Let me tell you all a story.
8 Years ago, in March of 2018 (my fifth grade year), I wanted to make comic books. I drew little stick-figures on folded paper and called it Dogan. It was a story about a dystopian future city and a group of rebels taking control of it.
Very original, I know. I was 9--can you blame me?
The story morphed and shifted over the following months as me and a friend of mine would spend hours talking about story ideas and mediums. A comic, a book. An animation, and...
A video game.
I decided then that I wanted to become a game developer. Being a fan of FNAF at the time, I looked into the software used to make it, saw it was beginner-friendly, and made up my mind. I downloaded a free copy of Clickteam Fusion 2.5 for my horribly slow laptop, and got to work.
Over time, I continued to work on random games and stories. Platformers, visual novels, and everything in between. I got better at the skills I worked with. I grew up faster and faster, it seemed. My teenage years began, and even through everything that comes with them, I kept working on video games.
3 Years ago, at age 14, I released Five Nights at Roner's on Gamejolt.
It was an edgy, unfunny, and horribly buggy mess with a protagonist based on an unfunny racist meme all made in three days. I have since unlisted the original Five Nights at Roner's, and classic mode of FNAR: Remastered has many original "jokes" removed.
I thought it was funny. My friends thought it was funny. To us, that's all that mattered.
Seeing their reactions to it, I began work on another. Five Nights at Roner's 2. As the scope grew, I began using it as a medium to express my newer, bigger ideas. I experimented with coding different systems that I hadn't attempted before. I artificially injected more lore into the world without even knowing how I'd resolve it. I even released it on Steam, just to see what the process would be like.
These were the first two games I had fully completed and released to the public. I got to see the first lets-play of one of my games. I felt unstoppable. Like I had finally gotten a glimpse at my dreams of stardom at 15 years old.
I immediately began work on a third. This one, I thought, would outshine everything else so far. I'd make it perfect. I worked through setbacks and life struggles, opening playtesting in 2025. I wrote an in-depth dialogue and story progression system.
Then, something happened.
August 8th, 2025. My 17th birthday was coming in just under two weeks. I had a moment of pause. 17? That couldn't be right. I only just turned 14.
During that time, I reflected a bit. I looked back at everything I'd accomplished over the years, and I realized I wasn't happy. I realized I hadn't been happy in a very, very long time. I thought back on the early days, when I was still creating out of pure passion.
I remembered Dogan.
Well, that's not the right way to say it. I hadn't forgotten about Dogan. Over the years, I kept it in the back of my mind. The story shifted. The characters shifted. The title shifted. "Dogan". "Redacted". "Katabasis", and finally, "Nullhaven". The game became completely unrecognizable from its original concepts. But now, I really thought about it. It became the center of my attention. I dug through storage and found the oldest traces of it on tattered notebook paper from 5th grade math class. I started imagining the game coming to fruition with my new skillset. I imagined making it better than it ever could have been.
Gradually, work on Five Nights at Roner's 3 slowed. For over a year now I spent my time working solely on Nullhaven. I never admitted it to myself, but I think I knew it the whole time.
For over a year now, Five Nights at Roner's 3 has been cancelled.
When I look back at the history of this series, I see a version of myself that I'd rather leave in the past. I see a version of myself who wanted badly to be accepted, even when that meant laughing along with things he didn’t really want to represent. And to put it frankly, I'm tired of putting so much work into a series that doesn't represent what I truly want to do with my career. Next month, I'll be an adult. For years now, I've been dreading that day because, in my eyes, it represents the last day of my "trial period". I don’t think I can keep treating my biggest projects like experiments I stumbled into. I want to be intentional now. It's time for me to finally try to accomplish what I've desperately wanted since I was 9 years old.
So, I need to say this plainly: Five Nights at Roner’s 3 is cancelled, along with any other FNAR-related media. I will probably never return to this series. This might upset some of you, but I hope that everyone can eventually come around to understanding why I came to this decision.
Thanks for all the support. I hope you will all enjoy what I have to show you next in my journey.
-Roane
(P.S. -- You can join the RedShift Interactive Discord server, which contains archives of all the information regarding FNAR 3, as well as just some cool people to talk to, here!)
(Additionally, you can follow Nullhaven's development here!)