Thank you so much for playing and providing fantastic feedback!
I agree getting to full health does take a long time, though they do start smiling at 60 health.
The coins seem scarce at first but one unexplained mechanic is that that when the work counter gets to 99 it resets and doubles your pay. It does this twice for each of the 3 pets.
I ended up cutting the turn based battles because I couldnt get the text to do what i wanted within the 64x64 limitation. Also it just didnt seem fun given how simplistic it had to be in order to fit. So instead I opted for obstacles to try and avoid. I do have a GB Jam JRPG for game boy called Demon Fish Dead Ahead where the main feature is turn based combat, if you are interested, though its not very pokemon like.
Thank you again!