Today, Palestinian game developer Rasheed Abueideh is asking for your support and blessing as he sets out on his largest game project so far, which has been a dream of his for almost a decade. It's called Dreams on a Pillow. But to understand this campaign and why it is so important, it helps to know Rasheed's history in the games industry.

Almost exactly a decade ago, as an Israeli invasion tore through Gaza, Rasheed Abueideh recognized the power of games: they let players step into someone else’s reality. Not long after Rasheed began development of Liyla & The Shadows of War, a game that brought to life the harsh realities of living under invasion, apartheid, & occupation. The development was fraught with obstacles and rejections: Apple declared the game “too political”, and temporarily banned the game - and while publishing funding in the games industry were aggressively funding games, a Palestinian game was deemed “too controversial”. Rasheed persevered, and Liyla became a global phenomenon.

Despite the success of Liyla, Rasheed struggled to carve out a sustainable career in the games industry, facing a decade of rejection and avoidance from funding partners and publishers who deemed supporting a Palestinian “too risky” or “controversial”. While he continued to tinker on small games projects, he opened a nut roastery near his hometown of Nablus to support his family.

Today, the building sits empty as Israeli colonists terrorize the roads of the West Bank, making travel to his roastery unsafe. With Israel’s assaults on Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon intensifying daily, Rasheed -unsure of his continued safety in the face of relentless colonist attacks on the West Bank- has set his sights on continuing to following the path he was forced to abandon a decade ago: using games to not just tell the story of the 1948 Nakba, but to let people experience it through a game. To share the catastrophe that has haunted generations of Palestinians with displacement, apartheid, occupation, and violence.

Dreams on a Pillow holds the ambition and dreams of a Palestinian who was denied the right to make games like the rest of the world could, but persists regardless. It cannot be made with traditional games funding, because such funding cannot be accessed by a Palestinian. It cannot be made with traditional crowdfunding, because most popular crowdfunding platforms do not recognize Palestine. To tell this story, to fulfill this impossible dream, to bring together a team of veteran game developers and incredible local creators - Rasheed needs your help.

Game overview

Dreams on a Pillow is a pseudo-3D stealth adventure game inspired by a historical Palestinian folk tale set during the ethnic cleansing that was the 1948 Nakba.  

Like all oral folktales, the story of Omm has numerous variations, however, all stories share the same fundamental elements: a young mother living in Palestine had her husband murdered by the Zionist invaders, and she ran to her home to retrieve her newborn child from the bed. She fled out of town in a panic, only to realize later that she had carried along a pillow instead of her child. The ending of the folktale differs wildly based on the audience - in most stories, the mother loses her mind - in others, she is murdered, or successfully avoids the roaming Zionist gangs and military groups to make it out of her homeland - not to return in her lifetime.
 

Life Before The Nakba

In Dreams on a Pillow, Omm is a young mother from an olive farmers’ family in al-Tantura. Throughout the game, the player traverses historical events and stories of the Nakba as Omm attempts an escape towards Lebanon in the North. Whenever Omm has an opportunity to rest on her perilous journey, she dreams of her childhood - reliving a rapidly fading memory of a pre-Zionist Palestine. Using historical documentation and imagery, two decades of untold Palestinian history is carefully implemented and beautifully rendered, to disprove the common propaganda myth of “a land without people for a people without land”.

Survival During the Nakba 

Omm is not an action hero or a soldier - she is a scared civilian marked as collateral by ruthless Zionist brigades and gangs. While she is carrying her Pillow, she is further limited in her ability - while she can walk , she isn’t able to interact with most objects around her. Putting Pillow down, enables her full range of abilities - including a jump, crawl, climbing ladders, and throwing rocks - but it triggers horrifying nightmares borne from the terrors she's living through.

The Nightmares

Living nightmares encroach on Omm's reality every time she sets Pillow down. The swirling terrors reveal dangers of the mind, and shroud the dangers of the real world. Unsure of what is real and what is not, Omm has to ensure she completes her objectives and makes it back to Pillow... before her mind is lost to her guilt and trauma.

The Journey

 
Throughout the game, Omm, Pillow, and the player will experience often untold stories of Palestinian history. As Omm travels from the massacre of al-Tantura to the concentration camps of Atlit, she will later encounter the campaign of terror that led to the fall of Haifa, the bioweapon poisoning of Acre, and the Zionist attacks on refugees towards the Lebanese border.

Project Status, Needs, & Risks

Rasheed is the most notable game developer operating from Palestine, and has experience developing games about the history and realities of the Palestinian people. For Dreams on a Pillow, he will be joined by a group of a dozen veteran game developers, local talent, and a small group of volunteers that have selflessly offered their time and talent to balance out the unfair treatment of Palestinian voices in the games industry.

The team has attempted to raise publisher funding and cultural grants for the project, but has consistently been rejected as “too risky a topic” or “too controversial”. A single publisher responded positively to funding inquiries, one that has experiences in games with sensitive topics - but sadly, even for them the risk of a Palestinian story was too large.

That leaves Rasheed and his team with only one option to fulfill this particular dream: crowdfunding. As popular crowdfunding platforms either do not recognize Palestine or have a history of withholding funding, we have turned to the Muslim-focused platform of LaunchGood for the crowdfunding effort. 

To create Dreams on a Pillow, Rasheed will need approximately US$495,000 to pay for salaries, outsourcing, and asset creation. Additionally, the money will allow him to take care of his family & children, who were dependent on the income from his nut roastery. In this crowdfunding campaign we aim to raise at least US$194.800, which will move the game from pre-production into a production state. At that stage of development, the team will have a few core levels of the game created, and the entire game plotted out, scheduled, and prototyped. This will ensure the mechanics and narrative work together to tell this powerful and sensitive story. Prototypes and 'vertical slices' will have ensured all pipelines have been tested, all required talent is on-board, and few (if any) risks remain to the production process. At that point, Rasheed and his team will endeavour to raise additional funding with a far more advanced version of the game in hand - a much more viable prospect. If the campaign is so fortunate to raise the full development amount, the game will not need further funding before its commercial release in approximately two years. While unlikely, all and any surplus in funding will go towards ensuring Rasheed does not need to rely on Palestinian-avoidant funding sources in future projects, with part of the additional funds going to inspiring & supporting game development initiatives in Palestine.

As for risks, Rasheed is an award-winning storyteller and game developer, and he’s supported by a group of industry veterans with broad production experience on projects of this scope and size. While game development can be unpredictable, Rasheed insisted before this campaign went live that the mechanics be well-prototyped, the art-style be established and validated, and the narrative structure be plotted out meticulously. While self-funding the project with his limited savings and occasional donations was a great risk to his financial safety, it proves his commitment and does significantly lower the risk of the game’s development.

Project Timeline

Together with a team of veteran and multi-disciplinary talent from the games industry, Rasheed has worked towards a realistic timeline for the development and production of Dreams on a Pillow. With approximately two years of development time, the development team will have time and resources to ensure a high global standard of quality and fidelity for the game. Additionally, a clear plan for the completion of the game has been put in place to ensure continuity in the case of Rasheeds’ disappearance, injury, or demise at the hand of the continuously expanding Israeli aggression in the West Bank.

More Concept Art  

Dreams on a Pillow is the dream of a Palestinian game developer, and a proof that games can tell the stories of anyone, anywhere. We humbly ask for your support to make this dream come true, to tell this generations-old story in a new and powerful way.