Ukrainian hardcore platformer Through the Nightmares about a prison of horrors gets demo and trailer (+release date)

Ukrainian platformer Through the Nightmares by Sandman team has finally received a final release date and a demo for consoles.

Game development lasted nine yearsand now the project is entering the final stretch. В Steam The project has already managed to gather a base of players who have experienced the suffering of this hardcore game. They already know that Through the Nightmares — is a platformer in the «died, tried again and so on in a circle» style.

In Through the Nightmares, the player becomes the Sandman — a kindly spirit who brings pleasant dreams. He confronts the distorted god of dreams, Morpheus, who has kidnapped children and turned dreams into a prison, and Sandman saves them. One of the main game mechanics is the ability to change the size of the character, which is associated with many puzzles and hidden elements. The function affects the inertia, jump trajectory, interaction with traps, and opens new paths on the levels.

Among other features:

• Instant rebirth after death.
• Checkpoints through collectibles — you choose where it’s safe to save your progress.
  A reactive environment that changes based on your actions.
• Collectibles with a story — they reveal the children’s past and the truth about Morpheus.
• Eerie soundtrack and low-poly styleA style of 3D graphics where objects have simple shapes with visible edges. It looks as if everything is made of large pieces, like paper figures or old video games., which perfectly conveys the atmosphere of nightmares.

It will be very difficult to complete the demo on the first try due to the game’s ruthlessness. The new trailer emphasizes the complexity of the game and shows several new gameplay moments. The demo is available for the first time on PlayStation and Xbox, and players on Steam could play from earlier versions. But the demo will be available a little later Nintendo Switch — June 5.

The final version of Through the Nightmares contains more than 45 levels divided into 3 chapters and 6 gloomy locations, each of which is the personification of a child’s fear. They include dark forests and crumbling castles, but also classic monsters from under the bed. Also, the locations are filled with other living fears of children: spiders crawling on the walls, ominous silhouettes among the trees, highways with cars, etc.

The full version of Through the Nightmares will be released on June 19, 2025 on PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. On consoles, the publisher is Pingle, a Ukrainian studio that has previously worked on ports of many international games.

Source: Sandman press release