After reading through so much preamble/warning about the state of the game, I was delightfully shocked to see such a well-realized and visually striking intro! I'll perhaps come back to finish the rest as you've rested yourself and put more into it, but I think this is a really promising start! The character sprites have so much charm, and while I know the CSP backgrounds are likely temporary, they too add to a particular kind of flavor that I think is really cool. Keep up the good work!
there's the Ben Esposito saying, "no one said when you made a video game you had to make the entire thing", and there's never been anything more true than that. in a way, this is a kind of beautiful illustration of that in its current state.