Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach is the 8th major title in the horror series known for its dangerous animatronics possessed by the ghosts of murdered children. Whereas the series started in a small Chuck E. Cheese-style pizzeria, Security Breach takes place in the new Freddy Fazbear Mega Pizzaplex, populated with neon lights, Glamrock versions of the various animatronics, an arcade, a restaurant, and all sorts of crazy play areas to get lost in. You play as Gregory, a young boy who gets trapped inside the Pizzaplex after it closes. Just like every other Freddy Fazbear location, things that happen during closing hours get deadly in a hurry. Gregory must work together with Glamrock Freddy, the only animatronic that does not want to actually see him dead, to survive until the doors open for business the next morning.

Surviving will be no easy task, however. This Fazbear Entertainment location adds two new animatronics to the roster: Roxanne Wolf, taking the usual place of Foxy the Pirate, and Monty Gator taking the place of Bonnie. Together with Chica, this trio of animatronics are on the hunt to see any intruders dead. To make matters worse, the night security guard and a mysterious costumed rabbit are roaming the halls, also looking to capture you. Run and hide to avoid capture until morning!

Security Breach is the first game in the franchise to give the player full range of movement through a 3D space. You'll be expected to sneak by enemies and look for places to hide in order to survive. The gameplay mostly revolves around Gregory moving from location to location, unlocking doors, avoiding capture by the various animatronics roaming the halls, and otherwise just exploring. Time passes as you go through various sub-areas, each with their own sets of puzzles to solve, minigames to play, and threats to avoid.

Security Breach provides some other tools to help you avoid detection. Gregory has the ability to call Freddy and climb inside him, allowing you to move around undetected, since the other robots don't see him as an intruder. Freddy has limited energy before he must recharge, leaving Gregory exposed again. Completing certain areas will unlock tools that can temporarily stun enemies, like shooting a laser tag gun into their eyes or blinding them with a camera flash. You will also unlock upgrades for Freddy that will allow you to access further areas of the Pizzaplex, a la Metroid.

The game isn't without its flaws. It is riddled with bugs, some of which are bad enough to permanently lock you out of certain game endings or even making progress. For instance, at the end of each hour, Gregory must be inside of Freddy and then be commanded to enter a recharge station lest Freddy run out of power and leave Gregory helpless. At one specific hour, though, a glitch can appear which keeps Freddy from being able to get into a recharge station at all. Re-launching the game doesn't clear the glitch. The only fix is completely starting the game over and hoping you don't experience the bug the next time. This can be mitigated by always keeping a few backup saves, but as someone who has had to deal with that level of progress loss before, I know as much as anyone that running into a scenario like that is enough to make most people just put down the game forever. And while I played this game myself on PC, even later ports like the one for the Nintendo Switch contained game-breaking bugs.

Another big complaint by both myself and the wider player base was the final boss fight. The main ending of the game has you going into a final encounter that requires precise dodging, button timing, and resource management, which wouldn't be so bad if Security Breach did a better job of explaining what is actually expected of you. "Quick, hide!" yells Freddy as you look around helplessly at the totally empty room while Freddy himself is currently paralyzed and inaccessible to hide in. The encounter is notoriously frustrating.

For fans of the Five Nights at Freddy's story, the final and perhaps biggest mark against Security Breach comes in the form of its lore. Five Nights at Freddy's is the brain child of Scott Cawthon, who single-handedly developed every game in the series up until the previous entry to this one, Help Wanted. This left room for miscommunication between Cawthon and Steel Wool Studios, where the story Scott was crafting was not fully explained to Steel Wool, leaving many finer points of the intended narrative direction of the franchise conflicting with the story the game actually tells. The number of spin-off books and hints that had to be planted around in future series titles in order to help correct the narrative confusion that Security Breach brought to the entire franchise cannot be understated.

On a brighter note, Steel Wool Studios added free DLC later simply called "Ruin" that is comparatively free of bugs and helps clear up some parts of the base game's story. The DLC has some of the most entertaining parts of the game, really cranking up the terrifying atmosphere and putting the player in the shoes of a little girl who was a friend of Gregory's and is looking to find him. It is easily the strongest part of the entire game, with new mechanics, locations, and lore.

As far as moral elements go, there aren't many positives within Five Nights at Freddy's. Having at least one character in Security Breach show genuine concern and protective instinct over one of the children is a rare treat in this franchise. The corporation that owns and operates the Mega Pizzaplex may as well have the tagline "What dead kids?" Most of the other games have you playing as a security guard or a maintenance man, but this time, you're one of the kids at risk of being murdered and disappeared. To make matters worse, in the wider lore, the implications are that the child you play as is a murderer in his own right.