5 months down the line since this project was started and the pieces are finally starting to fall into place.

We've started sorting out all of the nitty gritty legal stuff and have made some headway.

First off, Travelling Merchant is now officially recognized as an LLC, so we're a real company now which is pretty awesome.

We're in the process of handing out contracts to the rest of the team so that we can legally use their work.

Once all of that is sorted we'll be able to start pushing forward on actual game development.

Another thing you may have noticed is that you're reading this on itch.io instead of a Google Doc, we've gone ahead and set up an itch page so that we can easily share progress reports in a fancy dev blog, all professional like.

We have our own website in the works, but that will take some time before it's up and ready to go, so we'll be using itch in the meantime.

Now for some actual updates about the game's progress, the foundation of the game has been firmly set.

Most of the game's core mechanics are already complete, the main plot and characters are solid and the art style has finally been realized.

Our biggest hurdle so far has been our art style, we've gone back and forth with it a hundred times over, we wanted to achieve the aesthetic of the old PC-98 titles but were struggling to achieve the look.

Finally, something amazing happened and we managed to recruit a new artist to the team.

He has been working with pixel art for years and just so happens to appreciate the 98 aesthetic as much as we do. He agreed to guide our art team to achieve the look we want.
With his help we have finally overcome our big hurdle, we still have a ways to go but we're about to make some big progress.

Look forward to it!