What Pacify is
Pacify is a first-person horror game where you work for PAH Inc., a company that sends interns into haunted places to prove the supernatural is real. Each mission has its own environment, story, monsters and endings, so the house with the little girl is only one of the jobs on offer. The Dolls mission puts you in a house built over a hundred years ago by a family who ran a funeral parlor. Rumor says they offered a ritual that let people speak to the dead, and that something went wrong during one of those rituals. A townsperson and the owners vanished, and investigators who came after never returned.
Playing with your group
You can go in alone or bring friends. In co-op you work together to escape, and you can save someone the girl has caught by interrupting her. In PvP everyone is an intern competing for the full-time position, and the person who does the most work gets hired — you can shove each other, and a player knocked to the floor is stunned for 5 seconds and drops their keys. Proximity voice chat is built in, with voice-changing effects that kick in in certain situations and environments, which makes splitting up across the house more fun.
How a run actually plays
You are running through the narrow corridors of a dark old house while a little girl switches between good and evil. Different circumstances push her toward evil, and once it takes over she chases you and your friends through the whole house. She gets smarter and faster as things go on. She can hear and see you, so staying out of sight and staying quiet matters as much as moving fast. Read the notes for clues about pacifying her, and find and use keys, dolls, wood and matches along the way. The goal is to pacify the evil and get out.
Before you start
Going in alone is possible but hard — you have to do the work of two to four people by yourself. Bringing at least three friends matches what the game expects from a full crew. Expect to try different strategies rather than one fixed solution, since the girl's behavior changes with circumstances and the endings differ depending on how the mission plays out.