ERECT Difficulty
― Friday Night Funkin' Kickstarter campaign description
ERECT difficulty is a special difficulty for Friday Night Funkin' that was first added in the WeekEnd 1 update. In many ways, ERECT difficulty acts the same way as the other difficulty settings ("Easy", "Normal", "Hard") in that it increases the note speed and the amount of notes in the chart; however, ERECT difficulty also gives every applicable song a special, unique remix, as well as special, remixed visuals. Most of the ERECT remixes are composed by the game's lead composer, Kawai Sprite, as well as music producers Saruky and crisp, but some other guest musicians of the Funkin' Sound Team may be featured on occasion.
There is another difficulty related to ERECT called Nightmare difficulty, which was also added in the WeekEnd 1 update. Nightmare difficulty has similar properties to the ERECT difficulty, such as the remixed music, but adds even more notes and a faster note scroll speed, making it the hardest difficulty in the game after ERECT.
ERECT and Nightmare difficulty are for veteran rhythm game players and are not recommended for novices or first-time players.
Overview
While hovering over certain songs in the Freeplay menu, the player can scroll through that song's available difficulties until they reach the difficulty option labeled "ERECT" or a more challenging difficulty option called "Nightmare". Upon selecting one of these difficulties, the song loads up as expected, but the base song will be replaced with a special remix that has more notes and is overall much more difficult than Hard mode. A song's tempo may also alter, usually to be faster; however, there are occasions where the tempo of a song may go unchanged, or in some cases, it may actually be slower.
ERECT remixes provide special unique visuals for each level; these visuals are also shared with character remixes.
Some ERECT remixes also have special camera movements that are not present in the regular versions of their respective songs. The unique camera usually activates when characters are singing a duet, or when the player character is performing a long solo.
All songs that are categorized as character remixes (e.g., Pico Mixes) are exempt from having ERECT remixes.
Trivia
- ERECT difficulty's inclusion came about due to a fundraising goal on the Kickstater campaign if the game reached $1,465,000 in funding. The developers came up with the idea for ERECT difficulty due to criticism that the game was too easy, even on Hard. However, the team ran into trouble figuring out how to make the game harder, since simply adding more notes wasn't feasible due to the notes correlating with the vocals. The team then came up with the idea of remixing the songs to be faster and more difficult, thus creating the concept of ERECT difficulty.[1]
- PhantomArcade, the director of the game, also pitched the idea of an "ERECT Extreme" difficulty, which was another version of ERECT that would add more notes and a faster scroll speed. This idea likely served as the basis for Nightmare difficulty.
- The first ERECT remixes to be uploaded were those of South and DadBattle on the 29th of December, 2021.[2][3] The ERECT remix for Bopeebo was later uploaded on the 22nd of April, 2022.[4] More ERECT remixes were first teased via the FNF Erect Mode Sampler video on the 20th of March, 2024,[5] with those of High and Blammed being released in full on the Erect Sampler single.[6]
- Some of the samples in the video contain outdated vocals compared to the final versions that appear in the WeekEnd 1 update, most notably the remixes for Fresh, Pico, and Thorns, with changes being made due to feedback from fans after the sampler was released.
- Despite being included in the teaser, the ERECT remix for M.I.L.F was not playable in the WeekEnd 1 update.
- The only ERECT remix in the WeekEnd 1 update that was not teased in the FNF Erect Mode Sampler video was the ERECT remix for Spookeez.
- The teaser for the ERECT remix for Roses has pieces of a QR code shown in the bottom right corner. This was apparently the beginning of an ARG, which was soon solved by fans.
- When these QR code pieces were assembled, the image could be converted to a Discord link containing an image with binary code on it. When translated, it would give a hexadecimal string that itself could be translated into a Caesar cipher, a type of substitution cipher. When the cipher was decrypted, it returned a different type of substitution cipher called an Atbash cipher. When the Atbash cipher was decrypted, it returned another Ceasar cipher that could be translated into a string of characters that made up a ROT cipher. When the ROT cipher was decrypted, it returned a YouTube link that linked to a video titled "Stratagem - Friday Night Funkin' OST" that contained audio intended to be put through a spectrogram. When the audio was put through a spectrogram, it contained an image of Boyfriend in a chef's hat holding a hot dog.
- ERECT and Nightmare difficulty are only selectable in Freeplay mode. They were originally planned to be available in Story Mode too, as indicated by unused assets for selecting them there, but they ended up being removed from it.[7]
- PhantomArcade hinted at the existence of a difficulty higher than ERECT during a stream in 2022. While reading the Spanish translations for the difficulty settings, after reading the Spanish translation for ERECT, he starts to read another translation, only to stop mid-sentence and say "I shouldn't read the other one."[8]
- The name of Nightmare difficulty was later leaked by EliteMasterEric and ninjamuffin99 in February 2024 through one of the images for the funkin.me blog post teasing the new chart editor.[9][10] The image, which was uploaded to the GitHub repository for the blog by ninjamuffin99 for Eric, was a screenshot of the "New Song" welcome menu, showing the available difficulty levels.[11] Nightmare was eventually confirmed to be the highest difficulty level when the WeekEnd 1 update was released.
- A common belief within the fandom is that ERECT remixes were inspired by Friday Night Funkin' B-Side Remixes, a popular fan mod that remixes songs from the base game as well as giving the game a new story overall. However, according to PhantomArcade, the concept of ERECT remixes was conceived well before the creation of that mod.[12]
- PhantomArcade has stated that not every song in the game will have an ERECT remix. Only a few songs in the game are planned to be exempt; this will only be reserved for songs that have "weird gameplay" mechanics, thus making them incompatible with having a remix.[13]
- While character remixes will not receive ERECT remixes, PhantomArcade was briefly considering the idea at one point before quickly scrapping it.[14]
Gallery
The unused graphic used for selecting ERECT difficulty in Story Mode.
The unused graphic(s) used for selecting Nightmare difficulty in Story Mode.
Ditto, but all the graphics combined and in motion.
The graphic used for selecting ERECT difficulty in Freeplay.
The graphic(s) used for selecting Nightmare difficulty in Freeplay.
The graphic used for ERECT difficulty during the results screen.
The graphic used for Nightmare difficulty during the results screen.
