Five Nights At Freddy's: Into the Pit Review

The Five Nights At Freddy’s videogame series has you playing as a night guard or other characters as they attempt to survive the night from the murderous animatronic characters attacking. A night lasts from midnight to 6 a.m, but this isn’t for only one “night”, the trick is you have to stay alive for five nights. Each title takes place in locations connected to a pizza restaurant franchise called “Freddy Fazbear's Pizza”.

The first game was released in 2014 and over the last 10 years, there have been over 15 different FNAF titles added to the franchise. I’ve played a bit of the first title that had you acting as a security guard, watching surveillance cameras and trying to survive when the animatronics came after you. I hadn’t paid much attention to the series until I saw the trailer for Five Nights At Freddy’s: Into the Pit, this title was totally different from all the others in the series, it showed a 2D game with pixel art instead of the more modern-looking entries that were released before. Being a lover of retro games with pixel graphics, this title interested me. Would the developer Mega Cat Studios be able to deliver a creepy and frightening experience for the gamer?

Before jumping into Five Nights At Freddy’s, you have to choose a few settings like what difficulty you want to play on. Do you want an experience that is creepy and more narrative, or would you rather have a more frightening time? I opted for the story-based option to learn more about the strange and scary things happening here. If you have played the previous titles, you may be interested in enabling the speed run timer in the general settings to challenge yourself further. Since I don’t need any extra pressure at this point, I didn't want to have a timer, that would be a poor decision. There are accessibility options that include changing the font style, and hint rate — the game helps you out when you are stuck, you can select five minutes, the default 10, 15, or 20 for those more confident in their abilities. Finally, audio visualisation can be turned on or off.

The protagonist is a kid named Oswald; he is busy drawing pictures of creepy animatronics when his dad tells him it's time for them to leave. His dad is taking him to a place called Jeff's Pizza, a rundown restaurant that not only has ‘za, but greasy menus. It's not fancy, but it's all that they can afford. His dad has worked part-time at the corner store since the mill closed, along with many other places in this dying town. People are leaving this place and Oswald asks his dad why they can't go like everyone else, the thing holding them back is his grandmother and her frail bones. He has a great solution, just wrap her in bubble wrap! As good as that sounds, it's not a viable option.

His dad drops him off and leaves for work, Oswald is 11 so it seems that his parents don’t want to leave him home alone. While eating, you hear a family talking about when this place was popular and how it used to have a ball pit, until the incident happened. Intrigued, Oswald's first quest is to find this ball pit that the family is talking about. This is where we get to take control of the protagonist. You can use a keyboard or a gamepad for this game, I opted for a controller. There are buttons for interacting, using your flashlight, accessing your inventory, and seeing your list of quests. One of the most important actions, running, is assigned to the right shoulder button to make it easy to access.

Looking at your handy map, you see that there are multiple rooms at Jeff's Pizza joint: an arcade, storage room, security, party hallway, kitchen, entrance, dining area, backstage, basement, and the ball pit. You find it, roped off with a “Do Not Enter” sign, you decide to take your chances and hop it, suddenly the room is hopping, the room is full of kids there for a birthday party, and standing in the back are creepy animatronics of Freddy Fazbear; Bonnie, the guitar playing bunny; and Chica, the yellow duckling. They are performing on the stage. After talking to a few of the kids attending the party, you know you are in the past when the kids are saying wicked and rad, plus they think the movie, Back to the Future is new and released three weeks ago. That places us in 1985! That ball pit is a time travel device that lets you jump between the two time periods, for the remainder of the game you will have to hop between the past and future.

Going back in time lets you find out what happened to the people visiting Freddy Fazbear's Pizza and how these events have affected your hometown years later. As I wasn’t totally familiar with the whole backstory of the franchise, this was nice so that I could learn the lore that I missed out on, and in a tense and suspenseful way too! I was excited to keep going back to witness these events and try to change the events as they happened, like trying to save the kid who was crammed into a mechanical suit. To help him out you will need to find a screwdriver, but it may be located in either time period, so you may need to jump between the two. If you do successfully save him, how will this mess up the future as he surely died in the past before.

Even though the game has a great-looking 2D pixelated look, it still managed to be incredibly scary at times, the developers have proved that you don’t need to have realistic visuals to invoke fear. Along with the look, the music does a great job of being very creepy and suspenseful, especially when the animatronics are trying to find you. My son, who is 11, said the Five Nights At Freddy’s games never scare him, but man did he jump when Bonnie located him hidden under the table! I wish I caught that on video, it was awesome.

I don’t want to ruin too much of the story since the game is quite short as you have to survive for all five nights. There are four different endings that you can get, so there definitely is some replayability here that will keep you coming back. The mechanics of the game are done very well; when you are viewing the town map, you can select a spot that you want to go to and fast-travel there, saving you a lot of walking time. Your current objective is displayed in the top right corner of the screen, and there is a log that keeps track of any conversations that you have had so that you can reference it whenever you need to, especially if you forget something important.

This game really surprised me, the story was very interesting and did a great job of making me want to come back for more. The whole game felt suspenseful and tense, with creepy sound effects like breathing, footsteps and screaming to keep you on edge and don’t forget about the great soundtrack. I never expected to like Five Nights At Freddy’s: Into the Pit this much, I’m so glad that the pixel visuals enticed me to give it a chance. Playing in both 1985 and the present added an extra challenge to the game, as finding the item that you needed or the place you had to go could appear in either time period. The only issue I had was that a spot where a Freddy mask was supposed to appear never did, and I needed to trade with someone for an item that I required. Luckily, someone online had the same issue and figured out a solution that could be used when this happened. I’m so glad it was posted for all the other players with that issue.

If you are a fan of the franchise, this will be a title that you want to check out, or even if you have never played a game in the series, you will still get enjoyment from this title, especially if you love pixel graphics and a few jump scares!