Great little game, real blast from the past with that DM feel to it. I remember playing that for @6months and still finding secrets in it.
On my second run through, this time for a complete explore, finding & solving all secrets, won't take me 6 months though, doubt it will last me more then a week or two, still excellent value for a indie £10 game.
A few basic dungeoneering tips from an old dweller like myself:
1) First clear an area of baddies then spend some time properly exploring it, I tend to sidestep past walls and quickly check for switches (easy to spot once you know what to look for)
2) Jump down any pits, obviously close lying pits will dump you in the same area below, use map and common sense. Make sure everything that can be solved on a level is solved before moving on, although in a few cases, a level cannot be completed unless you drop in from the level above, find/solve a secret or find a way up from the level below. So if in doubt, come back to it 1 level later and recheck.
3) Food & certain items are essential, I'd recommend keeping around some rocks & torches in your backpacks, stack up on food as much as possible but eat the heavy weighing food first to avoid easily being overloaded. There will be a few times you cannot carry anymore, I would recommend you drop off a bunch of stuff near an easily accessible area (like near the stairs) and make a note on the map, which I recommend you also do for any closed doors/areas you cannot get to yet.
4) I had no problems running out of food here but that was a hard lesson learned in DM, stack up when you can and leave cache supplies if you have too much and in some cases, farm regenerating food dropping mobs, of which there are few.
5) Practice moving around fast with your party (never has there been a game that requires sidestepping so much!) and always have a plan of retreat, although there are some instances that dumps you right in the cr@pper, but still you should rely on mobility and a cool head (I usually die cause I panic and fumble the controls)
Lastly an important note to all Grimrock players regarding exploration and general dungeon skulking, AFAIK, there is only 1 place that stops you from backtracking all the way to level 1 and that is shortly after the spiral (level 10 IIRC), once you get to the end of the spiral (or go down stairs not sure) there seems to be a wall that closes at the start of the spiral which will stop you from back tracking altogether (tried looking for a way to open it but there simply isn't one, I have an odd feeling its a bug, the blocking wall should disappear after the encounters but it doesn't). So once you get there, make a separate save file just in case you find you forgot or missing something, I did on my first time around, so be warned.
NOTE to Minotaur Head Hunter players, if you find any skulls, DO NOT put them into containers like sacks or chests. Unless you carry the skulls in your main inventory, it does not add the bonus once the skull(s) are in a container. Bit annoying.
Apart from that have fun getting lost, peeing your pants and generally go stir crazy figuring your way through Grimrock
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i'm on that level now fighting crabs