Fog of war vs the air purifier man

It's interesting that once you explore an area you have permanent vision in that area. If a monster walks into it then you can see it immediately. Cool.

Music

The little level start theme is really nice. I wish there was more of it occasionally, some more pieces (even short ones like this) of a similar theme could set a really interesting tone. Perhaps on certain events, like low health or discovering something?

Touch-based navigation

I hate the 3-diameter exploration/vision footprint.

(1) To find where walls go I have to navigate by touching them.

(2) Every keypress an "unstable" experience, taking even one step too far leads to walking into spike pits. Combine this with the large amount of key tapping required to get around: it's very tiring.

A stable gameplay environment never gives you dangerous choices. ie things only get a little bit worse or a little bit better with each step and it's clear what is going to happen. An unstable gameplay environment makes every keypress be the choice between life or complete death/restart with no warning. Too much of one or the other is problematic.

Pessimism on life
Is there any way to increase your HP? I realised after a while it might be a game of attrition? :(

Mix of turn-based and time-based logic
Discovered this accidentally when I blew myself up :) I only occasionally see this in games, it would be nice to see it in a more complex context.

Different way to play the game

Health: 0x75c75c
Bombs: 0x75c764

Zooming around is fun. I was down 400 hp by the second level. Down 2500HP by floor ten.

This game would be impossible otherwise. From level3 onwards you will encounter lots of situations where you need bombs to progress. I have no idea how people could possibly get to level 50.

Use for the coins

Initially I thought the coins were just to fulfil my kleptomaniacal desires. As the game went on I started to believe that you might hide something special in each map to do with the coins.

*spoiler* The smiley :( merchants are disappointing. Sidovich scam prices! And I couldn't kill them with a bomb either >:[

I met myself?

Possibly a bug, where a wall adopts the texture of the player? Couldn't interact with it other than blowing it up.

Technical
Runs fine under Wine on Linux.

I don't think you limited the framerate? The game permanently pegged 3 of my CPU cores at all times. Maybe your system enforces vsync, slowing this down. The main menu in particular is strobalific :D

Sound effects pause the gameplay logic temporarily. You can observe this by holding down a direction key and observing slowdowns when fighting or collecting coins. You must have different logic for the SFX vs the music.

The "out of bounds message" only briefly flashes on my screen. I can just read it.