I'm going to reveal that my main influence is
Mutant Warzone. From the author of STAR QUEST. But Robot never uploaded a version that included the OST he and mrjordak created for it. And mrjordak marked all tracks on Youtube private :(
By this point I've put a LOT of work into the design doc. Probably saved myself a huge amount of time in the process. Interesting how initially the idea didn't seem all that appealling in my head, but with a lot of (obsessive) thought interesting ideas slowly accreted.
I briefly considered making the game in MegaZeux; now I'm programming it from scratch. I really hope it turns out as planned.