Into the Pit Review

Into the Pit is a welcome addition to the FNAF series. After playing through the game, it’s art design, gameplay, and LORE was extremely satisfying. Into the pit got me excited for the FNAF series again! I want to see the next FNAF movie and game now. I’m curious to know what is next in the post Afton world as we get to see the Mimic take center stage as the current antagonist after ruin. The teasers share implications of a circus that may have been the start of all the horror! I’ll be keeping my eyes out for the next FNAF update we excitement.

-Reed

Transcript:

Into the Pit is an incredible game for the Five Nights at Freddy's series. It is filled with lore, Easter eggs, solid gameplay, mini-games, puzzles, and some good scares. Let's dive into the ball pit as we explore Into the Pit.

Into the Pit is a ten-year anniversary game in the Five Nights at Freddy's series. It is an adaptation of the novel with the same name. As a long-time lurker in the FNaF series, this game was on my radar after I enjoyed Security Breach and its DLC Ruined so much. Its different art style and gameplay vaguely reminded me of pixel horror games of the past. From the first time I saw a trailer, it made me want to play the game, so I was absolutely delighted when Mega Cat Studio sent me a review code for Into the Pit.

Now, this is going to be my review of Into the Pit, and also, more or less, my thoughts and reaction to the game itself. The very first thing I noticed was the absolute love poured into this game for fans of the series. In addition to competent game design throughout, I think one of the most important factors in judging any game is answering the obvious and simple question: Is the game good?

I believe that for Into the Pit, the answer is a strong yes. The game tells a cohesive narrative that you don’t need ten years of background understanding to enjoy, unlike modern MCU movies at the time of writing this. Without that weight, the game is much more palatable to common audiences. But that is not to say that old fans have been abandoned. Truly, it’s the complete opposite. The more hardcore fan you are, the more you feel rewarded by this new installment. I tip my hat to Mega Cat Studios for pulling off one of the hardest tricks in the modern era: being able to satisfy both the hardcore and casual audiences of a fandom.

The game itself can be as short as 20 minutes if the player decides to dip out at the first opportunity, but it can also run for about 3 to 5 hours on a 100% playthrough, depending on how much you read all the lines in-game and if you're taking your time. I know I was delighted when I went up to the door and was like, "Can I just peace out?" And I got an ending immediately. Those types of things really help give player agency and interest in the game.

As is tradition with FNaF games, there are multiple endings, which encourage new playthroughs. After beating the game, you, the player, are given access to a customization menu to let you control how aggressive the animatronics are. Yet another feature in this game that lets the most hardcore players get their custom night, where they can try to beat the self-imposed, near-impossible challenge of surviving all the nights and becoming the true King of Five Nights at Freddy's. Move over, Markiplier.

As a general summary of Into the Pit, we play as a boy named Oswald in a dying town that he is really having a tough time with. He wants to leave, but his father can't find a way to actually justify leaving despite falling on hard times when the local mill closed. Oswald has to stay at a local pizza restaurant after school while his dad works extra hours, and it gets to him, making him upset.

So, one time, when his dad is late picking him up, he tries to teach him a lesson by hiding in the closed-off ball pit area to make him think he went missing. When he goes in, Oswald finds himself in a completely different world. Is it memories? Is it time travel? Is it some other type of sci-fi element? I have no idea, but the theorists surely have something to say about it. Regardless, Oswald has the time of his life at this party scene of 1985 Fredbear’s Diner or whatever this is lore-wise. It’s the Pizza Plex with the animatronics in their prime.

But after having some fun times and making new friends, Oswald and all the kids are attacked by an evil rabbit animatronic. When Oswald flees back into the pit and back to reality, trying to escape all the killer animatronics, he finds his father, who is then pulled into the pit by the pursuing evil rabbit. Oswald pulls his dad back out, but now his dad is possessed by this evil rabbit.

And now, this is the crux of our game. We are trying to save Oswald's father from this other mirror world, this memory world, this alternate timeline, this time-traveling device. Again, I really don’t know what it is, but yeah, I’m going to keep throwing things out there. And we need to survive five different days of going into the pit and out of the pit using mechanics from both different worlds to try and find a way to save kids, our father, and get away from the evil animatronic. And while we do it, we unlock all sorts of different implications to the FNaF series timeline. It's fun, and it’s compelling.

Now, I do want to address some of the criticisms that I'd like to put out there that I've been seeing about the game and what I experienced in my own playthroughs. Honestly, these are more nitpicks because I really don't have any big gripes with the game.

The first nitpick here is there are a lot of dialogues that are unskippable while playing through the game. Players looking to speedrun the game, especially on Nightmare Mode, which has permadeath, are subject to replaying the same 4 to 5 minutes to start every single run, and then to have that cut short by one mistake is going to erode the goodwill of the player. It's odd that that doesn't seem streamlined when there is an in-game speedrun tracker that encourages players to speedrun the game.

Next, the game isn't really that long on its surface. If the player ignores all the mini-games, this game will fly towards an ending. I can see players being unsatisfied if they are looking for more Security Breach-kind of content, as Into the Pit is not an open world. It's not something where you explore a comprehensive Pizza Plex like we did in Security Breach. Instead, it's a much more condensed, cohesive story that is filled to the brim with Easter eggs, a strong narrative, and an easy-to-understand gameplay loop.

Speaking of the mini-games, I think there’s criticism—on the weaker side—that the mini-games artificially increase the playtime of the game. I don't agree with that because I was able to play through most of them with ease and get all the bonuses for the secret ending in less than 50 minutes max. If I got stuck on one of the games, I’m not saying, "Oh, it’s so impressive how fast I went through it." It more shows that even someone casually playing, who also can't stand platformers (one of the games is a platformer), can do this in plenty of time, and it's not going to make the game run artificially long or frustrate players with a grindfest. If you want all the endings, you have to do all these mini-games, but everything is very casual in how it is built. It really allows players that want that extra difficulty to seek it out for themselves.

I think unanimously the current worst feature in the game is having to click the gumball machine a ridiculous number of times. I’ve seen people say it’s 50 times, 90 times. People thought you could only click it at certain points in the story, which was not true. On my playthrough, I immediately went to it to start because I was curious, and I was able to unlock one of the secret mini-games. So it’s just a lot, and it’s unnecessary how long it takes. That’s something I think the developers can reasonably drop in and make much easier for the community, as it’s actually a mini-game required to get the secret endings in the game. It’s one of those quality-of-life things that can be tuned.

During my playthrough, I didn’t experience any noticeable bugs, but I did experience tons of Easter eggs, lore nods, and was pleased to see that when I messed around in the game, the game messed back. One of the things I loved seeing was that sitting in the dark too long caused the main character to start hallucinating what’s going on in his room. I loved seeing the eyes all of a sudden turn into masses and characters and things that had been haunting him, which also filled in the characterization of Oswald as he’s going crazy, dealing with this mind-bending journey into the pit.

In addition, calling 911 or your mom in other parts of the game rewards the player with dialogue or even secret mini-games. It’s nice to feel that kind of creativity and agency. That’s the kind of fun you put into a video game that makes games worth playing. I believe it’s what keeps players coming back, always hoping to find, "Oh, maybe there’s some other number to dial," or "Maybe there’s something else to do."

Obviously, I haven’t even touched on the art style yet. Another delight to me was seeing the different art style introduced to the Five Nights at Freddy’s universe. There really aren’t too many games that I’m playing lately that are in this 16-bit animated style, along with some really interesting animated cutscenes that help bring and tie the whole story to life. The entire art style delivery of the game calls into question what is real and what isn’t. From the very loading screen, we are choosing our options and playing on a TV, just like the first Five Nights at Freddy's games are considered to be canon in the world. According to Help Wanted VR, the art style could be telling us that this is playing as a person who is playing a literal video game inside a video game, which is getting a little meta. But that doesn't mean what happened in the game didn't actually happen inside the canon of the FNaF universe.

It's very possible that whatever's going on in this video game could be paralleled or close to what's actually going on in the real series, because so many of these mini-games tell us the true story of what's going on for FNaF, and that's how we end up down the MatPat rabbit hole, which I'm not going to do. I'll happily leave that to the rest of the FNaF lore community to unpack. They are excellent at it and have a good ten years of understanding on me. So please go check with the experts if you really want to dig into that FNaF lore.

That's something that I think I'll see a lot of casual players do if they pick up this gameplay for the first time. If they don't feel the need to go find those endings for themselves, going online, looking up those endings, and then finding the theories out there that explain them is what's going to be the pipeline for this game. And then that enhances the community because it gets the dialogue going.

I know, quote unquote "scary games," as this is not on the hard spectrum of scary games, but it's still scarier for the most casual of gamers. It can be a really big commitment because a lot of people don't like scary games or being scared. But there are a ton of people that love learning about scary games. It's a weird dichotomy that you see. Players would rather watch and read about a scary game than be forced to play it themselves, which kind of gets into the whole button-crushing thing (which you can check in my video essay about pressing or not pressing a button in video games and what that does to you psychologically).

But back on track, I must point out it was FNaF 3 and its mini-games that told a secret story of what was actually going on in the Five Nights at Freddy's world that finally got me hooked on the series. Seeing new versions of these mini-games inside this game gave me the same chills I got back in the day, which was wonderful. Nostalgia. There is something special about that true 2D horror that continues to grow my interest in the Five Nights at Freddy's series. The subtle storytelling that an enthusiastic community tries to decipher through these very ambiguous and horror suspense-filled mini-games, or maybe radios or sound files or books and so forth, really has a soft spot in my heart.

Now I point all this out to show you how many decisions Into the Pit has made have different meanings for different players, and it really tackles that idea of an iceberg-like game. It delivers on the promises it makes to both the casual and hardcore fans of both gameplay and lore. It doesn't threaten to take up your life like an Elden Ring game would, but it may be too short for players looking to put tens of hours into this game, but not hundreds of hours. And if they have no interest in the gameplay loop challenge of avoiding the animatronics and custom nights, you're not going to get a lot of distance out of this game.

Overall, Into the Pit is a spectacular success. I applaud Mega Cat Studios for the addition to the series. After the poor reception of the launch of Security Breach, I'm so happy to see the FNaF community have a bunch of wins with Help Wanted, the FNaF movie, and now Into the Pit. I really can't wait for what's coming next in the series. I never thought the finale would be as strong as it has ever been, ten years later, but it is.

Congrats to Scott and all the creatives that made this possible. It's been a really special experience, and I loved it.