JH: The philosophy, correct me if I'm wrong as this is just an educated guess, would be to reduce or eliminate unnecessary variables, keep things as simple as possible without reducing complexity, and to eliminate grinding behavior?
It's both not like Crawl (in that it's not even a roguelike technically) and it is like Crawl (in that there are tradeoffs to a lot of player decisions). And Crawl is just generally inspiring too, its elements come together very well.

RJ: Yep. DCSS took EVERYTHING and made it a meaningful decision, and I wanted that to carry through to Desktop Dungeons. I ended up taking that idea to the extent that the very act of dungeon exploration became its own resource, and every monster encounter, movement, spell cast and item pickup could tip the balance subtly, yet significantly. All of the game's elements did their best to interact with one another in as many ways as possible.
I reckon it's far from perfect in this sense, but I like to think that I gave it a jolly good shot. Crawl is astounding, not least because it wasn't afraid to knock convention. I mean, it takes real guts to develop a game to rival a dinosaur like Nethack while explicitly disagreeing with parts of its design​

What's most interesting, however, are the degree to which skills and feats are essential; they are purposefully more powerful than most magic items, and choosing and using them effectively is vital. Thus, advancing your character isn't just a matter of levelling up plus some lucky magic finds, but is more a matter of consciously and strategically planning the route your character takes.​