Palestinian game developer Rasheed Abueideh has entered the full production phase of Dreams on a Pillow alongside the launch of a new crowdfunding campaign to support development.
The narrative adventure title is inspired by stories from the Nakba, the displacement of Palestinians by Israeli forces in 1948.
The gaming project gained international attention last year after a crowdfunding campaign surpassed its initial goal of $194,800 and ultimately raised more than $240,000 from more than 3,300 supporters worldwide.
The funding allowed Abueideh to expand the project with a 12-person team and complete two playable levels set in the Palestinian town of Tantura, where some of the worst violence occurred during the ethnic cleansing.
“The support has been incredible and very emotional for us,” Abueideh tells The National. “We received support from players, journalists, artists and Palestinians around the world who connected deeply with the story and mission of the game.”
Support also came from non-Arab and non-Muslim audiences who connected with the Palestinian cause through the project’s storytelling, he adds.
Dreams on a Pillow follows a young Palestinian woman, Khadra, as she flees a massacre in her hometown carrying only a pillow. Inspired by a folk-tale, the game blends pseudo-stealth gameplay and puzzle-solving as players guide Khadra through displacement, survival and recurring dreamlike sequences rooted in Palestinian history.
Abueideh, who lives in Nablus in the occupied West Bank, says reaching full production marked a major milestone for the team after years of development challenges.
“We built all the tools and framework we need for the game, established the development pipelines, and created vertical slices with several levels that prove our gameplay mechanics and narrative systems,” he says. “We have also locked the story and level structure.”
The next phase of development will focus on building and polishing the remaining levels already mapped out in the game’s design documents ahead of a planned PC release in 2027.
While the concept remains unchanged, Abueideh says the narrative process evolved significantly over the past year as the team explored multiple approaches before refining the story to its essential elements.
“The overall vision and direction remain the same, but our process expanded to explore as many options as possible for the story,” he says. “We then refined it by cutting a lot and keeping only the core elements that make the game and its narrative most engaging for players.”
He adds that the game is grounded in testimonies and accounts of the Nakba.
Dreams on a Pillow is Abueideh’s second major title following the multi-award-winning Liyla and The Shadows of War (2016), which centred on children living through attacks on Gaza. The game earned international recognition and established Abueideh as one of the few Palestinian developers creating politically driven narrative games.
For Abueideh, the project remains part of a wider effort to tell Palestinian stories through interactive media and encourage empathy from players engaging with the history behind the game.
