Another week down! This week we're still working on more art, both in new scenes and character portraits, and I personally am working on healing the bones and ligaments in my ankle, which I damaged through the simple act of walking. These are the perils of game dev!

SHOPS IN PROGRESS

The biggest development in terms of features this week is the start of the Shopping mechanic. Most of what I've done so far is behind-the-scenes functionality, so unfortunately there's not a ton to show for it visually just yet, but hopefully that'll come in one of the next couple of devlogs. You know, just a little shopping window, something along these lines:

Take the image with a grain of salt -- early design, arbitrary numbers, and so on -- but you'll be able to buy and sell items, compare equipment with what you've already got equipped, and so on like that. I only expect there to be a couple of merchants in South of the March, but the larger game to come will have all sorts, each with their own unique stock. 

CURRENCY QUESTIONS

One question I'm still going back and forth on is exactly how to display currency. I've always used tried-and-true gold as a kind of colloquial marker for currency in everything set in this world, but this game is going to be a lot more granular in its buying and selling, and I like the sense of scale that a smaller denomination provides. It'd make gold feel weighty and valuable where it usually doesn't.

To that end, I'm currently planning to divide currency into two denominations -- copper and gold -- with a familiar D&D-style 100:1 ratio. Something might be priced like "10g 55c," for example. I'm going back and forth because that obviously complicates things for the player a little bit, but I think it's probably a fair tradeoff. If Like a Dragon: Ishin can do ryo and mon, I can do this!