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 press release confirms the locations Wolfe's pact-work takes him to: Edinburgh in Scotland, Ireland, and Egypt, plus realms that sit outside our world entirely. 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. 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. Practically, this means the game can drop Edward into a scene from someone else's past, 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. 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. That framing points to the pacts themselves being a story mechanic: each power borrowed is a debt logged. The genre has a long tradition of bargains with a price, and 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.

Tips for Playing When It Launches

Treat every character as a case file. The tagline says everyone hides something. 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.

Developer Background

Alejandro Pascual has written about games professionally for over two decades. The Pactmaker is his first title as a developer, built solo. 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. What separates it from 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.