In a way, the idea of a bunch of cute little monsters is Witcheye's whole reason for being. I've had the above page from the Japanese Kid Icarus manual hanging in my apartment hallway for years, and I love it. Among the many things I loved about poring over game manuals back in the day was miniature menageries like this. There's something so appealing about these little collections — a big part of the attraction of later series like Pokemon, I think. (They also make me think of notebook pages from 18th-19th century biologists, always cool to look at.) Having made a game that was all celestial abstraction, I was excited to make one with more goofy personality.
The goal for this game was to come up with a bunch of enemies who had unique behaviors & vulnerabilities, each a kind of little puzzle as to how you deal with them. Yes, there are recurring enemy types — when you learn to handle one type, you may meet a trickier version of it a couple levels later. (In other words, this is a video game.) But I'm really trying to make each type distinct, so you always feel like you're seeing something new.
The goal for this game was to come up with a bunch of enemies who had unique behaviors & vulnerabilities, each a kind of little puzzle as to how you deal with them. Yes, there are recurring enemy types — when you learn to handle one type, you may meet a trickier version of it a couple levels later. (In other words, this is a video game.) But I'm really trying to make each type distinct, so you always feel like you're seeing something new.
From a gameplay point of view, designing enemies for this game has been an interesting challenge. Since the eye itself is both player and weapon, I can't just have generic grunts who try to bump into you. That affected their visual designs too — I needed to clearly telegraph what was dangerous and what was vulnerable. Then of course I try to squeeze in some personality... not always easy to do all that in 16x16 pixels!
Something that always makes me laugh in The Great Gatsby for NES is the look on the waiters' faces when you clobber them (for no reason!) Maybe there's something wrong with me... but there's lots of that kind of slapstick with the monsters in Witcheye.
Personality is also an interesting question as part of a dialogue with gameplay. These little leaf guys (I call them Leaf Meelone, obviously) struck me as basically amiable little doofuses, who originally didn't really do much. They just shuffled around, very occasionally spitting a languid projectile in your general direction. The problem was, they weren't that exciting to fight, so I ended up raising their firing rate, making them more aggressive. But when I did it, part of me thought, "...but they wouldn't act like that!"
Counting all the variations of each enemy, there are currently about 80 enemies and bosses designed for this game, with hopefully 100+ in the final version. As benchmarks, I used Super Mario Bros. 3, which has around 60, and Mega Man 2, which has around 35. But both those games have a range of other challenges (platforming, etc) that Witcheye doesn't, so I thought I'd aim high in this department. Please excuse the hubris!