The Pactmaker

What Is The Pactmaker?

The Pactmaker is a dark point-and-click thriller by Alejandro Pascual, a video game journalist of more than twenty years making his debut as a solo developer. It is coming to Steam in 2027 for Windows, with an itch.io release planned alongside it. Languages at launch: English and Spanish.

You play Edward Wolfe, a prestigious professor whose philosophy career counts for nothing after a tragic accident leaves his twelve-year-old daughter hospitalized. Desperate, he does what the title says: he forges pacts with otherworldly entities. Those pacts give him supernatural abilities, including the power to dive into other people's memories and shift between realities. The catch, as the store page hints with its tagline that everyone matters and everyone hides something, is that the entities have intentions of their own.

The Pactmaker Details

The Story So Far

The setup gives the game three layers to pull on. There is the immediate human drama: a father, a hospitalized daughter, and a bargain made from desperation. There is the investigative layer, because diving into memories means the game's chapters are other people's pasts, with secrets buried in them. And there is the supernatural layer: entities beyond the veil who forge pacts with humans, and whose true motives are the central mystery the store page dangles.

The beings Edward summons have a name in the game's fiction: Goetics. The itch.io page states it plainly — you summon a supernatural being "known as a Goetic." Naming the entities matters for a mystery game: it signals a consistent internal mythology rather than vague spookiness, and it gives the pacts a concrete system to hang on.

The press release confirms the locations Wolfe's pact-work takes him to: a prestigious library in Edinburgh, a remote Irish village with a bizarre apparition, the Egyptian temples of Aswan, plus realms that sit outside our world entirely. The Egyptian chapter carries tales of reincarnation and ancient god-cults, and the developers say the locations are inspired by real-world events, mysteries, and historical figures. That variety is unusual for a solo point-and-click. Most debuts in the genre stay in one city. This one is structured like a globe-hopping occult mystery, closer in shape to a season of television than to a single locked-room puzzle.

How to Play The Pactmaker

The Point-and-Click Foundation

The Pactmaker plays as a classic point-and-click adventure. You examine scenes, gather clues, talk to characters, and use what you find to progress. The itch.io listing confirms mouse as the input — the whole game runs on observation and clicks, no action sequences. Pascual's twenty years as a games journalist show up in how the game presents itself: the store materials lead with story and atmosphere rather than mechanics lists, and the accessibility choices reinforce a calm pace.

Memory Dives

The signature mechanic is diving into the memories of others, and the press release describes it more aggressively than the store page: you absorb and explore the memories of a diverse cast of characters and then take control of them. Practically, this means the game can drop Edward into a scene from someone else's past — possibly playing as that person — where the rules of the present no longer apply. Shift between realities is the second half of the ability, letting the same location exist in different states: Scotland to Egypt, present to memory. Expect the classic adventure-game payoff here: information learned in one reality unlocks progress in another. When you hit a wall in the present day, the answer is usually in somebody's memory.

Pacts as the Cost System

The entities grant abilities, and the store page's key features section asks what their true intentions are. Pascual's own quote sets the tone: "everything comes with a price, and yours might just be too high to pay. I wanted to create an experience where choices carry weight and characters aren't just tools to solve puzzles, but fractured souls with their own motives." That framing points to the pacts themselves being a story mechanic: each power borrowed is a debt logged, and the developer's Bluesky describes the themes as pacts, guilt, and consequences. A thriller structured around unexpected twists will almost certainly spend its chapters collecting on Edward's debts.

A Pace You Control

The Steam features list matters more for this game than for most. Playable at Your Own Pace and Playable without Timed Input mean no QTEs, no countdown puzzles, no twitch sequences. Save Anytime and Steam Cloud mean you can treat the story in short chapters. This is a game designed to be read, effectively, with mouse clicks.

Advanced Tips

Treat every character as a case file. The tagline says everyone hides something, and the supporting cast is built to have their own stories and inner conflicts rather than serve your quest. When dialogue stalls, re-examine the people you have already met before hunting the environment again.

Use memory dives to log contradictions. The genre-standard habit applies double here: whenever a memory contradicts what someone claims in the present, note it. A thriller built on twists pays off planted contradictions.

Save before pact decisions. Save Anytime is on the features list for a reason. Bargains with otherworldly entities are exactly the kind of irreversible-feeling choice you will want to see both sides of.

Play chapters, not marathons. Playable at Your Own Pace and Save Anytime make short sessions the intended rhythm, and a mystery this twist-heavy rewards letting each reveal settle.

Watch the debut gameplay trailer before launch. The announcement trailer (on the developer's YouTube channel) is the best current look at how memory dives and reality shifts actually present on screen, and it shows the pixel-art locations you will navigate.

Developer Background

Alejandro Pascual has written about games professionally for over two decades. The Pactmaker is his first title as a developer, built solo from Madrid, Spain. The itch.io page carries a "no generative AI was used" tag — all the pixel art and writing is human-made, which matters to a segment of the adventure-game audience. Solo point-and-click debuts have a respectable track record in the genre, and the announcement came packaged the way experienced press-facing projects do: a full press release, a gameplay trailer, screenshots, and direct contact channels for media and creators. You can follow development on the developer's X account or Bluesky.

Comparison With Similar Games

The Pactmaker sits in a specific niche: narrative-first pixel-art adventures with a supernatural hook. Its memory-dive premise and globe-trotting structure put it nearer to Unavowed and the Blackwell series, where supernatural investigation drives chapter-based storytelling, than to pure escape-room adventures. The Edinburgh-to-Egypt range also recalls Broken Sword's travel structure. The memory-absorption twist — briefly inhabiting other characters rather than just interviewing them — is closer to The Forgotten City's possession mechanic than to anything in classic point-and-click. What separates it from all of those touchstones is the emotional spine: a father's bargain for his daughter's life, which promises a more personal stakes structure than the usual occult mystery.

FAQ

When does The Pactmaker release? 2027. A more specific window has not been announced; the game is wishlistable on Steam now.

What platforms is it on? Windows, through Steam and itch.io.

How much will it cost? Price is not announced yet.

What is a Goetic? The game's name for the supernatural beings Edward summons and bargains with. The pacts you forge with Goetics are the source of his abilities.

Does it have timed gameplay? No. The Steam listing confirms Playable without Timed Input and Playable at Your Own Pace, so every puzzle can be solved at whatever speed you like.

What languages does it support? English and Spanish at launch.

Do you only play as Edward Wolfe? The memory-dive mechanic lets you absorb and explore other characters' memories and take control of them, so expect to step into other people's roles during chapters.

What locations does the game visit? A prestigious library in Edinburgh, a remote Irish village, the Egyptian temples of Aswan, and realms beyond this world — all inspired by real events, mysteries, and historical figures per the press release.

Is this the developer's first game? Yes. Alejandro Pascual spent twenty-plus years as a games journalist before making The Pactmaker as a solo project from Madrid.

Does it use generative AI? No. The itch.io page carries an explicit no-generative-AI tag.

What is the game about, in one line? A professor trades pacts with otherworldly entities to save his injured daughter, then uses the powers he gained to dive into memories and uncover what everyone around him is hiding.

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Last reviewed by Game How To Editorial. We play each game, verify controls against official sources, and update guides when game mechanics change.