Alright, I made it most of the way through the 4th floor, and then the monsters became a bit overwhelming... I'll try again later but I feel I have good handle

Alright, I made it most of the way through the 4th floor, and then the monsters became a bit overwhelming... I'll try again later but I feel I have good handle on the game. - Harest part for me was the learning the hotkeys. Most game designers will layout the slots to mimic the location of the hotkeys on the keyboard. I note that the right-side spells start from hotkey 1 and the bottom quick-items continue where the right side left off. You might find it more intuitive if you laid them all across the bottom and put less space in between the icons. To make it easy to visually determine which hotkey each button is, you could group them in sets for 5. For example: [1][2][3][4][5]__[6][7][8][9][10] - Consider reducing the size of the buttons for the INV, MAP, and CHAR. These are usually mapped to [I]NV, [M]AP, and [C]HAR as you have them so seasoned players will not have trouble opening them. Hotkeys will be displayed on mouse over anyway for newbies and you'll regain more of your play area. - With the MAP, INV, and CHAR buttons reduced, you can remove the left bar and leave the portrait of your character as a floating box in the top right, if you like. - The level of your character can be simply a number in the top corner of the portrait. Players understand this is the level of the character. And you can make this more obvious on level up, this number could GLOW briefly. - Health is probably the most important stat. I'd probably emphasize it by making it thicker, or longer (or both?). - Sometimes, I see items disappear (I'm assuming because there are two of them and you just drop them). Maybe you give the player a few points of XP or a gold piece for the trouble. It sucks to find some treasure and it's of no use to you at all. At least you can get a consolation prize. :) What do you think?