Five Nights At Freddy’s: Into The Pit Review - FNAF At Its Best And Scariest (2024)

I’m a little embarrassed to admit it now, as a 25-year-old man-child, that I used to be more than a little obsessed with Five Nights at Freddy’s. The first three games released when I was in secondary school (sorry), so my friends and I used to spend countless lunch breaks getting jumpscared, which I’d then follow up with endless theory videos and wiki deep-dives to try and figure out what the heck Golden Freddy is.

There was something about the scary but not traumatising horror and open-ended plot that really took hold of me, but over the years Freddy Fazbear and I have grown apart. Still, even if I have no clue what an Amalgamation is and don’t spend all my time watching Game Theory anymore, I’ve still kept half an eye on what FNAF has been up to with the hopes that something would come along and rope me back in.

The problem is that most of the recent Five Nights at Freddy’s projects simply haven’t been very good. The movie was a family-friendly snooze, the VR spin-offs have basically just been minigame collections, and the last mainline release, Security Breach, was a buggy mess that didn’t deliver on the scares. I figured I’d just outgrown Five Nights at Freddy’s, but Into the Pit has proven that a damn good game is all the series needed to keep me hooked.

A Surprisingly Straight-Laced Story, Time-Travelling Ball Pits Aside

Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit is based on the Fazbear Frights novel of the same name and has you playing as Oswald, a young boy who frequents a remodelled, yet still rundown, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria. While waiting for his dad to collect him one day, Oswald jumps into a sketchy ball pit (despite hearing that it gave someone ringworm, what a kid) and suddenly finds himself in the ‘80s when the infamous animatronics were still roaming and Ghostbusters was the hot new movie of the Summer. Not much has changed then, eh?

Things quickly turn sour as a roaming yellow rabbit (who, before you think I don’t know my Chicas from my Bonnies, is not Springtrap) murders a bunch of kids and then chases Oswald back through the ball pit, possessing his loving but struggling dad in the process. Now Oswald must travel between the ‘80s and today to figure out what happened to his dad, save the friends he made on his first trip to the past, and avoid being stuffed into an animatronic. You know, normal FNAF stuff.

Since its inception, Five Nights at Freddy’s has made a name for itself with its vague plot and open-ended storytelling that makes it a haven for theory-crafting. I’m far too behind on the series to get properly involved in all that anymore, but Into the Pit’s tale is mercifully much easier to follow even if you’re not knee-deep in the lore.

Five Nights At Freddy's, But Make It Scary

Into the Pit’s more straight-laced story approach (time-travel aside) was a nice surprise, but the biggest one hiding under the Freddy mask is that there’s a legitimately dark, tense, and scary game here. I’ve not been properly frightened of anything Five Nights at Freddy’s since high school, but Into the Pit kept me unnerved by showing and not telling its shockingly dark subject matter. There’s a whole lot of dead kids here, and the ones that survive are screaming out in pain as they’re stuffed into endoskeletons.

Thanks to being developed mostly without the grubby mitts of Scott Cawthon, unlike Security Breach, or the many other janky-feeling FNAF entries, Into the Pit also feels like it had a bit more time, budget, and care put into it. The gorgeous pixel art allows for more detail than any other game before it, while the eerie soundtrack and constant creepy disembodied laughs got my heart pumping and my hands sweatier than I was ever expecting.

This fear carries over to the gameplay too. Watching a bar decrease as you close doors and turn on lights is long gone, as most of your time in Into the Pit is spent avoiding animatronics and other deadly machinations. It has a cat-and-mouse gameplay loop that has you sneaking around, turning on distractions to buy you precious time, hiding under tables and beds, and then bolting for the hills when it all goes wrong.

There is an overreliance on quick-time-events, and the controls can be a pain to get a handle on at first (putting the menu button on both of the triggers and the B button is a crime), but figuring out how to get past the animatronics is consistently scary and satisfying. Mix that in with puzzles that feel straight out of a point-and-click adventure game (complete with multiple solutions) and Into the Pit is far and away the most fully realised FNAF game in the series.

Even though I reached the credits after just a few hours, that didn’t stop me from diving back in to uncover as many secrets as possible. This is the first Five Nights at Freddy’s game that has captured me like the original trilogy did, but it’s also the first to stand on its own two legs beyond the allure of what’s happening outside of the screen. Into the Pit is exactly what the series should be, and I hope future FNAF games are taking notes.

Five Nights at Freddy's: Into the Pit

Reviewed on PC.

4.0/5

Adventure

Point-and-click

Puzzle

Horror

Systems

Franchise

Five Nights at Freddy's

Platform(s)

Nintendo Switch , PC , PlayStation 4 , PlayStation 5 , Xbox One , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S

Released

August 7, 2024

Developer(s)

Mega Cat Studios

Publisher(s)

Mega Cat Studios

ESRB

Teen // Blood and Violence

Pros

• The scariest FNAF has ever been
• Satisfying cat-and-mouse stealth gameplay
• Not too focused on the series? complicated lore

Cons

• Frustrating controls
• Short runtime