War is hell: The scent of cordite, the clamour of artillery fire, the blood and the smoke and the guys from Five Nights at Freddy’s popping up randomly to scare you. It’s a nightmare made flesh, and something we ought to have grown past as a society, but which remains as a sad holdover from another age (2014, release year of Five Nights at Freddy’s).
Or, at least, that’s the case in Five Nights at Hearts of Iron 4, a mod/crime from an author named Krumtum that you can currently find over at the Hearts of Iron 4 Steam Workshop page. It does exactly what it sounds like: Mashing up the characters of FNAF and the unrivalled destruction of the greatest conflict in human history in a real peanut butter/chocolate-style combo.
“Have you always wanted HOI 4 to be more scary?” asks our author, “No? Now you can make it with this mod!” Once you’ve subscribed, “Every day you’ve got 1% chance for a jumpscare,” in which one of FNAF’s many animatronic horrors will appear atop a devastated continent to howl blue murder at you. In times of war, the law falls silent, but Freddy Fazbear speaks up.
That is, frankly, all there is to it, but I was so baffled and charmed by the concept I couldn’t help but write about it here in these hallowed digital pages. The comments on the Workshop page are a treat: “I FORGOT I HAD THIS ON AND F***ING DIED HOLY S***,” reads one. “Summary: S*** yourself while going insane as you micromanage 5000 divisions because you forgot about this mod and HOLY S***THAT’S F***ING FOXY,” goes another.
“You play, you play, you play, [then suddenly] Freddy: ‘BOOOO YOU TROTSKYIST TRAITOR TO THE MOTHERLAND BOO BOO BOOOOO’,” says a player. I don’t want Freddy Fazbear to call me a Trotskyist. That might be the worst thing that can happen to a person.
If you, too, want to play Hearts of Iron 4 with a 1% chance of Freddy Fazbear denouncing you as a Trot, you can install the mod just by hitting subscribe on the Steam Workshop page. Then you can forget you have it installed and probably have a literal heart attack when it kicks in. I did warn you: War is hell.
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