After a long hiatus, I came back to development on Asterius with a fresh mind. I immediately discovered where the slow-down issues were coming from. And after a few days of hunting down a memory leak, I was able to fix it.  The game is in a generally sufficient state of performance for a Beta now.  I was also able to find major bugs with plenty of other features and mechanics, including some bosses and warping to rooms, and have fixed those as well.  The game is working better than ever, and I'm thankful for all of you who stick with it! You help me keep going.