The player has two modes to play in: Adventure and Fixed Party. The game has two difficulty levels to choose from, Normal and Hard Mode. The player starts by choosing two parties consisting of four characters each. The starter characters are Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, Toy Freddy, Toy Chica, Toy Bonnie and Mangle, and can all be swapped in and out of the party. As the player continues, they collect more characters to place in their party. Along the way, a character known as Fredbear will give the player tips on what to do next. These tips frequently break the fourth wall due to Fredbear's seeming awareness of the situation he is placed in. The gameplay consists of exploring through the game world and accessing new areas. Once new areas are revealed, the player can use "Jumping" to teleport between each area through an overworld map. Initially, the world is depicted in a 2D 8-bit style, but as of Version 1.2 released in May 2016, the world has been redesigned into that of a fully animated 3D style. Many enemy characters can be found throughout the game, each exclusive to their own area, which can be battled with. Upon defeating an enemy, the player will gain experience points and "Faz tokens", which are used to buy upgrades such as chips and bytes to aid the player during the game. Meanwhile, the battles against enemies, which are completely random, are conducted in a separate 3D playing field. In battles, the player characters are on the right-hand side, while the enemies are on the left-hand side. Each character has a HP meter located at the top right corner; by sustaining damages, the meter decreases until it reaches zero, which induces a KO (represented by a gravestone replacing the knocked out character) unless the player selects a resurrection command available only on select characters. The player is given choices to pick a character and one of their three commands, which differ depending on the characters. The commands have different color tags and have different impacts, including healing the team (pink), providing status buffs (white), single-target attacks (orange), area attacks (red), poisonous attacks (green), and instant-death attacks (black), among others. Once a move is selected, the player has to wait for some time until the next command can be selected. The player can also swap the current party with the reserve anytime. After each battle, all characters, including the knocked out ones, are restored to full health. The player is told by Fredbear that glitches have happened in the Flipside, causing unrest among the animatronics. The player has to fix the problem affecting the source of the world. At the same time, however, Fredbear also reveals a potential hidden goal of collecting clocks and ignoring the present problem if the player leaves him idle for too long during a conversation. The player faces off against several game bosses, including an owl-shaped guardian of the source, until they meet with the problem, revealed to be the action of Scott Cawthon, represented as a light blue humanoid figure from There Is No Pause Button! game, who have grown frustrated by his fans' rabid and constant unsatisfied demands to him. The game has multiple endings depending on the actions of the player. The first ending, acquired after defeating the owl guardian in Normal Mode, has Scott thanking the player for trying the game, albeit also mocking them for choosing the easiest difficulty. The second, played after defeating Scott in Hard Mode, has Scott accusing the player of killing the creator and declares that the game ends because no one is able to continue writing it. The third is played when the player chooses Fredbear as party leader and bringing up a conversation with Fredbear. The fourth, played when the player enters the fourth layer of the Flipside, has the player encounter a figure who that they have entered the point of no return. The same area also has a pond that the player can enter, which plays up the fifth ending. The sixth ending is played once the player collects the hidden clocks throughout the game. The seventh ending is Chipper's Revenge, where you fight one of Scott's older creations that he didn't finish. The Version 1.2 adds a new storyline involving a Halloween world, in which the player is tasked to investigate something that impedes several animatronics, causing them to be discarded. The problem is revealed to be caused by a profane rainbow, whose defeat nets the player with the game's eighth ending, a teaser for Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location.