Allow me to begin this review by admitting to you that I am not a Five Nights At Freddy's (lovingly referred to as FNAF) fangirl. Truth be told, I know as much about the franchise as most casual gamers who don't play the games do, and I learned about it by watching Markiplier playthroughs or listening to my kids babble on about it. My personal, hands-on experience with any of the games has been limited to playing the very first installment of FNAF for research to surprise my FNAF-obsessed son with a special birthday cake. The game was fun for sure, but definitely too high-stress and claustrophobic for my liking. My preference has always been the wide-open worlds of games like Fallout 4 and Red Dead Redemption, or the gameplay of Tomb Raider or Bloodborne. Being trapped in a single room fighting off the unseen terrors of the outside world, only to be slapped in the face, time and again, with failure, is what I do on a daily basis as an illustrator and parent. I play games to escape that reality, so the FNAF franchise has just never really interested me.
With the more recent introduction of new installments like Security Breach, and fan-made contributions that allow you to break free from the confines of a security office and stretch your legs to explore, my interest in the FNAF games was slightly piqued, though I still only watched from afar. The games have always been fun to watch even for those of us who didn't actually want to subject ourselves to the stress and jump scares personally. When Five Nights At Freddy's; Into The Pit released, there was a buzz in the FNAF community while fans of the franchise watched their favorite content creators play. Casual players to speed-runners alike were delighted to see the throwback-style pixel art game with simplistic retro controls, but many feared that it would be a stale retelling of the same old Freddy Fazbear lore. Thankfully, these fears were unwarranted.
Based on a graphic novel of the same name, Into The Pit takes the player on an unforgettable adventure through the perilous universe of Five Nights At Freddy's as a kid named Ozwald. Like most kids, Ozwald is bored, hates the small deteriorating town he lives in, and in his young mind, believes that his family could easily move his frail grandmother to a new town, and there, they would all live happily ever after. In retrospect, that leaving town plan would have sparred the trauma Ozwald and his family would endure due to a misadventure with a very unusual ball pit in a local pizza dive.
Both of Ozwald's parents work, and his grandmother is not well enough to care for him alone, so Ozwald gets dropped off at a dilapidated entertainment center/pizzeria where the single employee, Jeff, allows Ozwald to hang out. On one particularly boring evening, Oz gets the idea to explore off-limits areas including a rundown arcade and a ball pit that literally screams to anyone who dares enter that they will, in fact, contract conjunctivitis or tetanus. Ignoring all warnings, Ozwald jumps in and is shockingly thrust back in time to 1985. There, he sees the pizzeria in its original glory and makes new friends, but before long, weird and terrible things happen! Oz narrowly escapes back through the ball pit and inadvertently gets his father abducted by a crazed animatronic rabbit. The rest of the game is spent over, you guessed it, five nights, trying to survive long enough to rescue Ozwald's dad from 1985 while the robotic rabbit takes his father's place in present day.
Into The Pit boasts a fun looking pixel art retro style along with minimalistic mechanics that mimic those of arcade-style games from the past with no shortage of puzzles to unravel, and new characters to meet and interact with. All this backs up a relatively interesting story, and oh yeah... bloodthirsty, rampaging animatronic humanoid animals who want nothing more than to make Ozwald's life a living hell until they end his run... er the player's run... I mean MY run... they killed me a lot! Into The Pit is not the type of game I would normally play, even if it wasn't FNAF, so it was often a struggle for me to navigate the controls to avoid these murderous mechanical muppets. Not to mention the fact that finding the sweet spot to activate doors and hiding spots often seems impossible, especially when you are running for your life. As with every other FNAF game, surviving a night in Into The Pit makes the next night more difficult. By night 5, my nerves were absolutely shot. It was the first time I ever ended a game on my livestream out of pure frustration. Admittedly, I am not great at this style of game, so by night 5, it was a skill issue on my part. I did finish the game offline where I didn't have the added pressure of performance anxiety on top of the insane stress caused by the game itself. My face was just as twisted and twitchy as poor Ozwald's by the time I was done. Let's just say that night 5 added a new layer of madness to an already insane game that almost broke my spirit and my keyboard. The devs owe me a new E key.
Jokes aside the overall gameplay is enjoyable even for someone who isn't a superfan and knows every bit of lore. The story is compelling enough to carry the player through any inadvertent tedium caused by retracing steps or deciphering puzzles while fighting for your life. There's even a decent push for replayability with achievements, collectibles, different levels of difficulty, and even unlockables. I mean I personally won't be jumping back Into The Pit anytime soon, but I can see the appeal to do so for those masochistic completionists out there... Although, I DO still have 22 achievements to get. So, maybe... just maybe.
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