- The Darkness Is Waiting For You...
Pacify is a Multiplayer Survival Horror game by Shawn Hitchcock, the developer of Emily Wants To Play. It was released for PC through Steam on February 22nd, 2019.
Congratulations, and welcome to your new job at PAH Inc. (Paranormal Activity Helpers Incorporated). They say you won't be in any danger, the pay is good, and as luck would have it, they have plenty of jobs lined up now. Your first assignment will be to investigate this old house. The broker wants to put it up for sale, but the locals have been spreading rumors of some evil thing there, which could really hurt his chances of selling it. Even he's starting to feel unsettled.
Anyway, we need you and some colleagues to check the place out. You could go it alone if you want, but we would feel better to have some backup. Explore the house, check for ghosts, and if you find any evidence of haunting, be sure to bring it back to us.
In addition to having single-player and co-op campaigns, the game also has PvP mode in which five PAH Inc interns can go up against each other to collect the most evidence to bring back, and from there be hired full-time. The players can actively push each other down and make them lose the keys and other items they have picked up in their mission.
Later on, the developers added two more cases for the interns to investigate, with a third on the way:
- A farm with an unnaturally gluttonous possessed woman in the barn.
- A forest haunted by a witch.
- PAH Headquarters, during a power outage.
Pacify contains examples of:
- Apocalyptic Log: Papers can be found in the house that tell what happened there.
- Continuity Nod: Two to Emily Wants To Play. Vult Ludere (source of the haunted dolls Chester, Kiki, and Mr. Tatters) can be speculated to have owned the Ludere Funeral Parlor, and if you bring Emilia to the van when you leave, you are to be sent to the Withers residence on the word of a pizza delivery boy, referencing the events of EWtP 1.
- Coop Multiplayer: Multiple players can investigate the house together.
- Creepy Doll: The house is full of these. They can even come to life.
- Facial Markings: The ghost of Emilia has a black X over her mouth, and her eyelids are covered in black.
- Haunted House: Ludere's Funeral Parlor, the first setting of the game, naturally.
- Living Toys: The creepy dolls scattered around the house will sometimes come to life. This is actually a game mechanic to prevent you from gathering them all up at the beginning of the game and stacking them in a convenient spot near the boiler room.
- Lock and Key Puzzle: Multiple doors are locked, and the keys to unlock them are scattered throughout the house.
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Nintendo Hard: Playing in single-player mode has you, a single person, doing the work of 4 people, with no one to help you if you get downed. - One-Word Title: But of course.
- Player Versus Player: One of the modes has players trying to get the most evidence, which includes pushing other players down and making them spill their evidence.
- P.O.V. Cam: The game is played from a first-person perspective.
- Single-Use Shield: If you're carrying a regular doll in your hand, when Emilia catches you she'll be pacified for a short time instead of killing you, but the doll will disappear and there are only a limited number of them around the house. You also can't carry a regular doll and a marked doll at the same time.
- Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: The first main enemy of the game is the ghost of a little girl, Emilia, that the players need to pacify.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: The method to incapacitate Karen. Find chicken. Incapacitate chicken. Fill the water trough. Spike the water with rat poison sacks and dip the chicken in. Feed to Karen.
- Turns Red: The ghost becomes faster for every marked doll you burn. When there's only 1 marked doll left to burn, she becomes red and moves insanely fast, much faster than you do.
- The witch also become more aggressive the more effigies you impale.
- Villainous Glutton: Karen at the farm. It's her weakness as well.
- Would Hurt a Child: The witch in the woods. There's a lake full of their souls. Dropping her in is the "new host" ending condition.
- You Have Failed Me: If you burn or otherwise cleanse the entity's body instead of bringing it back to PAH for them to exploit it and harness its power, PAH will punish your insolence by locking you up and using you as a new guinea pig to transfer the possessing spirit into.
