Friday Night Funkin' for Windows

Free music-themed game

Friday Night Funkin’ is a free game that lets you match your keyboard strokes to the music notes that play on the screen. It gives you a new opponent to face in each level, which is organized into weeks. However, Friday Night Funkin’ is only available as a single-player game.

Dance Dance Revolution, Stepmania, and PaRappa the Rapper are all similar to this game. All the titles are based on matching your movements with the rhythm of the music. DDR and Stepmania have significantly better music choices, but both the latter and this one feature songs based on comedy instead of professional quality.

What is Friday Night Funkin’?

A group of developers from the Newgrounds community created Friday Night Funkin’: Ninjamuffin99, PhantomArcade, Kawai Sprite, and evilsk8r. Since this game is free and open-source, gamers have developed mods to suit their preferences. The large number of mods attracts a solid community to play it since the game continues to evolve on a regular basis. If you know how to code, then you can modify the game structure yourself. 

The rhythm game has seven main levels that are categorized into weeks, which let you meet new non-playing characters. It requires your screen, keyboard, and speakers for you to play. Music plays while arrows approach the line that you need to match the keys with. The prompts are simple: left, down, up, and right. A short tutorial is available to make sure that you are familiar with the steps to win.

Meanwhile, a sliding scale that lets you know your level of health is placed at the bottom of the screen. The more notes you get correct, the more the slider will move to the left to reveal a green line. You can tell that your opponent is doing better than you when the marker moves to the right, which reveals a red line.

What made Friday Night Funkin’ so popular?

Friday Night Funkin’ has a subtle yet interesting storyline. While it does not feature a prominent story, you can still understand that the goal is to unite Boyfriend and Girlfriend together. The user interface is split into two sides, with the boyfriend, the character you play as, on the right, and the opponents on the left. Girlfriend sits directly in the middle of the musical battle on top of a speaker.

While the music that comes out of the speaker is not appealing, the simple yet challenging gameplay keeps gamers engaged. However, some players have commented that they do enjoy the game’s music. The electronic songs get quicker and more difficult as the game progresses. While the variations in the types of music are subtle, the songs have slightly different genres, like EDM and hip-hop. The lack of quality songs on the playlist coupled with overlapping and lagging prompts is unfortunate, however.

Is Friday Night Funkin’ kid-friendly?

The computer game presents weapons and demeans women. The retro-style graphics make the unethical aspects of the game easier to ignore, however, the theme is still apparent in Friday Night Funkin’. The level of ethicality is another important factor for gamers to consider as to whether FNF is worth playing or not.

Addictive PC game

The official version of Friday Night Funkin’ features a total of 10 NPCs. While the scenery does change each week, Girlfriend remains in the middle of the two competitors that are on each side of the screen. A row of arrows is above each opponent to match the music up to keyboard strokes. Plus, the retro graphics are a fun touch to have.