I had a dream. I’m serious. I literally dreamt of Terdo.

Well, not exactly Terdo, but last autumn I dreamt of an alien species coming to our world. That species was tall and friendly but rather reserved, and it had not two but three biological sexes and genders. They arrived on Earth at a time when there was no global society anymore, no nations, states or governments — just scattered people trying to survive on a mostly empty planet they barely understood.

I usually have very vivid dreams. Some haunt me, some excite me, some inspire me.

That dream about a new species coming to Earth inspired me deeply. I started thinking about all the sci-fi franchises and blockbusters I know, and I began wondering: if I were, let’s say, president of a global government somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy, would I really order my people to invest unimaginably large amounts of resources into building giant spaceships over several decades, then send them travelling for two hundred years to another part of the galaxy, only to invade and exploit a planet in order to regain the resources I had already spent making them leave in the first place?

No, I wouldn’t.

I mean, we all know that no matter how impressive the special effects of certain world-destroying movies are, most of them are basically nonsense, and any physics student could tear those plots apart in no time. The same goes for faster-than-light travel or the warp technology of the Star Trek franchise (haha, good one!, and I consider myself a fan) and, honestly, for much of what we see in mainstream sci-fi.

So, unable to forget about the species I had dreamt of, I started doing research. I asked Google, ChatGPT, Wikipedia and a couple of other non-human entities smarter than me how interstellar travel could realistically work. Travelling through the galaxy, finding inhabitable worlds, sustaining civilizations across enormous distances, and so on, you know, just basic planning and stuff.

And that’s basically how it all started.

I collected notes, chat protocols and online articles. I began thinking about what could have forced such a species to leave its homeworld, and what might happen to Earth over the next thousand years. At some point, the word Terdo formed in my mind.

Admiring the books of Tolkien and Michael Ende during my youth, I once wrote a fantasy story about a boy travelling to a miraculous place called Shales. Back then, I even started to invent a language for that distant land and drew some letters for it. After writing 50 pages and going through half of the planned alphabet I dropped it for no reason. This time, however, I wanted to go further. I mean, I’am an adult now, I’m no quitter. Except for that one time back than and the other few times when I started to … never mind.

These are three of the letters I designed for the Shales language, I was 13-ish. Can you spot the letter I feel embarrassed for today?

I’ve learned a few languages over the years — although I don’t fluently speak more than English and my native German, plus whatever strange thing I occasionally stutter that vaguely resembles Italian. Still, I have a decent sense of how languages work. So I began experimenting, combining aspects of Georgian verb structures with elements inspired by Hawaiian sentence patterns.

I mean… these are the kinds of things I do when I’m bored.

I started make notes in a neglected appointment book. By the end of January, I had gathered a fair amount of material, accumulated many hours of sleep debt, and developed a clear vision of what I wanted to create.

I wanted to write a visual novel based on that dream of mine.

And that dream came true. Luckily, I get to share this journey with the closest person in my life. Together, we became Nēnē Vision Games.

Why “Nēnē”?

Well… that’s a story for another time.

These are my earliest notes from January 2026. I used a fancy appointment book with Portugese azulejos by Paperblanks from last year that I bought to get my shit together at work. It remained empty for 365 days but the cover looked oh so beautiful on my desk.