You take the call, accept the contract, and settle in at MCM expecting a quiet shift of watching prototypes move across a screen. Then Chica screams into your face and the job stops feeling routine. FNAF: The Flipside is a 2D survival puzzle built around exactly that kind of shock, a fan-made prequel to Secret of the Mimic where you watch movements, report malfunctions, and slowly work out what the machines are hiding. The game rewards patience over panic, but it rarely gives you room to relax.
The setup is simple on paper. MCM needs someone to run tests on its latest prototypes for one of its biggest contractors, and you are the person who gets the call after assuming your working days were behind you. Your assignment is to watch movements, report malfunctions, and stay alert. Nothing in that description prepares you for how quickly Springbonnie, Fredbear, Monty, and Bub turn a routine test into something personal.
Treat each night as its own test instead of the same shift on repeat. That mindset makes the odd pacing easier to accept, because the tasks change shape from one night to the next. It also stops you from hunting for a single trick that will carry you through the whole run.
Lore hunters get the most out of the setup, since The Flipside is written as a prequel to Secret of the Mimic and every corporate detail reads like a clue. Even without that background, the premise is easy to follow: a company, a contractor, and prototypes that need watching. One detailed player review praises the visuals and the voice acting, and both do a lot of work before the first jumpscare lands.
A frequent complaint among players is that nothing explains what to do with Fredbear. There is no tutorial, so the learning loop is dying, noticing what killed you, and trying something different. One player reported having to lose to two different characters before the controls made sense, and Fredbear’s inputs reportedly need both hands at once, which catches keyboard-and-mouse habits off guard.
FNAF veterans are hit hardest by this, because muscle memory from older games helps less when reviewers describe the mechanics as unique. Newcomers at least arrive with nothing to unlearn.
Since dying is the teacher here, the early nights are the cheapest place to experiment. A few habits make that experimenting less painful:
Between nights, the game slips small minigames into the flow, and the community is split on them. Some players enjoy the change of pace after a tense shift. Others call the whole set pointless, arguing that all but one of them boil down to clicking something to ward off an animatronic and then going back to holding your mouse still.
Ward-off clicks: Most of the minigames come down to one well-timed click that pushes an animatronic back before you return to holding your mouse steady. It keeps the tension going between nights, but it also explains why critics call them filler.
The shape-changing test: The first minigame is the one people remember for the wrong reasons. Your shape changes the instant you let go, even when you already waited for the change, and one player lost nearly all their progress to that quirk. It is a small detail, yet it shows how the same game can feel harsh in one moment and fair in the next, since another player praised how fair the whole thing is.
Difficulty is where opinions really split. One player says the nights do not ramp up properly and that Night 4 onward feels like whiplash instead of a climb. Another says the game feels fair and that every death was their own mistake. Both camps are describing the same nights, and the gap often comes down to how quickly Fredbear’s controls become second nature.
By Night 6, the uneven ramp is hard to ignore, whichever camp you belong to. Expect at least one shift that feels harder or easier than it should.
Once the story nights are done, a late-game content update adds Madness and, above it, BLOODLUST. Press the little madness star on the main menu to start the BLOODLUST night. That update is built around challenge and player skill, so players chasing the hardest run the game offers are the ones it was made for, and it is a poor place to learn Fredbear’s controls for the first time.
Yes, it is a fan-made prequel and a fresh take on the story told in Secret of the Mimic. You play a returning contractor helping MCM test prototypes, and Springbonnie, Fredbear, Monty, and Bub are part of the cast you deal with along the way. It is not an official entry, so it works best as an alternate reading of that story.
BLOODLUST is the hardest mode in the game and sits above Madness. Press the little madness star on the main menu to start the BLOODLUST night. Because it targets late-game skill, clear the standard nights first so that Fredbear’s controls are automatic before you try it.
Fredbear’s inputs reportedly need both hands at once, and the game gives no tutorial to say so. Players learn by dying, which is why the early nights are the safest place to test the controls. Once the two-handed rhythm clicks, the nights stop feeling like guesswork.
FNAF: The Flipside works best when you accept its rough edges and lean into what it does differently: the between-night minigames, Fredbear’s two-handed inputs, the jump in difficulty around Night 4, and BLOODLUST waiting behind the madness star. Chica, Monty, and Springbonnie will keep testing you until you learn how each one moves. If you want a fan-made prequel that treats your shift at MCM like a puzzle box, the game delivers it.
