The idea behind Sunrise: A Dieselpunk Fantasy was created first by ketskari of Sun Labyrinth who posted on the annual NaNoReNo recruitment thread about a simple fantasy-like story involving an owl needing additional writers and programmers. Zelda Knight of Cherubim Scribes was interested in helping out with proofreading or co-writing, and ended up being the main writer as well as the concept artist. She has always been fascinated with the dieselpunk genre, loved ketskari's previous work in the Asher series, and didn't want to do NaNoReNo alone again.
Zelda Knight and ketskari bounced ideas and did some research. Afterwards, ketskari outlined the story and started working on the art and GUI, while Zelda Knight began writing. From there the project proceeded to twist, transform and contort into the pretzel it is today. It went from silly to dark (not a direction anybody particularly regretted), and took on an choice bit of dieselpunk gloss that neither writer (it was her idea) nor artist could resist.
Finally, saguaro of Lucky Special Games brought it all together by programming the UI assets found in the game as well as some features such as text history.
With the announcement of Spring Thing on the Lemma Soft Forums, Sunrise eventualy was entered into the showing first as a pay-what-you-want venture, and now completely free for all. The UI art has also been released CC0 by ketskari, along with the code by saguaro, who has a long tradition of giving the community great tools like the Basic Message System. Since its creation Sunrise: A Dieselpunk Fantasy has received a series of Let's Play videos, a surge of generous donations the authors are thankful for, and even a review in Italian!