Oneirium

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Explore a nightmare. Lose your mind. See the truth.

Awaken to a realm where dreams and reality blur beyond recognition. As the Awakened One, you must traverse a haunting world of nightmares and fragmented memories, where nothing is certain and every shadow hides unspeakable truths.

Navigate through twisted dreamscapes filled with abhorrent creatures that defy comprehension. Master brutal combat, unlock arcane abilities, and forge your path through interconnected levels where each step forward reveals deeper mysteries about the nature of existence itself.

Help tormented souls uncover their buried truths while questioning your own reality. In this dark gothic horror experience, the line between salvation and damnation rests in your ability to distinguish what is real from what is merely another layer of the endless nightmare.

• Dynamic Sanity system that transforms gameplay and reveals hidden paths

• Intense and gritty combat with parrying, backstep-lunge, rolling, and weapon variety across melee, ranged, and arcane styles

• Brutal executions for each enemy and a devastating feel to eradicating foes

• Deep customization with mix-and-match passive trees alongside the trait system

• Rich NPC questlines exploring dark themes of trauma, identity, and survival

• 30-40+ hours of interconnected Victorian Gothic horror

• Built from scratch on a custom C++ engine (no Unity, no Unreal)

• Hand-crafted by a solo developer with 17 years of programming experience and a dedicated art team

Madness as Mechanic

The Sanity system is the heart of Oneirium. It transforms your perception of the world, your combat capabilities, and your understanding of the story itself.

How It Works:

You begin with full Sanity. As you explore, witness horrors, defeat disturbing enemies, and uncover forbidden knowledge, your Sanity degrades. But losing your mind reveals truth.

High Sanity

• The world appears "normal"

• Standard enemy behavior

• Full defensive stats

• Hidden paths remain invisible

Medium Sanity

• Subtle visual distortions begin

• Enemies hint at their true forms

• Defense reduced

• Some hidden paths become partially visible

• NPCs react differently to your troubled mind

• Oneiran, the one true tongue, begins to take form in all dialogue

Low Sanity

• Reality fractures completely

• Enemies transform into their true forms

• All hidden paths revealed, including shortcuts, secret areas, and entire new zones

• Oneiran becomes fully readable, unlocking ancient mysteries

• Defense significantly reduced

• New dialogue options can appear

• Walls shift. Colors intensify. Impossible geometry manifests.

• Risk of madness: permanently altering effects if sanity goes unmanaged

Managing Sanity:

Restoration is possible through rare consumables, certain NPC quests, and specific passives and relics. But degradation is inevitable. Witnessing death, reading forbidden texts, interacting with cosmic horrors, spending time in corrupted areas, dying repeatedly... the world wants you mad.

Strategic Depth:

The system creates meaningful decisions. Do you stay sane for survivability but miss secrets? Do you embrace madness to access hidden content? Can you survive low Sanity long enough to reach your goal? Which builds work best at different Sanity levels?

Oneiran:

Scattered throughout the world is a language only the mad can read. Carved into stone, whispered by the afflicted, hidden in plain sight. As your Sanity falls, the symbols begin to make sense. Learn to decipher Oneiran through exploration and discovery, and unlock secrets the sane will never find: hidden lore, clues to powerful items, insights into characters who cannot speak their truth aloud, and prophecies about what lies ahead.

Players can work together to crack the language, creating a community mystery that extends beyond individual playthroughs.

The Thin Line Between Worlds

"In the dream, we are all gods. In waking, we are all prisoners."

The World:

Oneirium takes place in a twisted Victorian-era world suspended between reality and nightmare. This is not our history. Here, the industrial revolution awakened something ancient and malevolent. Factories produce suffering. Churches imprison secrets. And people are slowly realizing that their world is just another layer of the dream.

The name comes from "oneiric," meaning of or relating to dreams. Dreams, nightmares, and reality have collapsed into one another. No one can tell the difference anymore.

Your Role:

You are the Awakened One, once human, existing between states of consciousness. You cannot die permanently. Death throws you back, implying you are trapped in a cycle. You see things others cannot. And as your Sanity fractures, you begin to perceive the truth beneath the lies.

But truth comes at a cost. The more you see, the less of yourself remains.

Brutal. Precise. Unforgiving.

Oneirium's combat draws from the best of the genre while carving its own identity. Every enemy tells a story. Every death teaches a lesson.

Core Mechanics:

• Parrying: Time blocks perfectly to deflect attacks and open enemies for devastating counters

• Backstep-Lunge: Quick backward movement with an offensive window to strike back

• Rolling: I-frame dodges for aggressive players who dance with death

• No Stamina Bar: Every action has weight, but you have full creative freedom to define your playstyle

Three Combat Styles:

Melee: Close quarters with swords, axes, and brutal weapons. High risk, high reward.

Ranged: Bows, crossbows, and throwing weapons for calculated, tactical combat.

Arcane: Dark magic and occult powers for those who embrace the madness.

Customization:

Mix-and-match passive trees let you build your character your way. Discover rare traits that fundamentally change how you play. Each weapon type has unique movesets and synergies. Active skills complement your chosen playstyle.

Enemies and Bosses:

Every enemy in Oneirium reflects human fears, traumas, and darkest impulses given physical form. These are not mindless monsters.

• Grotesque, memorable horror design

• Unique boss encounters with distinct mechanics and lore

• Sanity-based variations: as your mind breaks, enemies reveal their true forms

• Environmental storytelling through enemy behavior and placement

Combat Philosophy:

No artificial difficulty through damage sponges or unfair mechanics. Every death is a lesson. Every enemy is conquerable through pattern recognition, timing, and build optimization. When you finally defeat a boss after twenty attempts, you will feel it.

Stories Within the Nightmare

NPCs in Oneirium are not quest dispensers. They are broken people trying to survive in a world actively hostile to their existence.

Quest Examples:

• A mother searching for her lost child in a world where children disappear into fog and return... different

• A woman fleeing her violent past, only to find it manifesting as monsters that hunt her

• A knight, last of his battalion, losing his mind as he uncovers forbidden knowledge, forcing you to choose between truth and his sanity

• A priest questioning his faith as miracles and horrors become indistinguishable

Branching Narratives:

Your choices matter through:

• Sanity-based dialogue options revealing different conversation paths

• Timed decisions reflecting crisis moments

• Consequence chains where helping one NPC might condemn another

• Multiple endings per questline: survival, madness, or bittersweet redemption

Built with ZEngine, a custom engine crafted from scratch using C++ and SDL3. Special thanks to the SDL team for decades of dedication to open-source game development, providing the foundation that makes projects like this possible.

There is still many things left to do, as this is only in it's Playtest/Demo stage. See the Kickstarter for a full list.

The target release date is Q4 of 2027

Support us on Kickstarter to bring this passion project into a full in-depth game!

You can find this on our website or discord!

Why We Need Your Help

Every asset, every sound effect, every pixel has been paid for through my own commitment to seeing this game finished.

But to complete this vision, we need your help.

With your backing, we can:

• Commission additional professional art assets and animations

• Refine current artwork with more frames and detail

• Bring characters to life with professional voice acting (stretch goal)

• Localize the game for international players (stretch goal)

• Create animated cutscenes showing the brutality of this world (stretch goal)

• Properly market and QA test the game to the standard you deserve