We haven’t really posted that much for the previous couple of months, have we? To be fair, we were quite busy with Chronotopia’s development.
Our brand new promotional art by the talented Eirlysa Lawrence
(We’re funded at 75% and Chronotopia has been greenlit! There’s only 3 days to raise funds and make this project a reality so it’s now or never to support us!)
After PyriteKite/Kat, it’s Anako‘s turn to talk about her work. And she has quite a lot since she’s doing both the sprites and the event CG! I highly suggest checking out her DeviantArt account or following her on Facebook/Tumblr because she posts very pretty things~
(We’re 60% funded! That’s one step closer to our dream but there’s still a long way to go so keep on supporting us on Kickstarter and Greenlight!)
After writing two articles on Chronotopia‘s story (namely the concept and the characters), I’m making way for PyriteKite/Kat to explain her part of the work: backgrounds art. She’s very talented so check out her DeviantArt account~
* Note: I use Adobe Photoshop CS6 for creating backgrounds and take about a week to complete one depending on complexity.
Last time I talked about how I came with Chronotopia’s concept, this time I will explain how I selected Donkeyskin as the fairytale I was going to rewrite.
Beware, it is strongly advised that you’ve played the demo beforehand not to spoil the surprise and to understand better what follows. If it’s not the case yet, I warmly recommend that you go take a look!
It’s been a week since Chronotopia’s launch on Kickstarter and we’ve already reached 3 000€! It’s the perfect timing to come back to how the demo was made and evoke the content that’s planned for the full game. And as a good leader should set an example, I’m starting with my part: the writing!
Beware, it is strongly advised that you’ve played the demo beforehand not to spoil the surprise and to better understand what follows. If it’s not the case yet, I warmly recommend that you go take a look!
Here we are, it’s the big day: Chronotopia is now officially live on Kickstarter!
Chronotopia is a dark rewriting of the fairytale Donkeyskin : the young princess lives a peaceful existence in her castle, enjoying her days with her best friend and confidant, Nahima. That is until her father, gone mad since the death of his beloved, decides he should wed the princess instead. Donkeyskin has to find a way to escape from this fate, but how? She doesn’t know it yet, but it’s the beginning of a long nightmare that will take her to the edge of madness.
Inspired by a wide range of influences (literature, anime, videogames), Chronotopia is a unique and more mature take on a forgotten fairytale that includes many twists and choices that affect the ending: Donkeyskin can either escape with her servant, become a fairy, or die a horrible death. Multiple times. It’s up to you to save…or doom her.
It’s on starting blocks that the team is delivering to you the latest news before Japan Expo 2014. And, to start off on the right foot, here is our promotional visual !
Last time we told you all the orders had been send. In the meantime Projet Saya received the packages and was kind enough to take some pictures to satisfy our curiosity. Here is a sneak peek, I hope you’re drooling as much as we do XD.
The cover for the Short Story Collection’s hard copy
The music album
The bookmarks (don’t mind the ones on the left, they’re from Atelier Dreamnoid, one of the teams we’re sharing the booth with)
Being Beauteous’ posters
After a long month of fierce work, we were finally able to finish the Short Story Collection we promised during the Indiegogo campaign. Therefore we will sell it next to Milk first volume (episodes 1 to 3). Speaking of Milk, we’re deeply sorry to announce we didn’t made it on time for the English translation. If you buy Milk hard copy on our booth, you’ll have access to a patch later (if you want so) to correct that mistake. As for the free wev versions, they still are planned way later this summer, so if you didn’t preorder, you’ll have to be patient ~
In addition to the goodies sales, we really want to make the most of our talented artists. Roganis won’t be able to bring his music instruments as planned, due to technical issues, but our three lovely designers will make drawings on request. Morsy will only be there on Thursday and Sunday, whereas Melow and Orties will be there the entire week. Don’t hesitate to ask them !
Since Projet Saya has a camera, we won’t forget those who can’t go to the convention ! If you follow us on social networks (Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook), you’ll be able to see us clown around live XD.
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).
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 !
The 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 !
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 !
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 !
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.
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.
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 !
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! 
Those 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.
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.
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!
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 ;).