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Welcome to SEKAI - Prologue Part 1

April 1st, 2025. Things were going as average, as far as your life was concerned, be it tumultuous or peaceful. It was even pretty normal for a holiday, for that matter. Nothing particularly new had happened, other than perhaps you’d had more time to think than usual. More time to reflect on where your life had gone thus far, and more about what you’d like to be doing with yourself.

More about music.

And what the art of song meant to you. To YOU, specifically. What DID it mean to you, exactly?

Still, in the midst of your average day, you stared at the screen of your device. Just to pass the time, of course, when… Well. You noticed something unusual. A file that shouldn’t be there, in your music folder. “Untitled.” You don’t recall downloading this. In fact, you don’t recall downloading anything new in particular recently, but there it was nonetheless, staring back vacantly at your eyes.

Perhaps it was an accident amidst your scrolling, or perhaps you were overcome with curiosity, but… Ultimately, the unfamiliar song began to play. As the world around you glowed white and triangular colors danced in your periphery, the strange tune filled your ears in a way you couldn’t yet comprehend, guiding your body to a strange new place you found entirely unfamiliar. Gone was the location of your everyday, replaced with something far, far more fantastical.

Was this what it was like to be spirited away? And… Why did it seem like three other people were appearing here with you?

[colorfuldreamsmkg]

For point 8 in the review, would it be possible to tell us anything about WHICH character types or elements you saw a lot of? I imagine there are both general community trends and things that differ game to game because they're common responses to its specific pitch/themes, but I'm curious if you have anything to say about either...thanks!

So, we think it's best to not get into extreme specifics as that could spoil things for both characters that got in and characters that didn't! Some people might go on to use their apps for other games in the future for example, but we can give some like... broad swathe examples or non-spoilers examples.

It's hard to, in this case, call them community trends as the vast majority of the overlap things were relevant to music culture and music-related tropes. Things that you might more commonly see in movies about musicians and their struggles. There was a LOT of that, and we had to pick and choose the ones that were the most unique out of that crop.

Something that wouldn't be a spoiler to note is that like 15% of the apps we got were bassists, and we didn't want to take that many bassists. That was just an unfortunate accident, as everyone loves bassists! They're cool and fun.

Once again, there's NO SHAME in using tropes! You totally can use them as support tools if they inspire you, and sometimes they can be an excellent starting point when building your OC. It's just generally beneficial to make sure you have unique stamps that go along with that trope so they have a solid identity, more or less c: Helps you stick out among them.

In this case, though, it's fair to note that something that normally would NOT have a lot of overlap, but for some reason just weirdly did this time. Sometimes that happens, y'know? It can be pretty hard to predict what's going to be the 'most popular thing' apped to a game sometimes. I saw a game where like a dozen of the apps were detectives once, and that is DEFS not the standard. It just happens!

[colorfuldreamsmkg]

General App Review

Hello! We wanted to give a brief general app review giving some trends we noticed in the apps we rejected compared to what we personally look for in apps. Do take this with a grain of salt, however, as this heavily revolves around what THIS mod team looks for rather than what every mod team seeks out! However, some of these notes might be useful to take with you in the future, or even if you opt to try to apply for a Churin game again someday.

As an additional note, many of the things noted on this list aren’t things that inherently fail an app! We can and have accepted apps that have done these things before. If your app had any of these things in it, that doesn’t necessarily make it bad! We had MANY apps we loved that we couldn’t fit into the game for one reason or another.

That said, here’s the list!

Ease of Read - As mods, we often have to read 40+ apps in a short span of time when picking a roster! Therefore, we often end up favoring apps that are easier for us to read, rather than requiring us to read the same paragraph over and over while trying to understand what’s trying to be said. Remember: An application isn’t a published novel, nor is it a scientific journal. At times, straying away from flowery prose and jargon can help the reader. Additionally, extremely long paragraphs that span half a page by themselves or series of events that are confusing and lack points of connection are much harder for us to get through in a timely manner. Poetic tools and technical jargon are better suited to the prompts section than the backstory, as those give us an excellent view of how we can expect you to write posts within the game.

Prompt Character Voice - Speaking of prompts, we noticed a trend of muns turning in prompts that didn’t give us a good view of your character’s voice! At times, a personality section only tells us so much, so the prompts are also designed with the hope that we can learn about your character’s behavior and mannerisms in practice. We received quite a few prompts that spent more time discussing the surroundings and unflavored actions that didn’t give us a good view into your character’s mind. We’d really like to see that!

Backstory Focus - We also ran into an issue where some people spent more time talking about their character’s backstory characters rather than their OC themselves. We WANT to know about your character’s life! We want to know how THEY viewed the world. While learning about other characters and how they shaped your own is valuable, it’s important that we get to the meat of what your OC’s own experience is, as well.

Missing Information - For the most part, the short answers section is like a quick review. It’s for the mods to have easy access to quick information we can look at during the course of the game for things like motives and such. We’d rather not go into a short answers section and be surprised by a secret that is completely life-changing written in one sentence that could’ve been described in detail in the backstory. Those are the kinds of facts we want to know more about! Details on those kinds of things are valuable to us.

Research - It’s important to research technology and illnesses, mental or physical, you’re less familiar with when you want to apply them to a character’s backstory! It’s important to us that real-world illnesses are respectfully-presented, and that technology that exists in modern day works the way it should.

Compatibility with the Game Concept - This game is all about characters’ strong feelings towards music bringing an entire magical world to life based on THEIR FEELINGS towards the craft! Therefore, we really needed OCs that felt passionately about music in one way or another. Characters who only had one afterthought paragraph dedicated to music or only had throwaway lines here and there about it didn’t really work with what we needed. And the same goes for characters who didn’t really care about the music they were making, nor had the capability to come to care about it later. They just didn’t work for this game! There’s a good chance they’d work well for others, however.

Duos - This is no fault to duos as a concept, nor to those who applied them, but we quickly discovered that duos were INCREDIBLY difficult to sort into units in ways that made sense for the duos themselves and the rest of the cast. Unfortunately, duos didn’t really work as well as we thought they might in practice. We genuinely apologize for that, as it was an oversight on our part! As a general tip, when submitting a duo, we highly recommend you also submit a solo app as a back-up. Duos tend to be popular as a whole and there's a generally limited amount of them any given game can accept.

Overlap and Cast Diversity - This is another one that’s not really anyone’s fault, and there's only so much you can plan for. To make a healthy and fun game, mods need to pick out a cast with a wide variety of characters. There were characters we REALLY wanted to take, but simply couldn’t because we received too many apps that did this one thing, or too many that did the other. The best advice we can give to avoid this, even though it doesn't ALWAYS solve the problem, is to make sure your character isn't solely an archetype. While taking inspiration from a trope is just fine, be sure that the character has individuality and personality beyond it, as well.

[colorfuldreamsmkg]

Full res link

Congratulations to our cast of 20! Prologue proper should be starting in roughly a week, as your SEKAIs are born!

Below the cut is the text version of the roster.

Unit 1

Bo Lau Fei - K-Pop Visual, played by Lovely

Hitome Hoshikawa - Cosmetology Student, played by Hes

Inazuma Dauza - Dance Game Mascot, played by Azurite

Pellonia - VTuber, played by Faust

Unit 2

Cecilie Erdon - Message in a Bottle Writer, played by Ser

Clarabell - Clown, played by Ember

Swan Song - Biomusician, played by Crow

Witch - NEET, played by Diddgery

Unit 3

Crimson - K-Pop Vocalist, Played by Rei

Dahlia Howardson - Percussionist, Played by Penny

Kanji Mochizuki - Florist, Played by Gato

Suzie Dean - Librarian, Played by Luca

Unit 4

Emile Dupont - Orchestral Music Director, Played by Ash

Johann Reiher - Abstract Artist, Played by Roadie

María Dolores Aguiar - Singing Competition Judge, Played by Zwei

Sonny Desirée - Roboticist, Played by Pastry

Unit 5

Erika Singer - Retail Worker, Played by Nan

Jedidiah Jones - Mechanic, Played by Roark

Ozzy Driscoll - Tattoo Artist, Played by Maya

Takuma Sanzou - Bartender, Played by Aster

[colorfuldreamsmkg]

[Link to full-res]

And the roster is...

Mafuyu - In the Warmth of Glowing Dusk (Trained) Emu - One Who Laughs at the World (Trained) Ena - The Best Angle (Trained) Airi - Shine on Me (Trained)

Ichika - Tonight's Stalemate (Trained) Saki - Prayers Soaring into the Sky (Untrained) Nene - The Gap is Laid Bare (Trained) Kanade - Flowerbed of Memories (Trained)

Honami - Grateful for Courage (Trained) An - Time for a Decisive Battle (Untrained) Kohane - After the Climax (Trained) Rui - Longing for the Old Days (Trained)

Toya - Feelings That were Buried (Untrained) Shizuku - Keep You From Falling (Untrained) Haruka - Together With Our Little Fans (Trained) Shiho - With Refreshments in Hand (Trained)

Akito - A Night of Defeat (Untrained) Mizuki - Reverse Hermit (Trained) Tsukasa - Together with a Little Star (Trained) Minori - My First Vocal Range Check! (Trained)

[colorfuldreamsmkg]

Happy Miku Day!

Hello folks! We come bearing good news!

First of all, happy birthday to Miku!! Do not forget to sacrifice all your belongings to the queen.

Second of all… We have an official roster date for you! We will be dropping the roster on September 10th 5 PM CST! Game start will likely be roughly a week after so people get the chance to meet each other and all our ducks are in a row, but our full cast and units will be revealed then c:

We will be deleting the server one hour prior to roster drop so be sure to have everything you want off of it saved beforehand. And make sure you have friend requests and DM's open, as well, as we will be sending you the server invite if you got in through Discord, and we might not have some of you added already.

In other news, we will have a super special bonus post going up on September 3rd 5 PM CST, so look forward to it!

[colorfuldreamsmkg]

CHEERING FOR YOU MODS GANBATTE

THANK YOU KINDLY!!

[colorfuldreamsmkg]

Progress update!

Hello everyone!! I know it's been awhile since we've given a formal update on how progress is going, and we're overshooting our estimate on when things will be done a bit, huh? So I figured we could write out a bit of a progress report for transparency on how all of that is working on our end for both the server and the blog! So here's how it's going!

Roster selection - 100% (Power role(s) contacted and confirmed) Prologue and Ch1 Maps - 100% Document compiling (gacha, character sheet, etc etc) - 100% SEKAI creation - 70% Roster art sketched/lined - 65% Map Art - 50% Roster art colored/shaded - 35%

As you can see, we're about 75% done overall! We should be able to set a proper roster drop date for y'all pretty soon, even though we're not quite ready for an exact date number yet. Hopefully within the next week or so we can drop a label on it!

[colorfuldreamsmkg]

Hatsune Memeku

[colorfuldreamsmkg]

oo ee oo

[colorfuldreamsmkg]

That's a wrap! Apps closed

The submission box is now closed, as the last mods are going to bed! Thank you for everyone who turned in, we ended up with a lot of apps in the end! If you have any questions for us you're still free to ask either over discord or tumblr asks, but we won't be accepting any more apps from this point on, nor will we accept any changes to apps already turned in with the exception of OOC information (changes in discord username, OOC pronouns, etc).

We'll have more updates for you soon, but for now it's time for us to sleep… And after that, time for us to read all the apps we've gotten!

[colorfuldreamsmkg]

And time is up!

Alright folks! The official app period is now closed! Be sure to check the blog hopefuls page and the submitted apps channel to make sure your app made it in.

If for some reason your app didn't go through, You now have a grace period of 4-6 hours for those who had tech errors and the like to send something in. Mods are/will be busy from here on so we may not respond to questions in the timeliest of manners, so bear with us on that.

Break a leg, and we'll keep you all updated as we progress in roster selection!

[colorfuldreamsmkg]

It's the final countdown!

Hello folks!! This is our final posted reminder about apps to mention that they're due tomorrow, so make sure you have them in by June 24, 2024 11:59 PM EST!

Additionally, if you've already submitted your app and it's not showing up on this page, then it hasn't come in on our end! Tumblr probably glitched and didn't send it properly. Try to send it to us again before it's too late.

Before anyone asks about it, though, we will have a grace period to account for tech disasters and the like, but there's no solid cutoff point for that. The grace period ends when mods are in bed. That's usually somewhere from 4:00 AM to 6:00 AM EST, but we won't guarantee any solid exact time on that. Therefore, to absolutely guarantee you'll make it in time, try to submit by the deadline proper.

Break a leg!

Colorful Dreams is a game for 18+ muns, runs on multi-day submission trials through the tumblr blog, with threading occurring on a discord server. App submissions are now open and close on June 24th at 11:59 PM EST!

About || Mods || FAQ || Apps || Hopefuls || Hopefuls Server

[colorfuldreamsmkg]

What's the status of real-world brands/properties other than vocaloid? Should we namedrop, come up with spoofs, or just try not to mention names? (...specifically can I call Discord Nightcord, since PJSK and thus the idea that Nightcord is a fictional knock-off of a real app called Discord doesn't exist?)

We have a preference that you use actual brand names so everyone's on the same page! If you want to make up a rival brand or have your OC make a fake company and whatnot that's fine, but be sure to write a note for it in the 'changes in technology/politics/etc' section so we can put that on a public lore doc so everyone knows that's the case.

The only exception to this is the use of Nightcord since that's particularly relevant to ProSe lore. We will also create a lore doc bullet for it for folks who haven't played the game before.

[colorfuldreamsmkg]

Last Week Remaining!

Hello folks! We've reached the final week of apps being open! As a reminder, the final due date for apps is June 24, 2024 11:59 PM EST! This will not be extended, nor will personal extensions be offered. We will post another reminder the day before apps are due.

As a note, this will also be the deadline to submit any changes to your apps! Like correcting typos or adding more details. The only exception to this rule is changes to OOC information (like mun pronouns and triggers/squicks, etc). If you make any changes be sure to highlight the changes and inform the mods!

That said, good luck with getting your apps in! We're excited to read them :3c

Colorful Dreams is a game for 18+ muns, runs on multi-day submission trials through the tumblr blog, with threading occurring on a discord server. App submissions are now open and close on June 24th at 11:59 PM EST!

About || Mods || FAQ || Apps || Hopefuls || Hopefuls Server

[colorfuldreamsmkg]

is yuri allowed? ^^;

[colorfuldreamsmkg]

Do we have to include everything our characters might need for music in their personal belongings? Particularly if they wouldn't/couldn't necessarily pack it in their luggage (even if that's not quite the situation), like an instrument they can play but don't have their own/don't initially want to for whatever reason? Same question for amps/gear for electric instruments. Thanks!

Nope! You primarily just need personal belongings that would be specific to your OC like toiletries they prefer or comfort items/games and such. There will be musical instruments available in-game you can get if your hopeful wouldn't own/travel with one.

There is a limited amount of space we can grant for personal belongings as it is, so cutting down on instruments when you can just grab 'em in-game still works, too!