Japan Expo is getting closer

Japan Expo is coming soon, so let’s give some news about what we’re preparing for this event ! Spoil : a lot of things (as usual).

Goodies

Items have been successfully send to be printed. Among the various stuffs we already showed you, there is one we hadn’t finish at that time. Indeed Morsy couldn’t find the time to do the last bookmark so Orties had to take care of it in her place. Here’s the result, I hope you’ll like it !

Miruku_Marque_Page-typoThe other thing is about the music album. It was intended to allow you to fully appreciate Roganis’ work but we also thought about making it a Milk OST, which wasn’t a good idea given that we haven’t finished the game’s music yet. So, all things considered, Roganis finally made up his mind and produced the following tracklist for The Milky Way of Music !

Album

1 – Shadow of the Moon, Sea of Shadow
2 – Un Matin Rayonnant
3 – Clepsydra
4 – The Dream of a Little Planet
5 – Les Cloches du Couchant
6 – Wind in the Hair
7 – Song of Storm ~Roganis Remix
8 – Crépuscule du soir mystique
9 – Endless Road
10 – Lost Woods ~Roganis Remix
11 – Le carrousel des Rêves
12 – Pluie de Cendres ~Gymnopédie
13 – Nevermore

The music album will have 13 tracks including a good amount from Milk (all episodes mixed up, even those that haven’t been released yet) or Träumendes Mädchen’s games, but also some covers and an original one. The first edition will be printed in very limited numbers and a lot of people already reserved their copies during the crowdfunding campaign, so there won’t be much left. If you’re interested in having one, please do tell, so that we know in case we’ll have to produce some more copies !

Milk Episode 3

Milk 003

Good news : the game is almost finished. We only have some programming to do and Episode 3 will be available for the convention. We took that chance to completely remake the textbox (from the old GUI) and enhance Episode 1 translation that wasn’t on a par with the rest anymore. Yet, having to deal with some withdrawals, we find ourselves very short to finish Episode 3 English translation. We’ll do everything we can in the remaining time but we might not be able to finish it on time for those attending the convention. We’re crossing our fingers !

Short VNs collection

Since we met the first strechgoal of our Indiegogo campaign, we’re working on a compilation that will include all of our little projects.

Being Beauteous is currently receiving quite the makeover ! Roganis remade his old tracks and some new ones to enhance the sound experience while we’re doing a brand new GUI inspired by Melow’s poster. We’re also redoing all of the CGs to stick to the new size (1280×720 instead of the old 1024×768) and ofer a more polished experience. Since Morsy didn’t have the time, Orties once again took care of the art and her style is of course very different. We tried to stick to the original spirit and we hope you’ll like the new graphics.

scene 01

As for Ambre, as promised we’re redoing the translation. We’re trying to enhance some backgrounds as well, as you can see on Melow’s sketch.

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However we’re experiencing issued with How visual novel changed my life. We wanted to add some extra scenes but we’re finding ourselves overwhelmed by the workload. Since it’s our more recent game, we’d rather focus on improving the old ones and won’t be able to deliver the extra scenes. We’re deeply sorry for the inconvenience.

Our schedule before Japan Expo is tough but we have a lot of energy to burn and we really want to please all of our fans =).

On a very different subject, the Träumendes Mädchen team is finally getting a real website. The devblog has become inadequate and we want browsing to be easy. Modifications are to be expected soon, we’re keeping you informed !

Träumendes Mädchen at Japan Expo 2014

The whole Träumendes Mädchen team is very proud to announce that we’ll be at Japan Expo 2014 from 2nd to 6th July !

For a long time we were hoping to come at a convention in an official way and that’s now a reality. You’ll be able to find us at our booth to discuss our various projects, chat or enjoy our fabulous artists : our composer will improvise some music and many designers will do little illustrations on request. If you’re passing by, go visit us, we’ll be very happy! Chibi_1Those who read How visual novels changed my life, our recent Nanoreno project, must have understood by now but we’re planning to come to japan Expo with something for you. Indeed, as exhibitors, nothing would please us more than to offer our fans some goodies. The thing is, we’re too poor to afford it by ourselves, that’s why we teamed up with Atelier Dreamnoid and Enless Seasons, two others visual novel creators, to gather our ressources. With the help of Projet Saya who kindly proposed to take care of logistics. We just launched an Indiegogo campaign to collect the funds we need to go to our first convention together.

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Here, at Träumendes Mädchen, we’ll be offering some goodies : three designs for posters, three design for pin-badges and three designs for bookmarks (the last one isn’t finished yet) for our different games (Being Beauteous, Ambre and Milk). There will also be a music album composed by Roganis (we’ll be showing the tracklist sometime soon) as well as physical copies of the first three episodes of our visual novel Milk. This edition will feature technical improvements over the online version, a new illustration for the main menu and the exclusive episode 3! Indeed, the lucky owners of the physical version will have access to the story as soon as early July while the others will have to wait until the end of summer.

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If the initial goal is met before the end of the campaign, we’ll be offering even more choice! With the first stretch goal, we’re going to produce a re-mastered compilation of our short projects with improvements here and there : How visual novels changed my life will include additional scene with new extra illustrations, the translation of Ambre will be enhanced and we’ll redo some of the backgrounds, where Being Beauteous will receive a new GUI (with some graphical enhancement if we still have the time). And with the second stretch goal, we’ll have twice as much goodies to offer!

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So, if you liked our work or if you want to support the western visual novel creation, don’t hesitate to pre-order on our Indiegogo campaign, even if you’re not coming to Japan Expo : we’re shipping products, with additional fee sadly. Even the simplest donation will be helpful. The whole team is counting on you ;).

2013 report & 2014 plans

Happy new year everyone ! As I said previously, I’m trying to write on the devblog, which has been a bit disregarded lately (and woken up with a huge post) by telling you more about our projects than “We’re working on it”. So, I’m taking advantage of this changing in year to make a report of everything happened during 2013 and what we are planning to do in 2014.

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2013 : hill start

After 2012, which was mostly occupied by the formation of the team and its difficulties to get to work, with most of the time dedicated to Milk’s production, it became urgent to produce something concrete (and I’m not even taking into account our entry in the No-Xice visual novel contest which was more of a warm-up). So we managed to release the first episode of Milk last February with great relief.

Old GUI

The old GUI

The visual novel I had in mind was a suicidal project : huge scenario, huge amount of artwork, managing people blindly, recruiting too early, many begginer mistakes and all. With a project like that, we should have crashed at some time or another, but nope. We managed to release a first part. That can seem ridiculously little to most people, but to us it means a lot, we felt like we’ve survived the hardest.

Obviously, my writing style being what it is, some people were a bit bothered by it, and that doesn’t surprise me. I’m well aware that what I write isn’t made to appeal to everyone and that just a handful of crazy people will like it, but that won’t stop me. After all, I’m here because I’m passionate XD What saved Milk’s release was the switch to an episodic format (the first episode being only 10% of the game, I’ll let you think about what would’ve happened if I aimed for a single release : the team would be dead) and it also allowed us to improve ourselves between releases. Yeah, we’re trying to improve more and more! Rome wasn’t built in a day, after all…

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We’re even on one of the EVN Thread banner, wow =’)

In March, we decided to take part in the Nanoreno, an international visual novel contest with a limited deadline, which was super intimidating (I mean look at the other participants). Despite that we managed to finish the game on time and Ambre was released the first day of April. I though the little story I had in mind lend itself well to something like Nanoreno and the feedback from the Lemmasoft community have been really heart-warming so far (don’t know if many French people enter the contest usually). So, the whole experience seems a little success. I might do a new version a Ambre one day to correct all the little things we couldn’t improve back then (who said translation ?).

FP cover

Two releases in one yeat, that’s not bad for a small team of beginners, I think we can be satisfied. Well, two and a half since I had to lend all my team members between april and june to help making Faith/Puella, a shot kinetic made to pay tribute to Urobuchi (he was coming in France at a convention). I offered some advices and did what I could to help and the result, without being a masterpiece, seemed nice enough to me. Especially for a large temporary team who lacks cohesion. Sadly, the difficulties they run into while trying to sell physical copies at Japan Expo disheartened the various project leaders. At least, their misfortune showed us that selling visual novel, even with the best of intentions, isn’t an easy task. It’s a pity the game faded from memory since then. Especially because a V2 (with improved GUI and some corrections) is waiting in a closet for a while. It might be released soon, who knows ?

Well, after that break, we went back to working again in june and I made fewer and fewer news. Why ? Well, first reason being summer is THE season for procrastination : everybody having vacation at a different time, the team is almost paralysed and it’s easier to go with the flow instead of working… Second reason being we’re still making progress but very slowly. Doesn’t really motivate to make news.We’ve almost finished episode 2 : sprite are ready, chibis are ready, Gui have been nearly totally remade…but we’re stilling missing somme backgrounds and the CGs.

 

2014 will be challenging

So, what do we have in plan for 2014 ? It goes without saying but our priority is to finish the already under way Milk episode 2. We didn’t make it in time for 2013 and passed the deadline (I was too optimistic…again…ahahahah) but I think we can do it early 2014. The when is a whole different story.

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What the new GUI will look like. Way better, right ?

We’re also thinking about trying Nanoreno again this year. If we do it, the project will be very different compared to last time. I might say it will be just the opposite in terms of atmosphere…

If possible, well most certinaly, we will try releasing episode 3 faster than the previous one. Since it’s lighter in terms of ressources, it should be a little less time consuming to make.

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Teaser of a chibi I intend to show for episode 2 release ~

At this point, doing all that would already be quite satisfactory, because not every indie team can afford to release two or three thing per year. But wait, there’s more ! In fact we have a new super special awesome secret project (because all secret projet are obviously super special awesome). Something a bit different than what we usually do. I can’t say too much for the time being but it will witout doubt represent a shit load of work so 2014’s gonna be a challenging year. Anyway, if we’re doing well, you’re gonna get news really soon ~

Being Beauteous English and German Version Released !

It’s been nearly a month since we release Being Beateous now. At first, it was just a little project we made mostly during the VN contest organized by No-Xice for the Epitanime event (so, yeah, it took less than a week to do this game), but we felt it would be great to seek foreigners’ advices too. After all, Roganis (the composer) and myself (the writer) were following the Lemmasoft community (possibly the biggest forum about visual novel) for quite a long time now, so it feel almost natural to post there to see if people would be interested in our work despite the fact it was written in french. I was pleasantly surprise to see there were some encouraging comments and, luckily, we found translators willing to help us. So, we’re very happy to release an english version for our visual novel. I hope English folks will enjoy Being Beauteous as much as we had fun creating it !

titre

Once upon a time, in a far away kingdom, there was a young woman, bullied by her evil step-mother and her step-sisters. It is said that her Fairy Godmother helped her to marry a prince and that they lived rich, happily ever after and had lot of children. Or maybe it was a lie and the story didn’t go as you would have expected…

EDIT 19/07/2012 : Thanks to Marcel Weyers, we also have a German translation now !

EDIT 16/08/2012 : The remaining typos have been corrected. We took that opportunity to release a “multilingual” version that includes both the original text and its various translations.

EDIT 20/02/2013 : File now hosted directly on the Devblog

New link to download the game (Français / English / Deutsch)

Link to listen to the game’s OST

Credits :

Writing/Project leader

Helia : Twitter / Blog

Art

Morsy : Twitter / Deviant Art

Music

Roganis : Twitter / Soundcloud

Programming

Keul : Twitter / Blog

GUI

Faf : Twitter