Could one of the scariest indie games to come out in the past decade be headed for VR?
It looks like that is the case if an ESRB rating entry is credible.
For those that may not be familiar with the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise, it is a horror game that involves being the night watch over a haunted amusement park slash Chuck E Cheese-type establishment populated with animatronics possessed by demons or some other malevolent force.
It’s a trip, and it’s absolutely terrifying.
Which makes it a perfect game to port to VR.
ComicBook.com reports that the game, Five Nights at Freddy’s VR: Help Wanted had an entry created for it on ESRB, the rating board for video games, though this article was removed pretty quickly once the wider Internet discovered it.
As for what the entry revealed about the game, we can tell you that it puts the player in the role of a repairman tasked with bringing the haunted animatronics back to life. Rated Teen, the game will probably be a markedly different experience than the traditional entries but we still expect there will still be some kind of intense horror element present.
ComicBook.com reports that this was the entry for Five Nights at Freddy’s VR: Help Wanted, “This is a VR puzzle/horror game in which players assume the role of a repair person tasked with monitoring/repairing animatronic characters at a pizzeria…From a first-person perspective, players explore dark hallways, complete puzzles, and try to avoid menacing, malfunctioning animatronic figures. The game contains frequent screams and jump scares, with the words ‘You Are Dead’ appearing on screen after players are attacked.”
Originally teased by Five Nights at Freddy’s creator Scott Cawthon back in November 2018, there hasn’t been much about the game since then. He revealed that it was about 40% complete, but that’s all we heard about it.
Talking about the game back then, Cawthon said: “This game is looking terrific…I’m working with a company called Steel Wool to bring the VR game to life, and these guys are making some crazy stuff. If you liked repairing Funtime Freddy up-close in Sister Location, just wait until you try to do something like that in VR, up close, personal, with this huge animatronics that is just one mistake away from jumping at you.”
All of it sounds like it will be a perfect jump-scare game for virtual reality, but we’re sure the devs will also throw out some new concepts for good measure.
Horror games are a particularly strong genre for virtual reality and we anticipate seeing more of those come out in the near future. Five Nights at Freddy’s surprised people back in 2014 because no one was expecting an indie game to be that engaging and terrifying at the same time. The sequels might have diluted the formula a little bit, but Five Nights at Freddy’s VR: Help Wanted could just be the thing it needs right now to get that old magic back.
