You know, when I dream, it’s never very liminal or even what I’d call Dreamcore. It’s usually pretty ordinary. Maybe I’m back in school, maybe I’m doing some boring thing. Reading. If I have a really oddball dream, like fighting off space aliens who turn people into bushes, it’s narrative-driven and surprisingly consistent. Meanwhile, the Dreamcore aesthetic itself is more based in surrealism, nostalgia, and uncanniness. Like walking into a Windows default wallpaper circa 1999.

Dreamcore: Rabbit Hole (not to be confused with the other Steam game just called Dreamcore), is a walking sim that tries to evoke that aesthetic. Honestly, after trying the demo, I’m a little mixed on it, but I generally like what they’re going for.

The game takes the idea of being stuck in a near-endless and repetitive liminal space and just recreates that. There are no mysteries or (at least in the demo) interactive elements. You just walk. And walk. And walk. All to the sound of a repeating song filling the air, passing countless identical houses on your way to anything at all. The final destination is a door you can’t even open, because it’s already opened.

In a way, that kind of weird boringness, where you start to wonder what the heck is even going on, fits the genre perfectly. How long is this walk going to take? It didn’t make my mind wander the same way POOLS did, but it definitely left a kind of residue in my mind. It’s also funny because reviews of the demo are severely mixed, but according to the game’s own description, it’s exactly what it says on the box: Dreamcore you can walk through. On the Steam page, they write that it’s for “fans of dreamcore, liminal spaces, and atmospheric walks.” Keyword being walk.

Whether or not you’re into something like that is entirely up to you.

It’s not without some narrative, though. The opening of the demo puts you in the role of a father who’s staying late at work, arranging folding chairs and lights in a studio for what I’m guessing is some kind of morning show interview. He gets a phone call from his daughter, but suddenly an odd white door appears on the set, and away he goes. In the game’s Steam Discussions, the developer shares a bit of their idea behind the first level:

“The goal was to create an extremely saccharine suburb of cookie-cutter houses, so it would feel like everything is so identical – like the American dream of those years – but in reality no one wants to live there because there’s no personal identity. In fact, the place is oppressive, constantly reminding you that you’re just like everyone else.”

So there are things to pull from it. The demo includes that one level, but they promise other stranger worlds to walk through (some of that appears in the trailer). You can try the Dreamcore: Rabbit Hole demo right now on Steam, and the full game releases on April 7, 2026.

Last Updated: Mar 5, 2026 Video Games Published: Mar 5, 2026