traumerei-project

[traumerei-project]

Hiya everyone! Long time, no see~!! >w</ I hope everyone's been doing well! And it sure has been ages since I posted on here. Just wanted to share some new art, since Träumerei is likely going to end late 2025, early 2026.

Once Träumerei is complete, I'm switching over my focus to "Death & the Saintess" (Featuring the two characters in the second image). 'Saintess' Milagros Santana & the last remaining Philippine death god, "Diwata."

I don't have time to make RPGMs these days. It'll be a novel, but if all goes well, I might try to draw a Webtoon version of "Death & the Saintess." The entire plot was outlined in-depth from start to finish, and it'll be much, much shorter than Träumerei.

[traumerei-project]

Träumerei, Vol. 1

Why has time stopped for no one but you?

Once upon a time there lived a vampire named Noël Rousseau. While his existence was one of monotony, it was familiar. All was well, and he was content...until a curious demonic girl and her magpie stumbled across the small cabin he called home.

Placed upon a crossroads, Noël must decide whether to continue on in ignorance or confront the mysteries of his past--particularly the reasons as to why he was trapped in that lonesome, isolated house for over fifty years, and the disappearance of his Aunt Delia. Unfortunately, the outside world is not as he remembers it to be.

---

Hihi everyone; long time no see!!!

Now that I'm nearly done with Vol. 6, I decided to make the first volume available to read online again! The series will end at Vol. 10 [100 chapters all in all, plus one epilogue].

The first five chapters are free to read on RoyalRoad, & I'll start uploading from Chp. 6 onwards!

Träumerei Novel Link

[traumerei-project]

hellooo! i found ur game on itch and saw it was marked as mac playable but it only has an exe file? does the mac playable thingy means like itll work on emulators orr???

Hiya~!! I'm really sorry about that; I assumed Macbooks could run .exe files! ^^; If they can't, I'll remove the 'Mac playable' option. Sorry about the confusion!!

[traumerei-project]

Hiya Anon~!! Thank you so much for your kind words; I really appreciate it! ^-

-Noël is 100% a vampire, but not the type that drinks blood. The original concept during the early days was that he feeds off of emotions, but that's not exactly the actual reason. I can't delve too much into this, but vampire lore runs really deep.

According to Greek mythology, one of the ways a vampire is created occurs when a cat jumps over a grave. That's not happened to Noël at all, but there is a very unorthodox reason as to why he's a vampire but doesn't display many of their common characteristics.

-That second question isn't something I can address here, but it's related to Noël's status in the final game. The answer is yes.

His Aunt is canonically a witch, so he definitely has an affinity for magic. Noël just managed to convince himself over three-hundred years that he does not.

-Aunt Delia is dead. Her ghost still lingers. Noël didn't actually kill her. The Aunt Delia that appears in Chapter 1 is more or less a "nightmarish version" of herself.

The only person who could really be held accountable for Delia's actual death is...herself. But there were many outside factors that led to it. Her love for Ilia, her desire for revenge, her inability to accept change, & the state of the world she lived in led to her throwing away her own life. It's something of a Rousseau family trait. I'd say she died the same night that Ilia did.

She was a kinder, warmer person two-hundred years before she met Noël. The novel excerpts here aren't the finalized versions. I'm typing this on my phone...unfortunately, I only have the rough drafts saved on it.

-Ilia is dead, & Lila is a different entity altogether. Attempting to "bring back the dead" is something of a family trait. Noël tried resurrecting Ilia after Adelaide died, because he didn't want to lose his only family.

But his efforts completely backfired, as Lila was already dead for a century at that point. This excerpt might not make too much sense since a lot of the characters mentioned in the 4th novel don't appear in the 2nd game, but this provides a bit more insight as to what happened with Lila/Ilia & Noël:

-Noël's been alive for over three-hundred years. He's lived through the Crusades, stopped by France shortly during their revolution, witnessed countless public executions, & encountered many lost, earthbound souls. It's not so much that Noël forgets things. He's just very, very good at pretending to be oblivious.

-The timeline was 100% all over the place in the games. It was an experimental project, & meant to begin in media res.

This may have gotten a bit too wordy. To balance things out a little, here are images of the novel covers. Azelle's, Henrietta's, & Adelaide's designs significantly changed, but everyone else more or less looks the same:

I no longer make games, but please feel free to ask if you have any questions about my creative process. Or anything with writing as well! When I'm not at work, I usually spend my time writing novels. My next long-term project is titled "Rigor Mortis" [Old name used to be "City of Bones"], so it'll definitely be a chaotic but fun series to work on!

Thank you so much for reading~!! <3

[traumerei-project]

hi there! i know u havent used this blog in a few months, but can i request if u come back to change ur mobile theme a little? the text and bg are almost the same color and it makes it nearly impossible to read ur description...

Hello~!! Sorry about that, & thank you for letting me know! I updated the mobile theme a bit. ^-^

Hope it's a bit easier to read on mobile now!

[traumerei-project]

Twitter's....well, going up in smoke, so I might try using Tumblr more often again. I'm about to get started on my sixth novel~!!

[traumerei-project]

Awwwwww, your style is really really cute!! Thank you again for taking the time to draw Noël; I love your art! And Happy Birthday as well~!! <3 <3 <3

It’s our birthday 😎😎

@traumerei-project

[traumerei-project]

Hi, i was looking through old posts and saw some posts mentioning voice acting, im just curious why the games didnt have voice acting in the end (nbd i just like to know the game dev secrets so no pressure)

Hi Anon! That's fine, it's no secret at all.

The reason why I didn't go through with voice acting in the end is because auditions were from around 2015. And then again in 2017. Chapter 1 didn't come out until 2019, and at that point I felt like it would be a bit awkward to contact the VAs since I hadn't spoken to some of them in 4 years. I didn't think anyone would have remembered voice acting at that point since it was so long ago. ^^;

All of the VAs are super talented! I follow some of them on Twitter, so it's really neat to see them continue with their work well into 2021/2022!

[traumerei-project]

I just opened my online store today since my business cards finally arrived! Noël plushies are available! There are also some Träumerei, Tangled, & Jibaku Shounen Hanako-Kun keychains. At the moment, I can only do shipping within the United States, but I'm trying to see if I'll be able to do international in the future.

Store Link

[traumerei-project]

hi, i was playing your games and it reminded me of black butler. i dont know if anyone asked this before but have you got inspiration from thst series? if not whats your inspiration to make this game?

Hi Anon, thank you for your support! ^-^

Black Butler is not one of my inspirations. I've seen comments about it for around six years now, so I figured I could address it here. You're perfectly fine, Anon! I'm sorry for talking about it here, but it fits into the topic--

I only watched the first 4 episode of Black Butler when I was 16.

I've gotten a lot of comments/messages throughout the years along the lines of, "Noël is just Ciel" & "You're clearly way too into Black Butler and you should just stop," so I'm put off from ever checking out the show again.

Of course, if you like it that's a-okay!

----

And onto something brighter, a lot of my inspiration just comes from dreams/nightmares I have. There was a dream I had for months about underground tunnels underneath my town, so I incoporated some of that into my stories.

I've always been into fairytales, so I wanted to try going for that sort of feel with the games.

Noël's design was influenced by Little Red Riding Hood, Red from Pokemon, and Seto Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh. No one's ever believed me about that last part, but I swear it's true. Kaiba was 10000000% an influence on his design, particularly with the coat.

Annabelle's design and namesake was taken directly from that one Raggedy Anne doll that's supposedly haunted.

As for the others, there wasn't any particular influence. I just like drawing cute, frilly clothing and bows.

Thank you again for your question; stay safe and stay well everyone!! ^^

[traumerei-project]

Thank you for this, Venti [https://mobile.twitter.com/KokomiVenti]. I choose to believe this is what Noel was doing in Kentucky.

This is now 100% canon.

[traumerei-project]

hi, i finished all the chapters and it was cool, but im so confused abt the timeline >.< could you explain it a bit? and is chapter 4 happens after all the others but its in the past?

Hi Anon! Thank you for playing all four chapters! Chapter 4 does in-fact happen before the previous three. I didn’t want to release everything in chronological order, but--

I’ll slightly summarize each individual chapter. Major spoilers beneath the cut.

Chapter 1: This technically takes place in 1888 [I never specified the location, but my headcanon is that the characters are in Germany]. Noël ends up falling into a ‘time loop’ with Annabelle, which was meant to slightly hint towards the idea of ‘time’ being rather unstable.

He mentions gramophones, the Wizard of Oz, driving licenses, etc.--All of which would have been impossible for him to know of, considering he was ‘locked away’ for fifty years.

Essentially, the entirety of Chapter 1--none of it can be taken at face value. Certain characters he encounters may not quite be as benign or malicious as they first appear--for example, Annabelle and Delia. Noël’s an extremely unreliable narrator. He’s confused and lost and completely out of his element. Also, as he has lived for centuries, a lot of his memories are heavily disjointed.

It is revealed [but not stated outright] in Chapter 3 that Wyvn, the grim reaper, had placed him on trial. 

This chapter is the most ‘recent’ memory he had. 

Chapter 2: It occurs during the height of the witch trials in Europe. 1524 A.D. The story was supposed to progress backwards, so this one [definitely] takes place before Chapter 1.

Noël worked as a freelance ‘exorcist’ prior to stumbling across Procession’s Way. He meets Ilia and the Sauer twins, among other people.

Admittedly, I should have made this more clear, but a small hint as to how things weren’t quite as what they seemed were with the faceless NPC sprites. They were the exact same ones from the previous chapter, which was meant to signify how Noël posessed absolutely no memories of them.

Another reason as to why I had this part be the second chapter was due to Henrietta and Adelaide Sauer. Compare their appearances to Wyvn...rather similar, right?

Chapter 3: This chapter goes right back to where Chapter 1 left off. It is technically in Noël‘s “”””present””””” time. 

It is revealed that he was on trial the entire time. The best way to phrase the previous two chapters were that he was reliving his memories on speedrun.

The reason as to why Noël kept jumping from one timeline to another was to highlight on the pasts of some of the other characters. I had wanted to feature Annabelle, Azelle, Rue, Lila, etc., etc., but due to a lack of time since I was a student at the time [and limitations as I was the only one working on this game], I instead tried to improvise a little.

I only discuss a tiny fraction of every character’s backstory, but I just really wanted to include them [if only slightly].

In the end, Wyvn swings their scythe on Noël. And so--

Chapter 4: I had been waiting years to finally get to this chapter. Not to make excuses, but it ended up becoming more like one giant cutscene. I had to cut out a lot of content as I kept getting sick during development. 

Anyway, this one takes place in 1943. Noël was actually born on December 30, 1930, but due to some very tragic events, he found himself back in time. He was actually wandering around for about ten years prior to the start of Chapter 2.

I’d say more, but I would be getting into more spoiler territory outside of the game.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All the way back in 2015, I wanted to make a game that consisted of at least 10 chapters. I learned very quickly such a thing would not be possible for a single-person developer to make within a relatively short time frame.

Instead, I tried condensing some key elements to 4 chapters, but even then--I only ever touched upon about 5% of the complete plot.

As a result, I tried reworking everything and changed how the games would progress. Chapter 4′s ending was already set in stone, but the way as to which the previous chapters would head towards that goal were tweaked. Characters were cut. Backstories and dialogue and many scenes were taken out since the games are very art heavy. 

I figured the easiest way for me to get around drawing so many assets that would only be seen once was to reuse them--for example, the NPC sprites which were repeated within a few chapters. It worked [for me, at least], since they fit into the whole Noël ‘reliving’ his memories throughout all four chapters.

I may not make games anymore, but I still continue work on Träumerei as a series of novels on Amazon. Unlike the games, the storyline within the books are completely linear and will feature a lot of the other characters [such as Azelle, Rue, etc.]. They will also contain stories that I couldn’t include withn the games due to time constraints. For example, two of the chapters in volume 1 center around giant birds who wear masks made from human faces, while others reflect a bit more on rarely seen characters such as Delia.

After this, I plan to work on a [completely unrelated] Webtoon by 2024, but that’s kind of getting off-topic.

Sorry for the essay, but now that the games are all 100% done, I wanted to talk about my game-making process a little bit! Thank you again for taking the time to read all of this, because gosh, I wrote a lot more than I intended. ^^;

[traumerei-project]

The e-book and physical versions of Träumerei, Vol. 1 are now available on Amazon!

The only difference here is that I stopped using Denise as my author name. I decided to use my actual name rather than a nickname for the final version. Thank you! >w</

Book Link

[traumerei-project]

My proof copies have arrived!!! Just need to read though one more time and update the ebook!

[traumerei-project]

Finished the final illustration; it looks like I'll be able to place in an order for a proof copy tomorrow! I've been deciding between having a plain background and coloring it yellow, but I think I'll go with the former.

Can’t wait to officially release this and start working more on character designs for my [unrelated] webcomic, among other things.

[traumerei-project]

Oh thank you for answering ^_^ cant wait to see more Rue, Azelle and Annabelle in the novel, I miss them. I think Traumerei would be a good visual novel, have you thought to make one?

Thank you Anon!! :D I wish they appeared more here, but their parts in the story are still incredibly far from over! Unfortunately, Azelle doesn’t appear until the second book. Annabelle’s important here, but Rue’s the more prominent character this time around, especially in the latter half of the first book.

I did briefly consider doing a visual novel, but I decided to step away from games. Working on RPG Maker was fun, but I want to try new things and branch out more to other mediums!

[traumerei-project]

:D Just finished chapter 4 and most of the mysteries were answered, but what exactly is going on with Rue and Azelle? Why Rue made a deal with Azelle to come back to life? And who is Rue looking for?

Hello; thank you so much for playing Chapter 4! I’m really glad that I was able to answer most of the series in-game! My intention was always to make the game start off super cryptic, but slowly start to address more about Noël’s background while keeping almost every other character vague.

To be honest, I mainly added that one scene at the beginning of Chapter 3 for me. Azelle’s my favorite character, but in the game, he doesn’t exactly...do much [Later on down the line, it’s very different, however]. It was a hint to a major plot point I had in mind since 2015, but knew that I could not include the whole entire thing due to personal constraints among other issues.

There are actually loads of characters I wanted to still include in-game [such as a time keeper who would switch ages from old to young again, along with a vampire obsessed with collecting mirrors]. But, in the end, the game is more about Noël with slight implications about there being more to the others and their world. What you see in the game is a very small snippet of the full-on plot. 

Though, to answer your question--Rue and Azelle are sort of-maybe friends. Had they appeared more together in-game, it would have been shown that they get along pretty well! They’re polar opposites, but that’s what they like and admire the most about each other. 

That’s something that will be addressed in the books, but--essentially, Rue is in this for revenge. Azelle was his only resort to achieve this at the time [not...that he actually has gotten revenge]. Rue’s family has caused a lot of suffering for very many people over the centuries, so let’s just say things ended really badly for him. In-terms of backstory, I’d say his is perhaps one of the darkest. Just as much as Noël’s, if not moreso.

Let’s just say...Rue is looking for ‘himself’. There’s a reason why he’s covered in bandages.

Thank you for your question, Anon! ^^