NeedsFoodBadly: yes at this point that is kind of the strategy. Although in the newer build I will be giving to my testers, I have updated the move system.
basically an enemy was dangerous if there were an odd number of spaces between you and the monster. a skip turn would make the game easier, but would completely break the game. So I set out with that in mind and came up with a solution taken from many tabletop RPGs. basically your main character has a Move range and an attack range. usually the move range is 2 and the attack range is 1.
the player can move 1 or 2 spaces in a cardinal direction. this means they need to think about how they move to get the enemies into position. I also upped the tension by giving you no health, so one hit kills you and combat is deterministic. enemies never miss.
enemies have also changed. the current build has 3.
a witch: has an attack range of two and paths towards the character.
a Rat: has an attack range of one and moves every other turn( might swap the every other turn to the witch)
an Eye: has an attack range of one and only moves towards the player, when the player is directly in line with it.
each enemy has different AI, and each needs to be handled differently.
my next goal is the addition of potions. they will be one time use and bestow a bonus until the next turn. some examples are +1 move, +1 Range and Shielded from damage .
also I will be adding Traps. but these are not ordinary traps like in most roguelikes. these will be quite obvious tiles. the first will be a spike trap. it will pop up spikes every 5th turn damaging anyone standing on the tile. this can be good to lure monsters on to the spikes.
finally I am toying with some kind of class/race bonus. where each time a player performs a specific action(like killing an enemy) a bar is filled, when the bar is filled they receive a free potion. it will always be the same type of potion. It might be a combination where race decides the action required and class decides the potion received.