Into A Dream is a story-driven adventure where you delve deep into the dreams of a man diagnosed with depression. Find the man lost within his own mind, unravel his story, and help him to take the first step towards therapy.
Currently being developed forPC Windows, Mac and Linux. The approximately 45-minute free demois available on Steam and Itch.
"I keep having to be reminded it's an indie game because it's head-and-shoulders superior to what I'm seeing from the Triple A game studios right now." - IndieImprint
"A title to keep in mind that has the potential to become an interactive experience with a very powerful social intervention nature." - Glitch Effect
"A wonderful game with rich voice acting, a great sound track and a brilliant art style. The game was an absolute pleasure to play." - Itch demo player
Into A Dream has teamed up with CheckPoint, a charity that provides mental health resources for gamers and the gaming community. 25% of the amount raised with The Coping Companion Perk will be donated to CheckPoint.
The digital Coping Companion is a personalised wellbeing assistant that you can use in any way that suits you. A powerful tool containing over 50 evidence based tips for dealing with everyday stress and anxiety, distress, and more.
The digital Coping Companion is also available as an Add On for Catnap Perk and above.
An emotional and heartbreaking narrative about love, hopelessness and depression
Beautiful original soundtrack and dreamlike atmosphere
Complex, real characters and relationships based on real-life experiences
Fully voice-acted characters
Wake up in a mysterious place devoid of all your memories and come upon a recording addressed to you. As you listen, you realize that your mind has been linked to the dreams of a Luke Williams, a man diagnosed with severe depression. You are Luke’s last hope and must prevent him from fading away.
Love, Hopelessness, Inevitability
Into A Dream's story is very relatable and my aim is to tell it as close to a real setting as possible. The themes of love, family, hopelessness, inevitability are present in our lives. Even if we have not encountered them personally, most of us know someone who has.
Mental Health and Depression
It is not my intent to say what depression is, or how it is for someone who is suffering from it, but to tell the story of someone whoseemotions and reasoning towards the eventsthat were thrown in his life lead him to it.
I hope that this understanding of reality can be expanded into a discussion of mental health. I believe that we grow when we observe and empathize. I hope that the characters and events in Into A Dream may feel real and resonate with you.
Original Soundtrack
The original soundtrack was composed as a narrative element in each scene, using the piano as the core instrument. Both its softness and richness can easily translate and depict ourselves and our emotions.
It was a perfect match in inspirational story-driven games such as To The Moon or Désirè. However, for most themes, I first finalized the visuals and sound effects of a certain scene, played the level, and let those guide the composition.
2D Silhouette Simplicity
The simplicity helps capture the emotion without being too distracting. The colour and lighting gives a sense of darkness in the foreground, where the characters are and the action is occurring, but brightening up into the horizon to depict a certain sense of hope.
Inspired by Limbo
From the entire visual design process, I've spent the most time on lighting. Limbo was a huge inspiration in the way light is used. Each layer of each scene has its own lighting to enhance the dreamlike atmosphere.
Psychology of Color
The monochromatic palette of each dream allows for the color to quickly represent the state of mind of this man, whether his feelings or his association with a certain event. The gradient of light, ranging from full black in the foreground to a light shade of color in the background represents his reality. A man living in darkness, but not without a sense of hope.
Into A Dream’s characters are built upon observations. They were created to be as human, as real and as complex as I can understand and put to paper.
I am fascinated by people. By how different people react to the same events, how different people have distinct motivations, reasoning and emotions under similar circumstances. To understand why they do so.
The characters were modelled after people I have observed, met and known. Instead of writing dialogues whenever I wanted something out of them, their main purpose is to showcase the characters, their personality and their relationships.
The events that are depicted in the game are also situations that although not having lived through them personally, I met others who did.
John Stevens - Hinted as being a renowned psychologist that was asked to venture into the dreams of Luke in order to find his depression's root cause and help him overcome his darkness. John has no recollections of his past while in these dreams.
Luke Williams - A very introverted, quiet, intelligent and driven person. He believes has the responsibility to fix the world, even if beyond his control.
Rita Williams - A kind, strong, warm and creative woman. She's a writer and the wife of Luke.
Anne Williams - Witty, curious, very bright. Anne has a strong bond with her father, Luke. She appears between 9 and 12 years old throughout Luke's dreams.
Isabel Williams - Luke's loving mother. Isabel is quite similar in personality to her granddaughter, Anne. They have a great bond and seem very alike.
Michael Gall - Luke's best friend and partner in his business. Michael is funny, loud, extroverted and somewhat moody.
Luke Williams is a father, supports a loving wife and is very close with his mother. Outside of his family life, Luke is an entrepreneur, having created a clean energy start-up with his best friend. Everything was going well in his life until some terrible news which lead to a downward spiralof unfortunate events.
Delve deep into Luke’s dreams, where memories and symbols are blended together; you are expected to disclose the events and actions that have led Luke to his darkness. Meet his close family and friends, and find ways to access his darker dreams. Unveil the emotional, powerful and heartbreaking journey of his life. Help Luke see that his life matters.
Into A Dream came to be as a somewhat impulsive decision. After working as an engineer for almost 5 years I came to the conclusion that it was not the path that I was most passionate about. I resigned from my job and started looking for different career paths.
In the meantime I finally decided to download Unity and learn some game development without the conscious intent to actually pursue that path. However, after the first tutorials my storytelling bug took over and I decided to make a prototype. From that prototype, Into A Dream came to life.
Take a look at the prototype:
Into A Dream is already close to be completely developed. All voice acting has been recorded, mixed and added into the game. It will be released in July 2020, without any funding necessary for its completion. No risk of not getting the completed game!
This Indiegogo is to raise money for the currently volunteering voice-actors, localization, and communication/promotion. I would like to have the game translated to multiple languages, such as Spanish, German, French, Italian, Russian, Japanese and Chinese.
I've had a lot of emotional support and feedback from the Into A Dream community throughout development and would like to offer this opportunity to get exclusive rewards and experiences, and being the first to play!
Customise your Perk with these extra items. You'll be able to add on any of the below items once you get to check out.
I'm Filipe! I am an engineer/composer/writer that has worked as a biotechnological engineer and also have ventured into various artistic projects, most proudly as a director of an original musical theatre, with both score and libretto of my own.
Having delved into the game industry due to my love for games and stories, I see this medium as a wonderful and unique way to bring a story to life through a combination of visuals, interaction, music and storytelling, leading to a more engaging experience.
Into A Dream is my favourite game and as a solo developer, I've enjoyed every moment of it. Thank you for helping make Into A Dream a reality!
I've been very lucky to work with many voice actors who will all be credited in-game. Below are the voice actors for some of the main characters.
I've chosen to crowdfund on Indiegogo because of the flexibility it offers. I've funded myself throughout the whole development of Into A Dream and want to use this opportunity to pay the currently volunteering Voice Actors and people who have helped with localization. After the amount needed to pay them has been raised, I'll start focusing on communication and promotion of Into A Dream.
This game encourages more people to add their voices to the conversation of mental health. By supporting Into A Dream, you're helping to reach more people new to the topic of mental health. Expanding the discussion of men's mental health in particular is important for me as it's slowly becoming a more accepted topic.
I want to hear your opinion about Into A Dream. I've been very lucky to have an incredibly supportive community so far and they've helped make Into A Dream a better game for you to enjoy.
With Into A Dream being released in July 2020, almost all challenges - there were many - regarding development have been overcome. The full version of Into A Dream was sent to Steam to review in May 2020 and is waiting to be released.
Being a solo developer means:
Diverse skills - You need to be familiarized with completely different skill sets, from designing to programming.
Mental health - With its fair-share of risk, developing can be overwhelming. Having to bear with it all by yourself, maintain the focus and motivation to move forward from within and believing that what you’re doing will pay off in the end are incredible difficult to endure.
Scope - All tasks have to be performed by you, the time committed is only your own. It is easy to overscope due to ambition and to underscope due to fear of not being able to reach the desired goal.
My main challenge now is enabling Into A Dream to reach a large audience. I aim to do this through increasing accessibility such as translation and working with indie game marketing specialists.
Thank you for reading about Into A Dream! Please follow my emotional story-driven adventure and help make some noise about this campaign. Indiegogo has share tools which means it's really easy for you!
Looking for more information?Check the project
FAQ
Into A Dream has teamed up with CheckPoint, a charity that provides mental health resources for gamers and the gaming community.
25% of the amount raised with this Perk will be donated to CheckPoint.
The Coping Companion is a powerful tool containing over 50 evidence based tips for dealing with everyday stress and anxiety, distress, and more.
Into A Dream’s characters are built upon observations. They were created to be as human, as real and as complex as I can understand and put to paper. 
