A suggestion: make a circle that you can toggle on and off to show your attack radius. It will make the learning curve on the circle of death a little easier.
A great little roguelike game. The save game keeps you able to continue at a later time. If you die stop doing so poorly at the game. Just put everything into damage and smash everything easily.
I understand that you wanted to get a retro feel. To get a more inclusive feel the cover art needs to be a drawn version of what this would look like if the graphics were many times better. Look at the C64 game Ultimate Wizard for an example. Otherwise a very excellent game.