Cruel World is now abandonware so I am releasing my own version of the game.
Downloads
Windows: https://sylvie.website/gentle-world-win.zip
Mac: https://sylvie.website/gentle-world-mac.zip
Linux: https://sylvie.website/gentle-world-linux.zip
I only tested the Windows version and I didn't test it that thoroughly. Let me know if I broke something.
Differences From The Original
In Gentle World, every node is a "public node". The title screen text is also changed slightly. Otherwise everything is the same.
In the original game, most "nodes" (which include things like checkpoints, doors to other areas, and tutorial information) were not public and you to HACK them to gain access. Once you HACK a private node, you can MINE it to become an OWNER of the node. This lets you freely use the node and inscribes your name on the OWNER list. However, this makes future HACK attempts by non-OWNERs take longer. This is because HACKing triggers a little auto-battle sequence where you fight against each OWNER, then finally the "guardian" of the node (you don't actually do anything in these sequences, you just wait and watch the fights play out and hope you don't randomly die and have to restart the HACK attempt). Over time, the OWNER lists on private nodes became very long and making progress began to involve very long periods of waiting. Eventually, a feature was added that lets you HEAL the world by removing your name from OWNER lists, but I'd guess that not many people did this. There was also eventually a PARTY feature which I think let you make nodes temporarily accessible to non-OWNERs, but you would have to CLEAN up the mess afterwards before using the node again.
Public nodes can be used by anyone freely, do not need to be HACKed, and cannot be MINEd, so none of this is relevant in the Gentle World.
Even if you obtain the original game, it's no longer possible to experience the game as it once existed, playing it shortly after release when there was an active community around it and the OWNER counts were smaller. So, enjoy this twisted version I created, ahaha.
See Also
Beaceful World is a rom hack I made shortly after the original release of the game which similarly makes all nodes public, but also has some additional changes and new secret areas based on cut levels. It's missing a lot of the content that's in Gentle World though, since it's based on a very early version of the game (v6, which I think was released on April 2nd 2021).