With just a little over a week left in its crowdfunding journey, the historical Palestinian game “Dreams on a Pillow” has already outdone its initial fundraising target of $200,000. Although this sum is less than half of the $495,000 the developers estimate they’ll need to cover expenses such as salaries, outsourcing, and asset creation, it’s enough to kick-start the game’s development. Thanks to contributions made via the Muslim crowdfunding platform LaunchGood, the nine-member team now has the means to lay the groundwork for the game. They plan to map out the storyline and work on game mechanics, prototypes, and a polished section known as a “vertical slice”—all of which are crucial for securing further funding, as detailed on their LaunchGood page.
“Dreams on a Pillow,” the brainchild of Palestinian developer Rasheed Abu-Eideh, is billed as a pseudo-3D stealth adventure game that explores the concept of a land losing its people. The game’s narrative is set during the 1948 Nakba, a period when over 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced amid the creation of Israel. In a 2024 interview with Time Magazine, Abdel Razzaq Takriti, a professor of Palestinian and Arabic history at Rice University, remarked on the dual aspects of the Nakba: it was both a humanitarian disaster, characterized by the loss of land, property, and the expulsion of people, and a political calamity involving the suppression of native sovereignty. These twin realities, he noted, persist to this day.
In the game, players follow the harrowing story of Omm, a young mother from a family of olive farmers in al-Tantura. Throughout her journey, players navigate the historical backdrop of the Nakba as Omm seeks a path to Lebanon in the North. Whenever Omm finds a moment to rest during her dangerous trek, she dreams of her childhood, recalling a quickly vanishing memory of pre-Nakba Palestine. Through authentic historical documentation and imagery, the game reveals two decades of untold Palestinian history, challenging the widespread myth of “a land without people for a people without land.”
Omm’s tale is heartbreakingly personal. In her frantic escape, she unintentionally grabs a pillow instead of her newborn child, after her husband has been killed by invaders. As Abu-Eideh mentioned on the game’s LaunchGood page, Omm is no action heroine; she’s an ordinary civilian gripped by fear. When the pillow is placed on the ground, she faces the harsh realities of her transformed world.
Abu-Eideh is no stranger to addressing deep themes in his games. Currently based in Gaza’s West Bank, he also created the 2016 game “Liyla and the Shadows of War,” which unfolds against the backdrop of Israel’s 2014 conflict in Gaza. This award-winning game offers a succinct yet emotionally charged experience, portraying a Palestinian girl’s struggle amidst the catastrophic events. Initially, Apple removed the game from its App Store, claiming it wasn’t suitable for the Games category. However, they reversed this decision and later featured it there.
After “Liyla and the Shadows of War,” Abu-Eideh turned his attention to opening a nut roastery in the West Bank to support his family. Unfortunately, ongoing Israeli occupation makes it unsafe for him to access his business. As noted on the LaunchGood page, “Today, the building sits empty as Israeli colonists terrorize the roads of the West Bank, making travel to his roastery unsafe.”
The narrative on the LaunchGood platform further explains, “Rasheed—facing continued threats from relentless colonist attacks on the West Bank—has set his sights on pursuing the path he was forced to abandon a decade ago: using games to not only recount the story of the 1948 Nakba but also to allow players to immerse themselves in that experience. He wants to share a catastrophe that has plagued generations of Palestinians through displacement, apartheid, occupation, and violence.”
