Five Nights at Freddy’s: Top tips, hints, and cheats you need to know!

For many years now, Five Nights at Freddy’s has been one of the best Nintendo Switch games and one of the best iPhone games you can get your hands on. You take on the role of a night security guard with an eerie job. With limited power, you’ll need to survive the night without getting attacked by the animatronics that roam in free mode at night. They don’t take well to anyone not in an animal suit so you’ll need to closely monitor their locations with the limited power you have at your disposal. Surviving all five nights heavily depends on getting to know your four enemies and how they move.

These are the tips, hints, and cheats we you need to know to survive all five nights at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza whether playing on Nintendo Switch, your iPhone, or iPad!

Five Nights at Freddy’s Core Collection (Switch)

Enjoy heart-pounding jumpscares on your Nintendo Switch from the first five games in the series. Can you last the nights and make it through safely? 

Buy from: Amazon | Walmart

Five Nights at Freddy’s (iOS)

Experience the original game on iPhone and iPad that started it all. Keep watch over the sentient animatronic animal robots at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza overnight. It’s your job to prevent them from making it into your booth using what limited power you have left. 

Buy from: App Store

1. Keep the doors open

(Image credit: iMore)

Regardless of if you’re playing this as an iPhone game or a Nintendo Switch game, these rules are the same. The doors are the largest waste of power in the entire game. Sure you could keep them closed at all times to ward off enemies but that’d defeat the purpose of the game. Not to mention, doing so will barely get you through an hour before you completely run out of power.

Instead, keep the doors open at all times until you actually hear a character approaching or see one in the doorway. Then slam them shut and leave them shut until they disappear.

2. Use lights sparingly and only under attack

(Image credit: iMore)

Five Nights at Freddy’s is immensely reliant on auditory cues. If you run around checking cameras and flipping on lights when you don’t need to, you’ll never have enough power to get through the night. Instead, when you think you hear something approaching, quickly tap the lights on and off to check the doorways.

On the right side door, you can sometimes see something approaching in the shadows before it gets to the doorway. This means you can bypass using the lights altogether and just shut the door.

3. Learn how all your enemies move

(Image credit: iMore)

Enemies move differently at Freddy’s. Learning early on how they move will get you further, faster. Here’s how I’ve found all four enemies to move throughout the night, with the exception of night five, where it appears all bets are off.

• Freddy – The titular bear with the top hat. Freddy is harder to predict and frequently makes cameras go dark. This is a good indication Freddy is lurking. Watching him seems to make him advance slower, so keep an eye on him and remember he typically moves throughout the whole camera circuit before attacking. But remember, he can break through doors, so slowing him down in the final hours of the night is key.
• Bonnie – It looks like a purple rabbit and always appears in the left-hand doorway but moves randomly in the cameras. Flick the left side light on and off if you feel Bonnie is moving, just to make sure they aren’t in the doorway already.
• Chica – As you’d expect, this is the yellow bird. It moves purposefully and quickly towards the player, and always appears in the right-side door. If you see Chica on a right-side camera approaching you, they’ll soon be in the doorway so prepare to close it!
• Foxy – The fox that mainly stays in Pirate Cove in Camera 1C but doesn’t like to be watched often. When you hear running on the left side, Foxy is attacking. Slam down the left door. You may also sporadically see signs in camera 1C that say “IT’S ME!” and if you see this, immediately slam the left door down.

4. Watch for glowing eyes

Five Nights At Freddys Glowing Eyes Arrow

(Image credit: iMore)

As previously stated, Freddy is hard to see on the cameras. One indicator that he’s in a specific room is if you see glowing eyes. There have been times I thought I was looking at a completely empty camera but caught a pair of glowing eyes, which happened to be Freddy.

Just be sure to keep an eye on Freddy as he moves through cameras as it’ll slow down his advance.

5. Headphones make audio cues much more obvious

(Image credit: iMore)

Five Nights at Freddy’s is chock full of auditory information. Being able to hear footsteps specifically approaching from the left or right separately is super important. And when you hear running or other sounds, you’ll quickly become acquainted with who is attacking and from where.

Through your iPhone or iPad’s built-in speakers, it’s sometimes impossible to decipher where a character is moving to, in turn making cameras harder to monitor. And as you can probably guess, that means you use more power. So in short, use headphones whenever possible.

6. Listen before looking

(Image credit: Clickteam)

Again, auditory cues are key. It’s also why headphones make a huge difference. You can hear the feedback coming from both left and right channels separately which tells you exactly what side you are facing an attack from. This makes it much easier to conserve power when you aren’t guessing what door to slam down.

7. Quick, short looks are key

(Image credit: iMore)

With the exception of when you’re tracking Freddy, short and quick looks are almost always best. You want to curb your power usage as much as possible. In most situations, you’ll be able to see where characters are at with short looks. Spend most of your time listening and only part of your time looking. I’d say an 80/20 rule would make a good guideline.

8. Don’t waste power until an animal makes the first move

(Image credit: Clickteam)

At the very beginning of the night, all the animals are located in camera 1A. Quickly take glances at them here and there in order to see when an animal makes their first move. In other words, when one disappears. That’s the point when you need to start checking the other cameras. Just be sure to also keep an eye on Foxy in Pirate’s Cove periodically. And more importantly, make sure you’re listening for attacks more than you are watching.

9. Customize each robot’s A.I. Level to make things easier (or harder)

(Image credit: iMore)

If you’re finding Five Nights at Freddy’s too challenging or not challenging enough, you can change the difficulty settings of each of the four robots. To do this, go to Custom Night in the main menu. Then move the A.I. Level for each robot up or down.

• Levels 0-2: Makes the robots slower and the game much easier to play.
• Levels 3-6: Increases the mobility of the robots, but is still considered a medium playthrough.
• Levels 7-12: Makes the anamatronics move around a whole lot more and provides a challenging game.
• Levels 13-20: Get ready to get attacked by each of these characters regularly. This is only something to be attempted if you want no peace all night long.

10. Turn the Cheats on

(Image credit: iMore)

The Nintendo Switch version allows you to select Cheats in the main menu. With these, you can choose whether or not to have Unlimited Power, Fast Nights, or Radar Map turned on.

• Unlimited Power: You never run out of power so you can keep those lights on or those doors closed all night long. This makes the game a synch to play.
• Fast Nights: The hours tick by twice as fast every night so you don’t have to spend as much time watching those cameras, listening for creepy noises, and slamming your doors.
• Radar Map: Makes an image of each robot appear on the map so you know exactly where they are at all times.

Survive the nights

This game might be several years old, but it’s managed to stay an important game in the horror genre all this time. Each animatronic has its own quirks to watch out for and if you really do conserve your energy you’ll make it a lot farther.  

With these tips, tricks, and secrets you’ll be able to make it through each night without getting killed by evil animatronic robots. Good night and good luck to you!