Okay. Hear me out. Just for a second. Maybe…just maybe…this is what Five Nights at Freddy’s should have been like from the start. I know, blasphemy, but I would have played the hell out of the series if they had all been like this.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit from developer Mega Cat Studios is a major shift in how FNAF is played. Instead of a first-person horror, it’s a 2D-ish adventure game with horror elements. The scares are still very much intact, but puzzles, escapes, and exploration are embedded into the experience. There’s a lot more depth here and a helluva lot more that is interesting during the game.
So, sit back, get down on that sweet-sweet cheap pizza, and let’s get hunting with thoughts on this review.
A story that is ‘Stranger’ and filled to the brim with ‘Things’
The story for Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit revolves around the broody-budding teenager named Oswald. Bored out of his mind, dealing with a father who is in the midst of depression, and hoping for a little bit of excitement to come his way, Oswald finds himself pining for fun days, especially when he is perusing the broken-down pizza joint named Jeff’s Pizza.
Dropped off at the pizzeria, as his dad has things to attend to, Oswald begins to explore the establishment. Wishing for more in his life and trying to find a reason to teach his father a lesson for abandoning him at the pizzeria, he stumbles upon the nastiness that is an off-limits ball pit and jumps in it headfirst. Totally wise. Nothing could go wrong.
Unexpectedly, when Oswald gets out, he finds that he has arrived in the past at the pizza palace. At first, the pizzeria seems wonderful and teeming with life, as kids are everywhere, birthdays are being celebrated, and good cheer is all around. But then things go south when the animatronics awaken and begin to collect children. Totally normal.
Freaked out, and wanting to go home, Oswald makes his way back to the ball pit, goes back to the present, finds his father, and then all is well…until his father is violently taken into the ball pit by one of the animatronics. When his father comes back out, something is off. His father has been replaced by the soul of one of the killer robots and now Oswald must find his way back and forth between times to figure out how to put everything back the way it was while avoiding death.
That’s a great setup! Sure, it’s a bit of an 80s camp, and it has some weird, connected vibe to Netflix’s Stranger Things, where two worlds are tugging at each other, but Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit puts more dimension to the FNAF lore. This story is more than just a scare fest of jumps, rather it’s an honest-to-God terrifying tale that the player must escape. It’s intense at times with its story, doesn’t force much between days/nights, and delivers a more compelling and unforgettable experience than any FNAF to date.
In short, the story is damn good. It fits perfectly in the FNAF world and excels in what it wants to deliver to the player – a terrifying experience that could have been a movie or show.
This is definitely one of the best stories in the FNAF family.
Gameplay to die for
The gameplay of this adventure horror is broken into several pieces. It’s a survival game at the forefront of the traditional FNAF style. It rents space in your head with the killer animatronics walking around hunting you. That’s an aspect of gameplay that is properly embedded at the ground level of this gaming experience. It has to be, or it wouldn’t be a FNAF game.
Surviving the times
Surviving the game is the biggest part of the gameplay elements, certainly one of the cooler parts. Surviving consists of hiding and moving at certain times. While not as complicated as puzzles (getting to that in a bit), the mechanics of running around and hiding until the danger is clear make sense and work perfectly with the survival aspect of gameplay. It also is built to add more intensity to the horror aspect of the game. So, for example, when one of the animatronics is after you, you have several options for hiding. One option could be under a table. Another option could be hiding in an air vent. Even better is hiding in a large case.
Now, the game doesn’t just stop there when it comes to hiding. You don’t simply hide and wait for a 2D version of an animatronic to go about its business. The good folks at Mega Cat Studios took it a step further.
When you hide, depending on how far away from the pursuing animatronic you might be, the game may trigger a quick time event in your hiding spot. For closets, it could be shifting from left to right to avoid being seen. In air vents, it could be swatting away spiders, so they don’t fall on you and give up your position. Even better, and a bit goofier, is when you’re hiding under a bed and toys sporadically decide to eject themselves toward the animatronic. These small, and somewhat easy, QTE moments add a bit more flavor to the hiding. Not at all just throwaways. I would imagine these QTE moments are far more intense for a younger audience but they are easy-breezy to us older folks.
While hiding is a nice option in the game and an easy mechanic to pick up on, you do have other solutions to scatter the killers when they’re nearby. One element added to the game is activating a loud noise to lure the animatronic into and sometimes away from a room. The noises could be Oswald scooting a ladder across a creaky floor. It could also be turning on a blender in the kitchen so that you can lure them in and then going into the room they were previously occupying while their attention is locked onto the blender. The noise meter in the game that sets off animatronics is vital for the gameplay to work and it adds that horror show element to the mechanics and puzzle solving. It’s simple and brilliant, and it works well with the story and world.
Speaking of world, there is a large world to explore in Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit. Well, large for FNAF.
Exploring the terror
The gameplay also includes an exploration element that allows players to explore places outside of the pizzeria, while also delving into the pizzeria itself and its many objects and rooms. The former of that last part expands the gameplay quite a bit, as Oswald will occasionally find objects lying around, like arcade parts or a flashlight, and other goodies that will help him survive. The game scatters them out very well and doesn’t really leave the locations Oswald can explore empty and pointless. It’s strange to have an exploration element in a FNAF-based title, but this works well thanks to how the gameplay works with the narrative. You’re not only surviving a dangerous pizzeria, but you’re doing it with purpose, while also using multiple locations and objects to help solve puzzles to get to the next step. But exploration is a heavy element here and it’s worth avoiding death to see all the places that Oswald can traverse.
Puzzling gameplay
This game is filled full of puzzles, but within reason and with respect to the story. This means you’re not doing something for zero reason. No game should waste your time, and this one doesn’t with puzzles. The puzzles dance hand-in-hand with exploration. For example, you might run into a puzzle that requires you to capture a critter that you saw in the past. How you capture that critter requires you to find a certain object. Once you find that object, you have to capture the critter, go back to the past, find the best path to avoid being murdered, and then drop off the captured creature in a particular area to trigger the next part of the story. The puzzles are not simple in their construction, and while sometimes they can be tedious when it comes to retrieving objects from different times, the payoff is generally satisfying. The payoff is led by story progression, meaning you get to see the next step of the narrative and uncover the next thing you must find to push forward. In short, puzzles work with exploration and survival, which works with the story.
All three gameplay elements support each other, while also making sense and pushing along the narrative of the game. It’s terrifying at times, tough and intense during others, but seeing the story play out is worth it. Legit, the gameplay is darn good. It’s far better than I expected, and I’ve played about every FNAF release to this point. It’s certainly a shift in how the series runs and it’s a great shift.
Anyway, that is mostly how the gameplay and mechanics work in Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit. It’s a neat combination of elements that come together and fit into the story and world-building aspect of the game. It all makes sense, though some of it will hit at different levels of enjoyment with different gamers. Regardless, it feels like everything here was well thought out.
On that sweet note, let’s wrap this review up.
Conclusion
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit from Mega Cat Studios is a brilliant entry into the FNAF world. It’s a different take that offers a more cohesive story, true terror, and a bevy of gameplay elements that work well within the world built for them.
