PROGRESS UPDATE:

First playthrough complete!  Most of the bugs have been squashed, and I think the game is mostly fair.  Here's what's next before I release an "early build" for final testing.

Saving games to appvars, plus a system to make sure a player can't save too often
A second playthrough to make sure everything works perfectly
Making the game's manual
A list of 12 bugs / items for polishing which are not worth listing here

Hopefully an early build will be ready within two weeks.

I love those graphics. By the way, is the fade-in/out effect generated with grayscale or do you change the contrast? On some calculators the screen darkness is different than other hardware revisions or models, so the best thing would be to make sure the fade-out effect starts at the current screen contrast value and that fade-in returns to that value, rather than returning to a fixed value set by the game. One of my old calc RPGs is unplayable on a TI-84+ from 2011 because the screen is too dark to see anything.

Second test-run complete!  I had to fix a lot of bugs that occurred from moving between levels, so I need to give it one more playthrough, but since this can be done in "invincibility mode," it shouldn't take long.

I also have to finalize the game's PDF manual.

Hopefully an early release build will be ready within three days!

Well, I thought the game was pretty much complete, but something was bothering me.  After level 6 there are no more "face 3 enemies at once," which is part of the challenge of the game and how you can use what you've learned.  I couldn't think about how to implement this because of several factors (including Megan's role as a helper), but now I can fix this.

I haven't received a single message about bugs or balance changes, so if all goes well, I'm going to officially release this the end of January 2022.  Here's a list of what I plan to change between now and then for those who are curious:

MAJOR CHANGES:
* Give Megan a stronger attack, but using it outside of emergencies or groups of enemies is disadvantageous
* Add groups of three enemies to levels 9, 10 and 11

MINOR CHANGES:
* Don't force Megan to always be the first to attack.  This can be the player's choice.  By forcing Megan to attack first, I found some frustration trying to take down shields with proton weapons.
* Make the enemies in levels 9, 10 and 11 a little weaker.  I'm okay with "farming" for money, but I felt it was getting ridiculous by level 9.
* Add an additional teleporter to level 1, further removing the frustration of not being allowed to save wherever you want
* Add another "automatic save point" to level 10
* Make it so that an enemy will launch a second attack after temporarily disabling a player or after being allowed to "dodge" again.  This means making a few enemies weaker to compensate.
* Take new screenshots (of course!!)

What I can say is that this game is quite polished so far and you have polished it even more with this update I am sure (although I haven't gotten very far yet). Hopefully the bug can be fixed without too much hassle. Sometimes bugs take a while to figure out >.<

The game's official release date will be January 31st!  (By "official," I mean that it will be released on ticalc.org and will no longer be considered "early-release.")

Apart from optimization and more spit-and-polish, here are some things I've changed:

* The very last level looks better now, with adjusted graphics and map layout.  Compared to my other levels, the last level looked rushed and unpolished, and it didn't look like it was at "night."
* One of your character's weapons can now damage 2 or 3 enemies at once, good for when you face groups of enemies.
* There are a couple of places in the game where your characters' health will be restored when you're about to face a "surprise" boss or a tough group of enemies.  The game will tell you that you're back to full health.

I think the last thing is to clean up the first level, since I found a few places where the transition from "metal" floors to "wooden" floors is somewhat ugly.  But I'm always finding some other things to adjust!  Come rain or shine, the game will be "officially" released on the 31st!

Woah this looks pretty cool and I like how it still looks true to the monochrome version.

Personally the preservation of the original resolution is my favorite thing for CE games (this is what I planned to to on the CE if I remade Reuben Quest 1 and 2 using grosged's sprite libs for TI-BASIC programmers). It makes it easier to port games and the style remains true to the original monochrome game.

Good job so far.