Thanks everyone ^.^ I was stuck for a while because I didn't like the messiness of having fixed width text routines like in Ash:Phoenix. But that I remembered that the Text() command automagically moves the cursor the appropriate number of pixels already :O so with a little hax (aka Deep Thought telling me the pointer to penCol) I managed to create the super-perfect align typewriter effect you see here

How long do you think the game play time is going to be?

I'm hoping it will be about as long as a typical calculator game--about as long as Dying Eyes or Desolate, if you've played those. The town, houses, and office building you see represent maybe 1/10th of the whole game? (estimate)

update! There's not a whole lot new about this externally, but I made a lot of changes internally. I did end up (kinda) rewriting the movement engine; it's actually a subroutine now. It takes a couple pointers as arguments, and can write kickback and movement to those pointers. Basically what that means is that all enemies now go through the same 8 directional collision checks and kickbacks as you do..at the cost of about 100 bytes . This is in preparation for the AI I'm about to put in (There's a very basic one present in the screenshot...it just moves towards you. Also I have no enemy sprites yet...)

Not in the screenshot:
-I also started to refine the npc engine...it can properly handle long (<2 line) conversations
-Added installation/free RAM error/quit messages to detect that the proper appvars are in Archive and that enough RAM is free, since it was suggested after StickNinja cleared a lot of people's RAM when they didn't install it properly

It's a bit hard to read, could you make it a bit clearer? Maybe by doing the background in gray.
The rest looks good.

you should definitely change something, now it's just too dark and the words are almost unreadable (tbh i could read it because i knew what was written there xs )

that's a lot better already now you can read what's written

Eh, I kinda like it this way. I don't want to have 'outlines' for the letters, and at this point each component of each letter is fully articulated... Call it an artistic vision if you will

Unless everyone else feels really strongly about it? I mean, most people will already know what it's supposed to say anyway

Wow, I just looked through this topic and I have to say, this is some really impressive stuff! Especially given the time you took to make it, which wasn't much. This even looks better in some ways than Ash

Keep up the great work, and good luck on the contest!

I guess I should provide another update+screenie...
Changed since last update
Enemy movement engine overhauled again...now supports 256 directions, simple obstacle-avoidance routines, and customizable attack and retreat patterns
16x16 enemies supported (not shown in screenie)
Many areas added, storyline modified slightly
Key/Door routines
Save bug fixed
Death routines created
UI overhauled to help the tilemapper run faster

To-do (required)
Add more behaviors for the AI (60%)
Sprite/Code more enemies (40%)
Sprite/Tile maps (70%)
Breakable tiles random chance give you health packs
Move some data to appvars to make more room (this will be an app)

To-do (if I have time)
Particle effects for enemy deaths and tile breakage
Fake wordwrapping
RLE compression
Consolidate appvars