Pacify

About

Pacify is a horror game created by indie developer Shawn Hitchcock and released in February 2019. In the game, the player is locked in a house with a girl who sometimes enters an "evil" state and haunts the protagonist, with the ultimate goal being to subdue her and escape the house. A popular playthrough of the game by YouTuber CoryxKenshin spawned memes "Go Crazy Go Stupid Doll" and "Baby Doll Closet".

History

On February 22nd, 2019, horror game Pacify, developed by Shawn Hitchcock, was released on Steam. ^[1] In the game, the player is a new employee at a paranormal activity agency who is assigned to check an old house. The house is soon revealed to be haunted by a girl named Emily, whose behavior changes between two states, "calm" and "monster". The player has to collect and burn nine marked dolls scattered around the house, while also using another type of dolls to pacify the girl when she enters her "monster" state.

Together with the single-player mode, PvE and PvP multiplayer game mods are also available in the game.

Reception

As of March 13st, 2019, the game did not receive reviews from any mainstream gaming outlets. On Steam,^[1] the game maintained "Very Postive" rating with over 650 votes submitted.

Fandom

On YouTube, several let's play videos of the game were posted by notable gaming channels. On the day of the release, YouTuber CoryxKenshin posted a video of his gameplay which gained over 1.6 million views in three weeks (shown below, left).^[2] On March 1st, Funhaus posted a playthrough video that received over 282,000 views in two weeks (shown below, right).

Related Memes

Go Crazy Go Stupid Doll

On February 22nd, 2019, Twitter^[3] user @dalveeen posted a fragment of CoryxKenshin's video in which the YouTuber edited in a soundbite from Go Crazy Go Stupid vine for comedic effect. The tweet accumulated over 38,700 retweets and 100,000 likes in three weeks, with the video gaining over 1.5 million views on Twitter.

On February 24th, musician LilNasX tweeted the fragment,^[4] captioning the video "the demons in my basement when they hear me playing lil uzi upstairs". The tweet gained over 45,900 retweets and 145,000 likes in three weeks.

In the following days, the LilNasX's video upload was reused in multiple jokes on Twitter, with notable examples made by users @mazarenai^[5] and @chileIimon^[6] (shown below).

Baby Doll Closet

On Instagram, edits of another fragment of CoryxKenshin's video^[2] gained popularity. In that fragment, CoryxKenshin opens a closet in the house, with baby dolls inside running out and scattering.

For example, on March 12th, 2019, Instagram^[7] user toucher_of_cancer posted an edit of the scene in which the sounds were replaced with multiple instances of Verbalase's 'Low Tetris' Beatbox. The post gained over 140,000 views and 22,900 likes in one day.

Search Interest

External References