing. In FNAF you have a limited amount of power to invest in the lights. This could have been replicated in the use of candles burning down over use, so that you had to manage the amount of time you use them.

For two, it could have been made a bit more interesting if you could have seen actual enemies or shadows of on the maps as you looked through them. This was a great part of the FNAF series as you could visually see the progress of the mechanatronics as they made their way towards you. In this game, however, it seems that the 'enemies' are randomly generated to appear suddenly in random rooms without any consideration as to moving through them in a set pattern. It became a game of 'check the two rooms next to me... no distortions? All good." which killed the buzz quite fast.

That said, the music and sound design was the better part of the game. Many of the sounds were quite well done and they mixed well to create a haunted atmosphere. I quite liked it - you did a great job!

The graphics themselves are a mixed bag. Mapping is decent enough, and consist of a mix of different RTP edits. It looks good though there are some rooms that definitely look better than others. The other graphical aspects - the room with the camera, the video camera view and the lighting/scare effects were very well handled. Some parts were a bit hokey, for example, the 'jump scare' for dying was hard to figure out what, exactly it was, and as such I wasn't scared at all.

It was also hard to see a major component of not dying - that being the silhouette you were supposed to click on to save yourself. Which also brings to mind another issue I had - I truly could not figure out how to save myself when the 'evil' had come to the room. I clicked many times on the silhouette and it seemed to have no real difference (it even moved at one point which messed things up a bit).

I must admit I didn't make it through the full game. I got to night three, which I tried a few times. Unfortunately I found myself yawning and I had other games I wanted to play. This was still about an hour's worth of game, though, so I considered that more than enough play time to submit a review.

Honestly, the game isn't terrible at all. It has a lot of great points - the atmosphere, the sound and graphic design, and the general idea itself is pretty decent. It's just a pity that the feeling I most equate with the game is boredom instead of fear.

Just a note to the developer: I do appreciate that you tried to mix things up a bit with the story and I think you were on the right track with that, however even the original creator of FNAF knew that he needed to change things up in order to keep the series interesting - he pushed his gameplay for the series beyond the simple "click and check and light" system because it wasn't going to stand up for repeated plays. It might be an idea to expand on future 'inspired' ideas to include something more interesting than the original.

Overall, it's a decent game, but not one that you'll be screaming to get your hands on.