We have been very busy over the last 2-3 weeks getting in a lot of new features and wrapping up our first map. The first thing (pictured above) is a mock-up of our new logo to go with the current title change. We felt is was in the best interest of the game to give it a more descriptive title so the team voted on ‘Hanako – Soul of the Samurai’ as the unanimous winner. This logo has been in the works for months, through countless rounds of iteration. The one above is about 90% done, the wordmark is complete there’s just a few optional elements being refined further. I’m proud to say that this logo was hand calligraphed on paper with Japanese brushes before being eventually digitized for actual use. We’re taking a very ‘essence-based’ approach to stay true to the culture as much as we can. (There are sketchbooks full of calligraphy samples for this logo, dozens of them. Maybe it’ll be part of our kickstarter one day *ahem*).

Art Update
We wrapped up the art pass on Night Streets (barring a few minor changes here and there) and all environment artists will begin focusing on our first large battlefield map, which we’re very excited to show you the design for when its ready for showing in the coming months. We also are working on the Archer character, getting it ready for rough implementation hopefully by March. Besides that we continue to get in more animations needed to put in functional versions of all of our core mechanics.

Programming Update
The programming team has been kicking major butt the past month or so with getting in a good bit of our milestone goals already. We recently have been playing around with Ki-based abilities like meditation and sprint in playtests and they are starting to feel pretty good. In the next update, we will be focusing on adding more weighted sprint attacks and continuing to tweak our basic combat system. In addition to the above features, a basic prototype of our long bow archery is in the works and is shown off in our Playtest footage video below.

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