I was enjoying the game so much, and then two design decisions seriously hampered the experience for me right before the end.
First of all, the game's difficulty is determined entirely by your starting fight. I apparently did too well there. The hallway fights were no problem, but the two final boss fights (behind the secret door on floor 9, and at the top of the tower) were impossibly tough. There are too many long sentences that I can't possibly complete in time with my wpm, so I'm pretty much guaranteed to take too much damage and lose these fights every time. (Though see my Edit below.)
And secondly, the auto save mechanic is atrocious. I explored to the final boss, couldn't beat him, backtracked, got to the secret boss, got a save point there, couldn't beat him either, then tried to backtrack further and explore more of the tower to gain more health for the fights. So I explored the remaining incomplete floors to 100%, went back to the boss battle, died, and... all progress since the last auto save was reset. Terrible, terrible design. Maybe there's a good reason for not allowing manual saving, though I doubt it. Even then, there can't be one for not auto-saving any time you cross the corresponding boss checkpoints, or whenever you change floors.
The typing aspect of this game is truly original and (except for the inflexible difficulty scaling) enjoyable, but the dungeon master part of the game, and the save system, are designs that have become history for a reason.
I'm upset =(.
EDIT: I did eventually recall a game mechanic to prevent boss damage and hence beat the game, but my second point in particular still stands.