Thanks for the comment, and I'll be curious if you find it interesting enough to play through to the end!
I have been curious about the PlayDate, I have a few friends who have them-- though the higher-res screen (even if it's black and white) and general polish of some games I've seen videos of make me feel like players would expect higher production values from a game than my basic pixel art here... so the art+animation effort might be significant. Have you played any tactical RPG-ish games on it? "Sasquatchers" is one that came up in a search that seems to be in the Advance Wars vein though with a very different theme.
(Also, since this game is inspired by someone else's existing board game, I made it as a labor of love and would never charge or accept donations for it-- but this also means I don't want to devote too much of my life to it :), though clearly I was inspired enough to make a sequel a few years later. I have thought about taking what I learned here to create a new tactical RPG, but there are already so many good games in the world, so it's nice to stick with smaller-scale free-time projects...)