Palestinian developer Rasheed Abueideh announced Dreams On A Pillow, a mix of a stealth adventure game and an interactive documentary set during Nakba – Israel’s brutal displacement and dispossession of Palestinian Arabs in 1948, shortly after Israel’s founding. Created by a “global team of experienced game developers,” it is the story of a Palestinian woman dealing with the loss of her child after escaping a bloody attack on her city.
Here’s the description of the game in the press release.
“Dreams on a Pillow is a pseudo-3D stealth adventure game based on a real-life Palestinian folk tale about Omm, a Palestinian mother who escaped a massacre in her city with her newborn child. After an hour of running in sheer panic, she realized that instead of the baby, she had taken a pillow to safety. Inspired by this story, Dreams on a Pillow explores Omm’s life story, depicting both the history of Palestine before the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. lands and the trauma resulting from the violence visited upon the Palestinian people during the Nakba.”
According to materials included in the announcement, Omm’s journey as a refugee takes her through places where several atrocities have occurred, including concentration camps and attacks on Palestinians near the border with Lebanon. Whenever he can rest, the game switches to documentary mode, “reliving a rapidly fading memory from beforeZionist Palestine” using archival photos and text.
Omm’s main possession is a pillow that serves as both a terrible reminder of the lost child and a kind of coping mechanism. While wearing it, he is unable to interact with objects or perform activities such as jumping, crawling, throwing rocks, and climbing ladders. However, putting the pillow down triggers Omm’s guilt and trauma, triggering nightmares that “reveal the dangers of the mind and obscure the dangers of the real world.” The immediate practical challenge during the stealth adventure sections, then, is to complete whatever objectives are available and retrieve the pillow before Omm’s delusions overwhelm it.
Abueideh is a creator Liyla and Shadows of Wara free game released for PC and mobile devices in 2016, telling the story of a Palestinian family’s struggle for survival during Israel’s war on the Palestinian territory of Gaza in 2014. Game he drew headlines when Apple initially refused to list it in the Games section of the Apple Store, requesting it be placed in the “News” or “References” category instead. A week later, they reversed their decision in response to protests and accusations of double standards regarding games featuring or being run by Palestinians.
Although Liyla & The Shadows of War won or was nominated for several awards, Abueideh says he has struggled to make progress in the industry since then, which he attributes to the publisher’s caution about the politically sensitive topic of Israel’s long-term occupation of the Palestinian territories. He says finding a time-honored publisher for Dreams On A Pillow proved “impossible” and he was unable to raise funds on his own. After the release of Liyla & The Shadows of War, Abueideh opened a nut roastery in his hometown of Nablus on the West Bank, but says it is now unsafe to visit the building due to nearby activities of Israeli colonists.
As such is Abueideh financing the game through the LaunchGood platform. He says he uses LaunchGood, which focuses specifically on Muslim projects, “because the most popular crowdfunding platforms don’t recognize Palestine.”
The announcement of Dreams On A Pillow comes in the middle of open war between the Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas, the government of Gaza. The current conflict began in October 2023, when Hamas crossed the border and killed over a thousand people, taking 251 people hostage. Since then, Israel has carried out a ground invasion and bombing campaign that has killed well over 40,000 Gazans and left hundreds of thousands injured or displaced.
In the process, Israel did just that destroyed many Palestinian institutions and cultural sites, including universities, libraries and museums. Although set many decades earlier, “Pillowdreams” is an affirmation of Palestinian heritage and rights in response to this ongoing erasure. It aims to strengthen the links between the current bloodshed and the Nakba violence, while debunking what the LaunchGood website calls a “common propaganda myth” about Palestine as a “land without people” before Israel’s founding.
