Chromamania was developed by Dotted Umbrella. Game development began in 1999 when the DreamStation 2000, the successor to the DreamStation game system was announced at that years E4 developer conference.

The idea for the game came when Jordan Orsin, had a high fever in the summer of 1998 and dreamed a series of vivid dreams that ended up the inspiration to the game's contents, especially the contents of the Dreamlands.

The game begins with Chroma waking up and heading off to her university. There she meets her crush, Sonya. Chroma reflects on realizing she's a lesbian and how nervous she is around Sonya. After some lectures and a stop at the coffee shop she goes home to cook dinner and watch TV.

She falls asleep and seems to wake up in a different world, meeting a man with a TV as a head. His name is Teevo. He tells her that she is in the Dreamlands, a dream world that is tethered to her own. She goes through the world and meets a variety of characters before waking up.

The order of the characters met are dependent on game play decisions, however together they start telling a story of the world of the Dreamlands and the various characters and how they connect to her own world.

As she endures the Dreamlands she notices that she becomes less shy and manages to talk to Sonya and others around her. Depending on the route picked for romance and whether or not she wakes up from the Dreamlands can lead to a variety of different endings.

The gameplay is split up in two sections, the waking world and the Dreamlands. In Chroma's day life she goes to university and spends time at home with her sister and goes to bed. The gameplay in that section is more or less structured like a typical dating sim, the only difference being the need for Dream Points to progress further into routes.

In the Dreamlands it becomes more akin to an open-ended exploration game, although there's also certain characters there that can be romanced depending on how many dream points you earn.

Dream points are earned by walking around in the Dream Lands, doing quests for locals or finding them hidden around.

When Chroma is asleep and in the Dreamlands after a certain amount of npcs talked to which ups a hidden counter the player will be prompted to wake up. This can be ignored but the consequences of that are that you progress further down the Dreamland routes. 3 awake calls in total are given and depending on how many you ignore that can lead to different endings.

• Dreamland
  • Teevo
  • Kzerlythotep
  • Zazazan
  • Flyva
  • Voibbon
  • Professor Meowzaleth
  • Clovaknar
  • Traumgeheimnisfluster
  • Yanvya-Och

Chromamania was remade on the Miragee System as RE:Chromamania in 2024. While the story and format remain the same, simply with different graphics, the remake adds in an additional route. The route is called “The Awake Route” and is activated by deciding on day one to staying up all night instead of going to sleep, which was not an option in the original game.