Give or take a couple days, but what ever. Exploring this world over the course of I think like three weeks was the number one highlight of my 2023, which otherwise was quite uniformly dismal. I loved being completely immersed in a variety of systems that I barely knew how to wield at first. Chipping away slowly at the edges... And I loved to chip. I wish I could have put some "CHIPS" (croutons) in the stew which taunted me for so long. I highly recommended it to all my small group of friends, but it's always difficult to describe exactly. There's something fundamental here that profoundly separates it from almost any other game I played, where it's impossible to use much else as comparison. It's an original copy. Such a strong feeling to the environment I wanted to cry at multiple points... The unflinching harshness of encountering the battlefield right away. Ice water to the face. ❤️

BIG UPS. Thank you so much, really. I hope you realize how special every RPGmaker game you made truly is. This is I think with hindsight my absolute favorite one, put to tape. I simply can't be patient enough to dip back in when it's finally done.
I wanted to make a piece of "fan art" back in last April, but couldn't get started, I almost completely forgot how to draw a bit before that point. I wish I had an image to go along with this post!!! Please imagine one.

Thank-you very much for such an interesting examination of the project, and I hope other people might encounter similar fates whether or not they put it into words here on itch.

The recent couple of maps took both a long time to complete and more than a few pages of new sprites.  I don't want the quality or depth to suffer right when I'm getting to some of the most important parts, so it's slow going, but I'm also trying new things all the time, which is...exciting.

I have some music to do by now also, for these new locations and events, which I'll get around to over the summer.

I don't know how, but people always try things in-game I've never once considered, so my own window into the game seems to prevent my ever noticing some issues.  Try to break it!

That said, I am not surprised THE DESCENDER has proven to be a source of issues, as it is one of the earliest unique enemy events and might be due for a tune-up.  I still can't say why it behaves oddly on occasion, but during the production of HOME GAME 3, I swear there was a Windows update which somehow changed the nature of how invisible events in RPG Maker 2000 interact, resulting in events which used to pass freely over one another no longer doing so.  Maybe it's the Steam version of RM2k, I don't know, but it was a bit of an issue to adapt and work within this new framework...All kinds of invisible events started colliding, even if they did not historically.  

I've found one or two genuine bugs in RPG Maker 2000 itself by now also.  For instance, the REMOVE HELMET script removes your BODY equipment slot!

Any weird bugs people have reported on here are appreciated and serve to improve the final game.

Cheers for the kind words and for anyone who has yet to stop by.