I like the controls = health idea a lot. I thought I understood what was happening initially but the fact that it changes which actions are disabled every turn is really interesting and I didn't expect that.
I know you put a warning at the beginning of the game, but it still tripped me up to lose the key when I picked up another item. I did that on the 4th level and it was enough for me to stop playing (I think I made it impossible to move on).
Overall, I think your theming is really good. The controls are a little wonky but maybe someone who plays this type of dungeon crawler more often will understand them more intuitively.