Friday Night Funkin’ Review

Posted on May 1, 2021    Posted by Athena Scalzi      4 Comments

If you like rhythm games as much as I do (which is a lot), then you’ll want to know about an amazing new game called “Friday Night Funkin'”.

This game, found on Newgrounds, is basically a music-centered “Dance Dance Revolution”-type game, with the arrows keys serving as the controls. You play as “Boyfriend”, a guy who is trying to date “Girlfriend”, but her demon ex-rockstar father doesn’t approve, so you have to fight him one on one in a rap battle. Whether it’s hired assassins or spirits trapped inside of dating simulators, many enemies come after Boyfriend, each foe offering up three songs as challenges.

I was shown this game by a friend, and I spent the next hour playing it. I couldn’t stop, it was so addicting! Not only is the music awesome, but the characters are so unique and interesting. Each character has their own voice, and different animations for each arrow key, which really shows how much thought and effort was put into making the game.

I started off with the difficulty on normal, but by the fourth level (which they calls “weeks”) I switched to hard, and I haven’t gone back since. The learning curve is relatively easy, in my opinion, or at least easier than say, the learning curve from medium to hard on “Guitar Hero.” Also, I’d say the game is pretty forgiving if you hit a note a little late, it’ll still count it if it’s within reason, and you can still hit a “hold” note even if you missed the initial press of it. Additionally, there’s a tutorial! So, not so bad.

It’s programmed by ninjamuffin99, with art from PhantomArcade and evilsk8r, and the soundtrack is by Kawai Sprite. I’d never heard of any of these people before this, but dang do they make a good game.

“Friday Night Funkin'” is especially interesting because it is a work in progress. The creators are constantly working on it and adding new things. In fact, last week, a new “week” came out! They’re all the way up to Week 7 now, when last year they only had the first one or two weeks out as a demo version.

In fact, they’re hoping to turn it into a whole ass game, and have a Kickstarter for it! The game is so wildly popular that it surpassed their goal of $60,000 by about a million and a half dollars. If they make a full game, it’ll include 20 brand new “weeks”, as well as cool features like two-player mode (whether you want to play together or battle each other).

What I like about this game personally is how much heart it has put into it. The creators obviously really love their game, and their work is so stylistic and unique. Seriously, not a single one of these songs miss, they all totally rock, and each one is more fun to play than the last.

My favorite enemy is probably Pico, but I also love Senpai (I mean how cool is that pixel art?!). When it comes to songs though, I don’t think any set can beat the “Mommy Mearest” set (yeah, that’s Girlfriend’s mom and Daddy Dearest’s wife). So, my favorite songs to play are any of hers (“Satin Panties”, “High”, and “MILF”), “Philly” from Pico’s level, “Thorns” from Senpai’s level, and “Guns” from Tankman’s level.

There’s also a few super popular mods for the game, and my true favorite song (and true favorite enemy) is from one of these mods. Since it isn’t in the Newgrounds version of the game, I’ll just leave a video of it here for you. It’s called “Zavodila” and the enemy’s name is Ruv.

I highly recommend this game, though fair warning you need pretty good hand-eye-coordination. But if you don’t have that, if you play on easy, I’m sure you’ll be fine and can still enjoy the music and characters without worrying about failing right out the gate.

Have you played this game before? What did you think? What’s your favorite song/enemy? Are there any other rhythm games out there you think I’d like? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!

-AMS