I won’t mince words; the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise is one that I’ve often struggled to get into. Despite its incredible popularity and massive success, it quickly became a franchise that I just couldn’t get excited about. Sure, the first game was interesting to me when it first came out, and I respect the deep lore that the series has become known for, but it felt like every subsequent entry failed to stop me in my tracks in the way that the first game did. The surprise factor and uniqueness of the franchise only became more and more diluted with each game feeling the same as the last.

Recently, though, I learned of the announcement of Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit, a new title set to release as a celebration of the franchise’s 10th anniversary. The work of Pittsburgh-based developer Mega Cat Studios, this title eschews the typical gameplay styles of your standard Five Nights at Freddy’s game in favor of a 2D gameplay style with pixel-art graphics. This is by far the biggest leap the series has taken since its inception, and it appears to be the most ambitious and unique game the series has seen. And dare I say, even as a non-fan of the franchise, I’m actually genuinely excited about this game.

A 2D FNAF Game?

Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit is the first title in the series to be handled by Mega Cat Studios. A 24-person team from Pittsburgh, Mega Cat’s previous experience largely centers around releasing modern games for retro platforms, such as the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Genesis. It’s an unconventional approach, but it helped them create a name for themselves early and often. Since 2023, though, the studio has changed up their style, instead focusing on PC and modern consoles, while still creating games in the old-school, 2D style.

As previously mentioned, this is a fully 2D adventure title with a pixel art graphical style. While the series has had occasional 2D minigames here and there, this is the first time Five Nights at Freddy’s has fully committed to a 2D style for the entirety of a game. The gameplay appears to be very puzzle-oriented, while also seemingly allowing players to explore several different time periods in the Fazbear universe. As the title would suggest, this title also takes heavy inspiration from the anthology novel Fazbear Frights: Into the Pit, one of the more beloved FNAF novels.

Seemingly in development for a very long time, the first trailer for Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit was released in late January, though its official release came not long after a series of leaks. The early trailers seem really compelling, and even with a new aesthetic, the scare factor is still there. On a personal level, I found the jumpscares to be really compelling in the new art style, and I’m happy to see that the overall tension is still very much there despite the radical change in style. But as good as the game looks, much of my excitement with Into the Pit comes because it’s doing something I’ve been begging the franchise to do for a very long time: try something different.

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This Is What The Franchise Has Needed!

As previously noted, a massive part of the reason why Five Nights at Freddy’s became such an uninteresting franchise to me was the barrage of games released at one time that played too similarly to one another. The first game, released in 2014, brought with it a rather fresh take on the horror genre, restricting the player by not allowing them to move around freely. Sure, you could see it as “a game that makes you sit around and wait for a jumpscare,” but it was an interesting limitation that helped emphasize a great amount of strategy in a horror game.

Following this sleeper hit, though, the franchise saw numerous sequels released in such a short span of time, a near-milking of the success of the original. In just two years, we were already on the fourth mainline entry, as series creator Scott Cawthon was releasing sequels at a rate that would make publishers like EA and Activision blush. And it wasn’t merely that multiple games were being released at one time, either; it was that these titles all played extremely similarly to one another, failing to really provide many unique gameplay changes. As someone who values gameplay more than anything in a video game, the sheer amount of titles that failed to meaningfully innovate on the gameplay front turned me off of the series for a while. No matter how incredible your writing or lore is, it means nothing to me if it’s accompanied by forgettable gameplay, and that was the biggest undoing for this series.

Even when the franchise did meaningfully change with 2020’s Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach, the lack of overall polish soiled the excitement I could’ve had for it. With Security Breach, players were no longer confined to a stationary chair, as they were given the chance to explore with greater freedom of movement. This was all well and good, but the finished product came out in an incredibly poor state, with major technical issues and glitches that made the entire experience a little less special. Even though it seemed to have a touch more development time than the typical Five Nights at Freddy’s venture, it felt blatantly unfinished at launch, and still carried some issues even after several patches.

With Into the Pit, it feels like the franchise is finally moving somewhere different with a unique new direction, and I’m excited. It really feels like the franchise is going somewhere truly new, and it’s showing an incredible fearlessness in doing so. They say that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but with Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit, it looks like that adage might very well be proven wrong. I truly hope the franchise continues to receive distinct entries such as this, and if that can happen, perhaps Five Nights at Freddy’s will become a series I’ll be interested in paying attention to.

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