Play Friday Night Funkin' in Your Browser

Friday Night Funkin' background

Friday Night Funkin' started at the Ludum Dare 47 game jam in October 2020. Programmer Cameron Taylor (ninjamuffin99) wanted to make a rhythm game inspired by PaRappa the Rapper and Gitaroo Man, and teamed up with artist and animator David Brown (PhantomArcade), composer Isaac Garcia (Kawai Sprite) and artist evilsk8r. The jam prototype, built with HaxeFlixel, was released on itch.io on October 5, 2020.

A larger demo followed on itch.io and Newgrounds on November 1, 2020, and new weeks of songs were added in later updates. The game became widely popular through streams and fan mods, and in 2021 the team ran a Kickstarter campaign for an expanded full version. Development continues under The Funkin' Crew Inc., founded by the same four creators.

How to play Friday Night Funkin'

Each song is a back-and-forth battle against an opponent, such as Girlfriend's father or other characters met during story weeks. Arrows scroll up the screen toward fixed targets, and you press the matching direction as each arrow reaches its target to keep the song going. Hits move a health bar in your favor, while misses push it toward the opponent; let it empty and you lose the song. Story mode groups songs into weeks with short scenes between them, and Freeplay lets you pick any unlocked song and difficulty.

1. Open the itch.io page and click to run the browser version, or download it for your computer.
2. Choose Story Mode to play the weeks in order, or Freeplay to pick individual songs and difficulties.
3. Press the arrow keys in time as the scrolling arrows line up with the targets at the top of the screen.
4. Keep the health bar from draining by hitting notes accurately until the song ends.