Bendy and the Ink Machine

In August 1966, retired animator Henry Stein receives a letter from his former friend and employer, Joey Drew, asking him to return to their animation studio and see something important. He finds the studio abandoned, but discovers an "ink machine", installed sometime after Henry's departure 30 years earlier. He finds a tape recording by janitor Wally Franks that suggests Joey engaged in bizarre occult practices while making the machine, as well as a mutilated real-life analogue of Boris the Wolf, one of the studio's cartoon characters. Once Henry fixes and starts the machine, he is attacked by a creature known as "Ink Bendy" that looks like an evil version of studio mascot Bendy. As the studio begins to fill with ink, Henry flees toward the exit, only for the floor to collapse and drop him into the studio's lower levels. Draining the ink from this area, he finds a chamber whose floor is marked with strange diagrams. He hallucinates seeing the ink machine, a wheelchair, and then Ink Bendy before passing out.

Henry wakes up and begins to search for a way out, eventually reaching the music department. Henry finds a stairwell leading to the exit, but the entrance is flooded with ink. While looking for a way to drain it, he is attacked by ink creatures known as the Searchers; once they are defeated, Henry enters the office of Sammy Lawrence, the studio's musical director. After completing several tasks to drain the ink, Henry hurries toward the exit but is attacked by Sammy, whose body has been transformed into ink. Sammy intends to sacrifice Henry to Ink Bendy in order to become a human again, but before he can do so, he is dragged away by Ink Bendy and presumably killed. Henry frees himself and flees through the studio, pursued by Ink Bendy. Barricading himself behind a door, he waits until Ink Bendy has left and then meets a living, intact Boris, called Buddy Boris.

Henry befriends Buddy Boris, and the two leave the latter's safehouse to continue searching for an exit. In the toy department, they find another ink creature called Twisted Alice who is a distorted version of actress Susie Campbell and the good character Alice Angel. Twisted Alice leads them to her lair and reveals that she has been harvesting the ink of other characters in order to make herself beautiful. Henry must perform several tasks for Twisted Alice in order for her to let him and Buddy Boris go free, learning from tape recordings that Susie became bitter when Joey suddenly replaced her with another actress, Allison Pendle. Angry and bitter over her dismissal, Susie allowed the ink to transform her into Twisted Alice. As Henry carries out Twisted Alice's tasks, he must hide from both Ink Bendy and the Projectionist, an entity of projector operator Norman Polk, and defeating the Butcher Gang members, Piper, an ink-demonic version of Charley, Fisher, a fishing pole neck version of Barley, and Striker, a spider like villainous version of Edgar. Henry completes the tasks and boards a lift to escape with Buddy Boris, but Twisted Alice double crosses them and forces it to crash to the bottom of its shaft. She then suddenly kidnaps Buddy Boris by force, pulling him into the darkness.

Climbing out of the crashed lift, Henry ventures deeper into the studio in search of Buddy Boris and finds a lounge filled with the Lost Ones, ink creatures who show no hostility. He also discovers that Joey had been planning to open a Bendy-themed amusement park called Bendy Land with the help of famed ride designer Bertrum Piedmont. In order to reach Buddy Boris, Henry must restore power to the haunted house attraction by finding and flipping a series of switches hidden throughout a warehouse filled with rides, games, and props from the planned park. He must overcome a series of challenges in the process, one of which requires him to destroy a ride containing Bertrum's still-living, ink-corrupted head. Entering the haunted house, Henry discovers that Twisted Alice has turned Boris into a deformed, hulking beast called Brute Boris and ordered him to kill Henry. The two fight, with Henry ultimately killing Brute Boris and freeing Buddy Boris' spirit. Twisted Alice tries to kill Henry herself, but is suddenly impaled through the back with a sword by Allison Angel, a physically intact and sane duplicate of Alice who is accompanied by a wolf character named Tom. Allison and Tom are the respective reincarnations of Allison Pendle and Thomas Connor, another studio employee.

Allison and Tom hold Henry captive, but he eventually gains Allison's trust and she gives him a "seeing tool" that allows him to see hidden messages on the walls. After Tom inadvertently reveals the location of their hideout to Ink Bendy, he and Allison abandon Henry and flee. Henry escapes on his own and crosses a river of ink on a paddleboat while avoiding a giant Bendy hand, reaching a shantytown built by the Lost Ones. There, Henry is attacked by Sammy, shown to still be alive and blinded by rage, thinking Henry is Ink Bendy. Unmasked by Henry, Sammy tries to kill him but is instead killed by Tom. After Tom gains Henry's trust, Tom and Allison aid him in fighting off the Searchers and Lost Ones, who had been kept at bay by Sammy, and Henry falls into the administrative offices. After repairing a set of pipes and killing the Butcher Gang, enemies that had previously tried to kill Henry, he finds Tom and Allison. Henry learns that Ink Bendy has stolen something important from the film vault and enters his lair — a much vaster version of the ink machine — to retrieve it. Allison and Tom remain behind, fearing that the ink will absorb and corrupt them. Inside, Henry finds one last tape recording by Joey, expressing his regret for everything that has happened and asking Henry to destroy Bendy. Henry finds the stolen item, a film reel marked "The End." Ink Bendy chases him throughout the machine while transforming into a giant monster, Beast Bendy. Henry eventually plays the reel, projecting a "The End" title card on every available screen and causing Beast Bendy to dissipate when he sees it.

The game suddenly changes to a flashback in the inside of Joey's home, with a bulletin board covered with letters from Allison Pendle, now married to Thomas Connor, and Wally Franks as well as sketches such as Bendy Land. Entering the kitchen, Henry finds Joey waiting to talk to him about the paths they took in their lives. After Joey tells to Henry visit the studio, Henry exits the house and finds himself immediately entering it, repeating his opening lines from Chapter 1. It is presumed that Henry and all of the studio's employees, now ink monsters and ink characters are trapped in a time loop of unknown origin.

In a post-credits scene, the camera focuses on a framed portrait of Bendy, Boris and Alice, which was a gift from Henry to congratulate Joey for his success (alongside a rusty ink machine sitting in one corner of the room). Just then, a little girl's voice asks "Uncle Joey" to tell her another story, implying that the entire game was merely a story Joey was telling his niece.

A mobile spin-off called Bendy in Nightmare Run was announced on January 26, 2018.[19] It was released on the App Store on August 15, 2018[20][21] and on the Google Play Store on September 27, 2018. The game is an endless runner style game involving the player characters of either Bendy, Boris, or Alice collecting Bacon Soup while running away from large bosses chasing the player character.

The creator has discussed wanting to collaborate with the developers of Cuphead, another game with rubber hose animation.[22]

A spin-off called Boris and the Dark Survival was released on February 10, 2020, on Bendy and the Ink Machine's 3-year anniversary. The game is a prequel, taking place before the first chapter of the original game. It revolves around Boris the Wolf searching through the different levels of Joey Drew Studios looking for supplies for his safehouse while escaping Ink Bendy, Twisted Alice, the Projectionist, the Butcher Gang, or Borkis, a yellow-eyed version of Boris.

Another game, Bendy and the Dark Revival, was announced on April 14, 2019. A gameplay trailer was released on June 24, 2019, announcing the game's release for Fall 2019. However, in December 2019, a new trailer was released to say that the game was being delayed and will release sometime in 2020. Another trailer was released on June 1, 2020, revealing that the game would be released in its entirety with all five chapters included, unlike the first game which was released episodically. The trailer also suggested the game would come out in the latter half of 2020.[23][24] However, on November 30, 2020, the developers announced that the game would be releasing in 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and that the game will be ten times bigger than the original game and didn't want to rush the game.[25][26]