Just gave this a go. It's very fun! Feels similar to 86856527 in a lot of ways, but with the deck-building expanded it'll become more individual.
I don't like the spell control scheme though. Transferring to a list all the time is quite painful. I'd much rather have icons on the top row for the 3 cards and a reshuffle icon, with 1234 as keyboard shortcuts for them. You could have tooltips (or long-press for tooltips) to state what they do. And this system would make it clearer that using an ability causes it to be replaced - you could have an animation of a card flying out from the deck for instance. Here's a mock-up:
http://i.imgur.com/6f9AXU1.pngHastily done artwork there... Obviously would be hard to match up with your current blocky style, but personally I think it's okay for UI elements to look different from map elements.
I changed the skull to blood because I think that makes more sense in the game. Currently it's confusing that skeletons don't give kills, especially since they look like the kill counter! To make it extra obvious you could have drops of blood appear from enemies when they're slain. If an enemy gives multiple counts it would have 2 drops appear, etc.
I still need to hook up with a programmer someday and do some collaborations. I really want more graphical RLs on iOS and android.
Hah, I'd leap on that if I knew anything about iOS/android, or had halfway decent programming skills :-/ But you seem to be quite capable yourself, in both design and coding. Just ask for help more when you have programming problems.
So the biggest problem I face right now is thinking of spells.
Well I'm sure I can think up a few...
Pull - draw all enemies towards you
Dig - destroy walls 2 spaces in each of the cardinal directions; will also kill stone enemies or enemies inside the walls
Infection - All enemies adjacent are poisoned and receive 1 damage next turn. If next to another enemy the infection spreads. When used correctly it can cause a wave of death.
Wind - Move all enemies one square in a specified direction
Confuse - All enemies confused for one turn - they move randomly and may bump and kill each other
Rush - Move up to three squares in a direction - if hit an enemy attack it
Warp All - Randomly teleport everyone, including yourself
Time Freeze - All enemies inactive for 3 turns
Sacrifice - Reduce everyone, including yourself, to 1 HP
Traps - Add a single-trigger spike trap to each of the diagonal spaces around you
Invisible - Makes you invisible for 3 turns as long as you don't attack anything
Regen - Gain 1 HP per turn for the next 3 turns
Brute - Do 2 damage in melee for the next 5 turns
Power - For the next 3 rounds all cards used have double effect
Minions - Summon friendly skeletons in the available space around you. You can swap places with them. They don't last to the next level.
Some enemy types:
Knight - Has an armour layer. One hit will destroy the armour, second hit will kill. But fire spell (and maybe other stuff) will kill it in one.
Bloat - Kills 1HP enemies next to it, absorbing their HP. Very dangerous around a Lich... Maybe gets slower as it has more HP?
Troll - Has 3HP, regens 1 HP every 3 turns
Ghost - Moves through walls
Giant Mole - Digs through walls
Spiked Knight - Same as Knight, but with the armour on it causes 1 damage when hit with a melee attack
Assassin - Invisible except when next to you
Fire Sprite - Throws fireballs which move 1 square per turn towards you (and continue behind if you dodge, potentially hitting enemies), also immune to fire and it hurts to hit them in melee
Wisp - Teleports randomly each turn. If next to you it will attack and then teleport away.
But then I think that really doesn't convey the spell deck idea. And it seems like two different ideas. So I might save that for a future project and just keep building on it. Since limiting the monsters to settings might unbalance the game. Also in difficulty it would have a Darren setting.
Hah, I always appreciate harder difficulty settings
For the whole deck-building thing, you might consider a race/class system. 3 races with their own deck, 3 classes with their own deck, and a few base cards like wait a turn. That would be 9 combinations. There could also be extra cards one can pick up by beating bosses in the game. Some could be powerful artifact cards that are permanently discarded from the deck if they're used.
A problem at the moment is monster distribution. I think your monster generator should always spawn enemies on the same parity as the player. This makes it harder to string easy kills.
