Ok, wow. First of all, you should move the instructions to a splash screen, a text file, or something. Having to randomly hit all the keys on my keyboard to see that Z allows me to interact with the signs, which then tell me to hit Z, is a little annoying and easily fixed. The game was really well implemented. I like the increasing stats! I loved being able to dungeon and dig around, combat was basic, but had offense and defense... and of course everyone enjoys finding treasure! Poor Humor and Audio, decent community (taking showers is always encouraged, although I am not sure of your orbitz fascination).

One last note that kinda upset me, I was not able to exit the game. ESC did not work, and I was not able to close via the X top right corner, or selected close from right clicking on the window bar. CTRL ALT DEL kill process... not sure if this has to do with the Game Maker thing you used to make the game or what, but just letting you know.

Most fun game I have played so far, and this game also kicks my games ass...

Sorry about forgetting the controls! It's something I always forget about!

Here are all of the controls!
Z = Attack/Interact
X = Use Equipped Item
C = Open/Close Items Menu
Space = Defend
F4 = Toggle Fullscreen (default is off)
F9 = Take Screenshot
Esc = When the items menu is open only, exits the game. (without deleting your save)
You can also exit the game by going to the staircase, but if you do not have the unspeakably generic object, it will delete your saved game. If you do, then you just beat the game, and it will show credits and give you the choice of deleting the save file to play again.

This game should take about 30-60 minutes to beat 100% on your first try.

Pretty fun game actually. A few niggles about the controls apply, also I'd like to run diagonally ;)
And please, don't do 10 dialog boxes in a row for one explanation.

Yeah,..good work! Eventhough you wrote the controls in your comment I had some problems with it(don't have a qwerty-keyboard)...Why not edit yours entry text and add the controlls there!?

Why stamina? ):
Very disheartening to be faced with a huge wall of earth, a stamina-draining pick, and no alternative route.

Exploration was kinda cool otherwise? Chests tended to be full of boring level-up stuff, though.

p.s. kinda annoying that you MUST exit game via stairs, or task manager

It kind of got better after a while, when you could dig through the earth a bit faster. The controls, collision handling and text boxes were a bit quirky but still nice effort, I actually played it to the end.

Poor execution ruined an otherwise solid concept. Don't make the user click when they're otherwise using the keyboard to control. Freeze movement when in menu and allow both L-R and Up-Dn to move the selection. Fix the character randomly getting stuck on blocks. Fix the character sometimes facing a different direction than they are moving. Don't let them run through a cloud of enemies when high levelled. Make attacking use some stamina. After you've done all this, I'll enjoy your unique and interesting special items a bit more.

/rant. Sorry. Wasn't at all as bad as that sounded, but I was frustrated by the things I mentioned above.

Thank you all for the wonderful comments and suggestions. Once my computer is finally fixed, I will fix this game!