The title makes the game seem like a VVVVVV clone, but Zzzz-Zzzz-Zzzz is lot different and tells a story about emotions, fears and the subconscious dreamworld of the human mind.

Indie Developer SaintHeiser and publisher Dagestan Technology, offers an adventure platform game that revolves around sleeping, dreaming, and nightmares, and what a person would go through if they were trapped in a never ending cycle of dreams without ever being able to wake up. The developer has literally taken the concept of a dream within a dream to the next level of dream-weaving. The graphics are simple 2D pixel-art and the controls mostly consist of the arrow keys and the Z button to do, well, everything.

Zzzz-Zzzz-Zzzz is the type of game that will make your brain hurt as you try to figure out which world is the real world, which is still a dream, and which is a nightmare, as every sequence starts with you waking up and then eventually ends with you either going back to sleep or dying. Is it all a dream? Is there a secret combination you have to discover to wake up? Is there really no end to this game?

Zzzz-Zzzz-Zzzz really delves into the psychological effects of being perpetually stuck inside of a dream, and it was actually quite fun to play. Check out the trailer that I linked down below to get an idea of just how deep the rabbit hole of dreams really goes.

The developer released a prototype to let players test the game out and I downloaded it to see what made it so special. I ended up spending close to two hours playing the prototype build as I became obsessed with attempting to wake up and find some sort of resolution to the game, but sadly, I was never able to wake up. Even when I thought I found the ending, it seemed like that still wasn’t the one true ending to the game and the key to waking up, like there was still something hidden within the dreams that I was supposed to find to truly wake up, and in the end, I was still stuck inside of yet another dream. In that regard, Zzzz-Zzzz-Zzzz is absolutely brilliant.

Every dream or nightmare in the game has a theme, concept, puzzle or a minigame that you have to follow and complete. Others don’t have a minigame or logic behind them at all and requires you to either climb back in bed and go to sleep again, or stand still in a certain location to transfer over into the next dream. There is also a “dream map” that you can eventually travel to that allows you to choose your destination and manually venture into previously visited dreams, but based on what I’ve seen from the dream map there could possibly be hundreds of dreams and nightmares hidden within the game for you to discover.

Zzzz-Zzzz-Zzzz has already been accepted by the Steam Greenlight community and has a Steam store page setup and ready to go, however, there is no official release date that has been given just yet for when the game will be available for purchase, but they do say sometime in 2016.

For further details and information about Zzzz-Zzzz-Zzzz or to download the free prototype, you can also visit the official website to learn more about the game.