It seems I've had a compiler bug which makes the win-condition unpredictably fail, and another to corrupt the status bar, but I can't confirm.
I (writing this in 2023) recall being partly inspired by AVGN's Little Red Hood episode in that the objective of the game is also to collect N items in an obtuse manner.
9 years after making the game I finally bought a flash cart and was able to test it on my childhood Game Boy Color: