I started this topic because I've had some people telling me that enemies are hard to see because they show up as "pixelated blobs."  Sooner or later, we might have to live with that.  But until then, I've been brainstorming ideas, and calc84maniac was a help as well.  I started this topic so that I can show some things I tried out and get opinions on them.

IDEA 1: Stop thickening enemy textures.

I always thickened the lines that I used to draw enemies so that the player could see them.  However, they do make it hard to tell what's an enemy and what's an object, so I plan later on thinning the lines and instead adding more detail.  BUT, enemies still appear defragmented from a distance, same as other objects.  How can you tell one distorted object from another?

IDEA 2: Show a player that the object is an enemy, not a spaceship or a tree

At the moment, this is what I need an opinion of.  You can see in the screenshot below that every enemy has a gray arrow above it.  That way you can see from far away that an object is an enemy instead of something else.  Right now it's a proof of concept, because I have to remove a couple of bugs where the arrow shows an enemy behind a wall

I like that idea, it really gives you an idea of where the enemies are

Though, to keep it from ruining the element of surprise, perhaps you should only draw arrows when the enemies are close to the center of the screen.

How about only having enimies? scenery never looks good until you are a foot away from it. It is like your character is nearsighted

hmm.. how about everything except for enemies are grey and enimies are black? But some meemies will be grey to fool you...
And/or enemies should meve more so it is more evident. If you make that the case, they should be a little easier to kill.

How about only having enimies? scenery never looks good until you are a foot away from it. It is like your character is nearsighted

NOO!! I wants scenery!

I also think the gray arrows look totally fine. I would probably prefer to play a game with the gray arrows as opposed to without.

What about making scenery gray so you know when you see an enemy? that way you can't see them behind walls.

Can you rephrase?  I'm confused.

I personally like the triangles.

Yeah I'm curious if that would make them easier to see. Kinda like how some calc games use gray for background images on which enemies can show up (such as Project M).

Btw this looks great Hot Dog but I think the arrows should be a bit smaller so when there are many enemies they are easier to distinguish from each others.