Earlier this week we learned about the existence of an official Five Night’s at Freddy’s VR game dubbed Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted. Roughly half of the content will be remixed and adapted versions of levels from across the entire non-VR series and the rest is all new content. In total there are about 40 levels overall. It’s slated for release on PSVR as well as PC VR headsets like Rift and Vive this April.
At a pre-PAX East preview event this week hosted by Sony we got the chance to try out Five Night’s at Freddy’s VR on PSVR and — despite the odds — lived to tell the tale.
Prior to my demo this week I had never played a Five Night’s at Freddy’s game at all. I’m aware of them, obviously, but I never actually sat down and played one for myself. Now that’s been remedied. The level I tried was apparently the second night from the first game if I recall correctly.
The basic flow in a Five Night’s at Freddy’s game is that you sit behind the desk watching over security footage after hours at a creepy Chuck E. Cheese’s ripoff location. Naturally, once it gets dark and most people go home, the animatronic creatures designed to delight children become a bit more…sinister.
You’ve only got a certain amount of power to get you through the night and you need to alternate between closing doors, turning on lights, and cycling cameras to keep a watchful eye on your surroundings. That’s all identical to the base game, but doing it in VR adds some extra layers of interactivity and intensity.
From an immersion perspective it’s fantastic. There is zero artificial movement since the whole game is you just reaching out and touching areas of the virtual world. Turning your head back and forth to look at doorways or frantically clicking through the cameras really made my palms sweaty. Seeing a giant, bunny ear silhouette in the doorway just before hitting the close button got my heart racing and, as anyone at the event this week can attest, I loudly yelped and jumped more than once.
In terms of gameplay, it adds a lot to play in VR. For example, on a PC or other screen you can only interact with what you can see. But in VR, I can have my hand over the button for one door while watching another door to quickly switch what’s opened and closed. It also makes reacting a bit slower since you have to physically move and react instead of just clicking or tapping something on a screen. That definitely changes things.
Horror remains to be one of the most effective game genres in VR and Five Night’s at Freddy’s VR is gonna be a great demonstration of that. There were more levels to play in the demo but I didn’t get a chance to try them. Some of the VR-exclusive content shakes up the formula with escape room-style scenarios and more.
Five Night’s at Freddy’s VR: Help Wanted will release next month on April for PC VR headsets and PSVR. Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
