Creator Interview with sqewree: Making DiaLune

DiaLune is a dark, otome isekai-inspired visual novel written and illustrated by sqewree. It was the first published visual novel made with RouteVN Creator.

We spoke with sqewree about DiaLune's origins, making a first playable demo, and bringing a long-held story out into the world.

RouteVN provided partial sponsorship for DiaLune’s development.

I go by sqewree. I primarily create illustrations, and I aspire to become a VTuber designer and bring my stories and concepts to life.

The basic gist of DiaLune is that it is an isekai manhwa-inspired story. If you have read villainess manhwa, you will know what I am talking about. It is essentially an otome isekai story, but the protagonist is a man.

The biggest inspiration I drew from while creating DiaLune was my favourite novel, Resetting Lady.

It is a dark story about a girl called Carynne, who goes back in time whenever she dies. She always dies before a year passes, so she has lived through almost a hundred years of life.

I saw the opportunity to work with RouteVN. As an artist who also writes, I had not decided which medium I wanted to use to tell DiaLune. This opportunity felt fated and quite fitting.

DiaLune did not decide my visual direction. My existing visual library and general art direction decided DiaLune's look instead.

I have always loved macabre, cute horror aesthetics and themes in both stories and art.

Using RouteVN was simple. For the first stages of ideation and writing, I worked entirely in Ellipsus. When I was done, I pasted everything into RouteVN Creator. There was not one particular part of the workflow that stood out because every feature was intuitive.

Because the engine was still very new, I did run into a few issues while adjusting the visuals and navigating RouteVN Creator. The back-and-forth of fixing bugs delayed the process slightly. Otherwise, compared with wrangling code myself, it went very smoothly. I could focus all my attention on writing my story.

I was very scared, frankly. Receiving attention from my friends and even random strangers on the internet for a story I had kept in my head for so long felt like something I could not handle.

Now that some time has passed, I feel super relieved. Something I thought up did not stay in my head and get left to rot. It actually escaped my mind, and a lot of people loved it.

I learnt a lot about my limitations, the tools I have at my disposal, and what I should and should not have done. I feel more prepared to handle my next project, whether that means reworking DiaLune or making a sequel.

Honestly? No glaze: just try RouteVN. If you are new, RouteVN is a great way to put your ideas out and really visualise what they look like in action, rather than committing to learning how to code and use Ren'Py.

But also, just do it. It is the same advice I would give anyone starting a creative project: start that project.

Great question. I have not lost my interest in or love for the characters in this story. More importantly, I feel stressed that I have not shown everyone the best of DiaLune. Propelled by that stress, the full DiaLune game will definitely become a reality one day.

But I am stuck in hell. The hell called school. I am hammering in my fundamentals and learning art again. The good thing is that when I am back, I will be better.

I am finding every excuse to include DiaLune in my assignments right now, so think of it as me training in the mountains to create the best DiaLune ever. :p

Thank you for sharing your experiences with us, sqewree. Working with you and seeing DiaLune come to life was inspiring for the RouteVN team as well. We look forward to playing the full version of DiaLune one day!