Friday Night Funkin’: Funkin’ never felt so good!

~ Author: Jacob Bullard

UPDATE: Until Tuesday, May 18th 2021, you can back this game on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/funkin/friday-night-funkin-the-full-ass-game

Friday Night Funkin’ is a rhythm game akin to DDR but with a keyboard. Originally a browser game created by ninjamuffin99, it became a game you can download onto your PC for free. It has many contributors throughout the Newgrounds community from art, to music, to coding. Newgrounds is a website that fostered an artistic community that has created many classic flash games and animations from the early 2000s that sparked the careers of many animators you may know of now. Some Newgrounds community characters come into Friday Night Funkin’ as rivals to face on stage as a result. Official levels are continuing to be added along with a huge modding scene that everyone is hopping onto. I would be surprised if you haven’t seen or heard of FNF yet, but to the few who are out of the loop, this is a GILF for sure! (Game I’d Like to FUNK!)

Gameplay consists of hitting the right notes as they come up on your side of the screen; up, down, left, and right. You face opponents who are “rap battling” you so you can win the favor of your girlfriend. Each “week” (level) consists of 2 to 3 songs that you have to complete to continue to the next week. Veterans of rhythm games can find moderate challenge in Hard mode but for those with slower reaction times you can change the weeks to normal or easy. If you miss too many notes the bar on the bottom of the screen will fill red and you will need to restart from the beginning of that song. Thankfully to the left of the screen your opponent shows the notes you will have to hit before they come to your side of the screen; a bit of a preview. Although the mechanics are simple, the main attraction of the game is the funk!

With tons of tracks with more and more being added over time the selection of music is all custom made for the game. Similar to Banjo and Kazooie dialogue or Animal Crossing characters rapping it’s a bit odd at first but after enough play time it’ll start to grow on you. Almost like listening to music in a foreign language, you may not understand the words but it sure is funky! There’s more than enough tracks to keep you entertained for hours, but if that’s not enough the modding scene is very active and has attracted all kinds of creators to make an amazing community passion project! Some of the more popular ones being the “Whitty Mod” or the “Tricky Mod”. If you are a Newgrounds Veteran you’ll be overjoyed to see some of your favorite classic characters breaking it down on stage, along with a cast of new and beautifully animated characters; each with their own original songs that will get stuck in your head all day.

This is a shorter review because the gameplay and music covers it all, but I felt the need to write a review on this project. Even though it’s free you can also PYOP (pay your own price)! Getting this wonderful community project more exposure will only ensure more weeks, more tracks, and more funkin all around. Recently there was even a version released on mobile for our non pc gamers! If you’re even slightly interested give it a try on browser and throw the creators a couple bucks. They connect with the community constantly and being an OG Newgrounds Member I love seeing the community come together again. With the release of the latest week (week eight) it actually crashed the Newgrounds website! If that’s the case you can also find it on “itch.io”, now go get funky!

LINK TO THE FULL GAME: https://ninja-muffin24.itch.io/funkin