| “ | If you ever start feeling anxious, looking out the window or just... You know, taking a look outside should calm you.
|
” |
| ― Fritz Glade | ||
Panic is one of the major mechanics in POPGOES and POPGOES Evergreen. It affects Strings during the gameplay, making his shift more difficult.
Description[]
Security-Strings (shortened to Sec-Strings) is a modification to Strings, a dreamcatcher ornament made to fight nightmares of The Puppet, that turns him into a robotic security guard. Sec-Strings is primarily an experiment by Fritz Glade as a test of artificial intelligence and curiosity, mostly to aid Fritz' own understanding of his past. Sec-Strings has a base AI system which he shares with Simon, but with an extension called "Curiosity" which allows him to form connections between things he sees, without necessarily a reason for those connections to be made. A side effect to this is something called "Panic", a digital hallucination that occurs within the mind of Sec-Strings. In the gameplay of POPGOES, Panic raises over time but is boosted when the player makes a mistake. It is lowered when the player turns to the window in the Right View, or when looking at Camera 10.
When the Panic bar reaches 100%, Sec-Strings will reach peak confusion and will shut down. This is illustrated to the player in the form of a jumpscare from either Popgoes, Blake, Sara, Saffron, or Stone.
POPGOES[]
During the gameplay, the Panic bar rises constantly but is sped up when the player makes mistakes such as shutting down the wrong room, pressing the wrong Simon Says colour or heating up the incorrect vent. The bar will also rise drastically fast when Stone the Crow turns his head towards the player in the Right View window, or whenever the Phone is compromised, either by the squirrel sisters stealing it or by Blake cutting the phone's connection to WeaselWare. The speed of the Panic bar is also dependent on the night of the game and the AI setting of Stone the Crow in the game's Custom Night. The Panic bar is primarily lowered when the player looks out of the Right View window in The Diner, but it is also possible to lower it slightly by viewing the Car Park (CAM 10), but the speed of the Panic rising in the later nights essentially negates this.
As the Panic bar rises, Stone the Crow will begin to appear on the cameras, blocking out all potential animatronics that could be in the room behind him. These appearances are digital hallucinations, as Stone never leaves the Car Park, which also speeds the Panic bar up for as long as the player stares at them. Stone can appear in all cameras in the game other than the ones in the vents. He does not have a panic-based appearance in Camera 10. Each of these panic-based appearances also has rare variants with a character called Gem Stone, which actually freeze the Panic bar until the player selects a different camera.
POPGOES Evergreen[]
The Panic Bar is slightly different from the original game. There are two bars instead of one, with the top bar being Temp-Panic and below it being Perma-Panic.
Temp-Panic works the same as in the original game, going up constantly and going down when looking out the window. If your Temp-Panic gets too high, it will overflow into your Perma-Panic Bar which will not go back down. If Perma-Panic reaches 100% you will be jumpscared.[1]
Your Panic Bar will also change colours and/or look different depending on what Phone you have equipped.
Gallery[]
POPGOES 2015[]
| "IT'S ME" | |
| This article contains information that is cancelled, scrapped or no longer canon to the POPGOES lore. |
Old Panic Concept Description
In POPGOES 2015 lore, the protagonist was a human named Mike Schmidt Jr. In that version, the Panic mechanic was already developed, but it worked slightly differently.
In the Scrapped Content Extras menu it was revealed, that originally there was going to be an additional eye symbol to pair with the Panic Bar. It would show whenever the Panic of the player went up or down. It also blinked to refresh the screen and update the animatronics' placement in the pizzeria. It was cancelled, as it made the game too easy and it ended up conflicting with 2016 version of the lore.
Trivia[]
- The title of music used in POPGOES trailer was called "Digital Panic Attack". It's a reference to the Panic mechanic.