Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit [Review]
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit is the newest installment in the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise. However, this one does not follow the familiar format or story the main series games have and is more of a spin-off. One that I would like to see continue into a mini-series. The game was developed by Scottgames and Mega Cat Studios and published by Mega Cat Studios.
The game starts with a kid annoyed that he’s spent his entire summer sitting at Jeff’s Pizzeria while his dad works. On the last day of summer before school begins he finds an old and disgusting ball pit. When he jumps in, takes him back in time to when the same pizzeria was called “Freddy Fazbear’s” and had multiple animatronics that perform on stage. While in the past our protagonist, Oswald, plays arcade games before the animatronics snap and attack everyone at the party. While escaping by going back through the ball pit, a golden rabbit comes out and snatches his dad who was looking for Oswald.
Oswald grabs his dad through the ball pit portal but notices that the golden rabbit (Spring Bonnie) has possessed his dad, or somehow took on his dad’s physical form. It isn’t exactly clear what happens and I wasn’t able to find an explanation for it within the game. But basically, Spring Bonnie pretends to be Oswald’s dad, tricking everyone including his mother, and only Oswald can see Spring Bonnie in his place.
To be honest, I think the story is a bit all over the place and inconsistent. It doesn’t make sense why Spring Bonnie can take on this form, the animatronics haven’t expressed this kind of supernatural ability in the games before. It would have been nice to had an in game explanation for what happened to Oswald’s dad. I also noticed that there’s dialogue in this game that contradicts the game itself. Like after the prologue Oswald returns home with his new Rabbit Dad the night before school starts. Searching Oswald’s desk gives you the dialogue “I got more important things to do than homework.” But school hasn’t even started yet. It may be small but it shows me the writer/s weren’t that intuitive with the story.
Five Nights at Freddy’s storyline has always been everywhere and far too complicated for its own good. The story of Into the Pit is a sufficient one if you are to ignore any previously stated canon the games and books have established. Which is personally easy for me to do because I like this game. The gameplay is fun and the art style is both smooth and unsettling, there’s even different jumpscare animations for every time you get killed as opposed to the same jumpscare over and over again.
The gameplay is similar to a point-and-click adventure but of course, you can walk around properly. You search everything for any items that may be useful while running away from psychotically possessed animatronics that have a vendetta against you. You can hide underneath tables and beds, in wardrobes and vents while also utilizing tv’s, blenders, noise makers, and even a cardboard cutout of Freddy to make noise and distract the enemies. I think the horror aspects of the game were cleverly crafted. While hiding you might have to perform a minigame, like swatting spiders away, to ensure Spring Bonnie does not find you. This is a nice change of pace as in most horror games with hiding I’m used to just staying in a locker until the enemy walks past me.
The game has plenty of secrets and extra things, throughout the game are arcade machine pieces you can use to fix up the arcade in the present day. They’re all Fazbear versions of classic arcade games like Asteroids and Frogger. Along with extra minigames, there are also a lot of hidden things throughout the game. At the end of the game while I was running away from Spring Bonnie for the last time I noticed a new door that appeared, unfortunately, I didn’t have the key for it so I had to run past it. I beat the game but I didn’t get the best ending. I don’t want to spoil what happened in my ending but the game does have multiple endings based on the star rank you get. You can even get a secret ending at the very beginning of the game if you run out of the pizzeria when the animatronics first go haywire. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more secret endings.
The multiple endings and secrets are a great way to make the game replayable. While I won’t be replaying so soon, it’s nice to know that when I go back to the game there will be more to do. Especially with the new difficulty settings. After beating the game one you unlock two more difficulty settings and an advanced settings section where you can lower the difficulty of each animatronic. Though to be honest, other than Spring Bonnie, the animatronics are not very present throughout the game. When running into Chica all she does is stand there and scream, she never killed me. All (normal) Bonnie does is grab you occasionally if he’s hiding under a table you run by. I didn’t even encounter Freddy in my playthrough other than needing to get him out of the security room to save a trapped child.
I like Five Nights at Freddy’s, I played them as a child when they first came out. So, I was excited to play Into the Pit as it’s a bit of a different formula than what we’re used to. I didn’t care for the story with its inconsistencies but I wasn’t expecting much out of the story so I can’t be too disappointed. What was disappointing was the lack of other animatronics, I don’t even think Foxy is in the game. The game was fairly difficult already but I don’t want them to be more present for the sake of difficulty but for the sake of more variety. I think the game would have benefitted from being longer. I know the whole motif is “Five Nights” but this is more of a spin-off and could’ve broken from the mold for the sake of a longer game. I enjoyed the game and was pretty captivated by the animations and how the characters moved, especially when Spring Bonnie would walk across a vent. For a game like this, the story doesn’t matter too much and I can give a little leeway with the inconsistencies. With that, I will be giving Into the Pit a 7/10. Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit is currently available on Switch, PS4/5, Xbox One/Series, and PC.