Friday Night Funkin'

This page is about the game itself.

Friday Night Funkin' (often abbreviated to FNF) is an open-source donationware rhythm game first released in 2020 for a game jam. The game was developed by a team of four Newgrounds users, Cameron "Ninjamuffin99" Taylor, David "PhantomArcade" Brown, Isaac "Kawai Sprite" Garcia, and evilsk8r. The game shares some gameplay features with Dance Dance Revolution and PaRappa the Rapper and borrows aesthetic influences from Flash games. The game has been credited with driving users back to Newgrounds, a site whose popularity peaked in the early 2000s.

The game includes a roster generally comprising characters from external media on the Newgrounds site.

The game revolves around the player character, Boyfriend, who must defeat a variety of characters in singing and rapping contests in order to date his love interest, Girlfriend. Gameplay revolves around mimicking the opponent's notes with timed inputs while avoiding running out of health for the duration of the song.

The game was initially created for the Ludum Dare 47 game jam in October 2020. A full version backed on Kickstarter titled Friday Night Funkin': The Full Ass Game is planned for release in early 2022.

Gameplay
Friday Night Funkin' is a rhythm game in which the player controls a character called Boyfriend, who must defeat a series of opponents in order to continue dating his significant other, Girlfriend. The player must pass multiple levels, referred to as "weeks", each containing three songs. Each week, the player faces a different opponent, though some deviate in structure from this via the inclusion of multiple opponents. During gameplay, the opponent will sing a pattern of notes (represented as arrows) which the player must then mirror by using the arrow keys or the W, A, S, and D keys. Some songs introduce more complicated patterns, with the player's pattern sometimes varying from the opponent's or both singers engaging in a duet.

For each week, the player has the option to select one of three difficulties: Easy, Normal, or Hard. As the difficulty increases, the speed of incoming arrows increases, and the patterns of arrows become more complex. The player's high score for each week on each difficulty is tracked and shown in the top corner of the week selection screen. The game contains two different modes of play: a story campaign in which songs are played linearly and a "free play" mode which allows for free selection of any of the game's music tracks.

Development
Ninjamuffin99 assembled a small team of Newgrounds creators to develop an initial Friday Night Funkin' prototype as a submission to Ludum Dare 47 in October 2020, which contained only a handful of music tracks and lacked menus. Despite its rudimentary design, the prototype received unexpected success, leading to many requests for a full game. In response, Ninjamuffin99 claimed to have plans to expand the game.

Ninjamuffin99 would later update this demo on November 1, 2020, which added several additional menus and options as well as "Week 2", an additional fight. Interest in the game grew, with it quickly growing in notoriety on Newgrounds as it had received significant attention via platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and Twitch. Its soundtrack by composer Kawai Sprite has been made available for free on Bandcamp and Spotify.

In February 2021, Ninjamuffin99 requested Nintendo to allow his game to be ported on the Nintendo Switch. However, his request was rejected, which he believed was because the game was incomplete.

Week 7 was released as a timed exclusive on Newgrounds. Due to the increase in traffic this caused to Newgrounds, the site crashed and was unavailable for several days. The game ended its weekly update following Week 7, with the developers instead focusing on working on the full game, titled Friday Night Funkin': The Full Ass Game.

Modding
The game has an active modding community due to its open-source release, allowing for the implementation of fan-made content. As a result, the full game will receive mod support using the Polymod framework.

Kickstarter
In April 2021, the developers announced plans to launch a Kickstarter project later in the month to turn the demo into a full game. On April 18, a Kickstarter for the full version of the game was released under the name Friday Night Funkin': The Full Ass Game and it reached its goal of $60,000 within hours. The Kickstarter ultimately raised over $2 million.