Yuha's Nightmares

Yuha's Nightmares is a nightmare simulator set in the dreams of Yuha, the waking-life alter ego of developer Yuliya Kozhemyako. You explore her feelings and traumas, collecting artifacts, memories and sounds to piece together her story. The game’s first episode, “Catastrophe,” is a standalone experience with its own ending and over 20 dream levels.

Catastrophe

The episode focuses on thoughts of home and what happens when you suddenly have to leave. Its dreams explore whether Yuha can find a new home in this world or another, as well as responsibility, her relationships with her mother and motherland, and the artifacts that carry stories through times of crisis. They raise questions about what to keep, what to leave behind and what can be translated into the virtual world.

Play through the dreams

The dreamscapes include an apocalypse, a return to a childhood home, disappearing staircases, sluggish limbs and losing your voice. Each level changes how you play: you might collect items against a clock, escape a house, dodge bullets or let them hit their target, or pick your cat out of a crowd. Across these separate adventures, you work out how each world functions and how to interact with it; the levels connect through a common storyline that reveals its full story at the end.

The Wireframe World

You can enter the Wireframe World, the invisible digital architecture beneath many games, to explore Yuha’s unconscious. From there, you can look through walls, see how levels are built and uncover secrets in both the game and Yuha’s mind. Glitches throughout the dreamscape can shift your field of view, making what you see differ from what you feel. You can get stuck in surfaces, but there is always a way out.

Episodic story

The game is planned as a series of episodes, each centered on a specific theme. “Catastrophe” can be played as a complete story without waiting for future episodes.