Five Nights at Freddy's Sister Location screenshot

Horror games, more so than any other genre of gaming, exist to push the player to their emotional limits. They are often graphically violent, feature unsettling and morbid themes, and the best examples of the genre use the player's own imagination as the catalyst for all of the horror.

Given that the whole point of the exercise is to scare the living daylight out of the players, both physically and mentally, you would think that there is no such thing as "too scary" or "too dark", but it appears that Five Nights at Freddy's creator Scott Cawthon has managed to cross that line. According to his most recent announcement the upcoming Sister Location game might be getting postponed as it features a plot so dark it sometime makes him sick - and I'd imagine that doesn't come easy given that this is the man that made his fortune with animatronic abominations.

Here's the full message:

"Hey guys, I wanted to post an announcement that this game might be postponed, and I'm not really sure when it would be released.

There are certain plot elements that are very dark, to the point where I sometimes feel sick. There would be no easy fix to this. I either release it Friday as it is, or I delay it by several months to completely rework the plot into something kid-friendly.

I'm unsure what I'm going to do. As always, thanks for your support. "

While my first reaction is to simply say "hell yeah, just release it", I must admit that this is a rather difficult position Cawthon has put himself in. The primary reason behind the rampant popularity of Five Nights at Freddy's has been its Youtube appeal, something that would almost immediately get thrown out of the window if Sister Location ends up being truly disturbing, and not just in a 'BOOOOO, I scared you!' kind of way.

If time was infinite and people didn't need to eat I would suggest delaying the game and then releasing two versions at once, each one targeted at their own demographic, but unfortunately this isn't the type of world we live in. So whatever decision Cawthon ends up going with is probably going to have some severe consequences down the line, though whether they will be good or not, that is something nobody can predict right now. The only thing I can say for certain is that the next few days are going to be quite interesting for the Five Nights at Freddy's series!