I feel like you're in my head, hah. I do have some items about enemies that interact with other enemies in mind. I did the first one last night (in the latest upload) with the Gorgon. She spawns surrounded by bricks, she is 25 power, which is impossible to kill. When all surrounding bricks are destroyed she gets reduced to 0. But I like the idea of other interactions like you described. I can see "aura" effects on enemies, both positive and negative. I want to add more enemies in the next big update so shoot over any ideas you have like that! :)
I love designing so it would be a pleasure to give you some extra ideas to cherry pick! I already know Unity pretty well, but recently I started studying Unreal and as exercise I wanted to prototype a game inspired by your concept/take on mine sweeper since your idea is so clever and I love mine sweeper <3...
I can pitch the idea to you If you're interested and share your opinion. Anyway...
I've not had the time to try the last update yet, I'll give you my feedback asap. In the meantime:
I like the concept of the Gorgon. Making it impossible to kill forces the player to find another way by experimentation. It's a puzzle in itself, within a puzzle game. When the player figures out how to kill the gorgon, he'll actually feel smart for finding a solution by himself.
I like to concept of the lovers where their position actually hints about the position of another monster in the same row. It's similar to what one would do when playing Sudoku. Having said that, how about an enemy which power is the sum of nearby enemies? Although, I fear it's too similar to the gorgon...
New concept, enemies that should be killed in a specific order: for example, an enemy A protected by an energy shield that makes him inefficient to attack right on. You first have to find the enemy B who's casting the shield. Killing B removed the shield from A, now that A is weaker you can attack it.
An helpful building that's disabled while at least one enemy is nearby. Once all enemies surrounding it have been defeated, the building activates, helping the player in some way (revealing tiles in a X radius, weakening enemies in a X radius, etc...). On the other hand, one could destroy the building once it's no longer useful. A destroied building could drop an item or give some money for the shop.
Another helpful tile, the cook/alchemist NPC. By itself is useless, but if you bring him a list of ingredient he can cook for you a meal/potion that provides buffs/heals/exp to the player. Once a tile near him has been revealed, he's revealed as well. Once revealed, enemies killed count towards ingreadient being brought to him. The list of ingredients is displayed somewhere on the UI. eg: "Bring me a slice of pizza, some slime juice and some minotaur meat" or wathever
I'll think about other enemies later on, for the time being I hopes this are good enough
Actually, after playing it a bit more I do still find it more difficult at times, but overall I personally percive it as an improvement and it's not impossible to win. Having a quicker to solve first level is better in my opinion, but for some reason I do feel like it has gotten harder that it was previously. It feels like it got more difficult, but this doesn't mean it's difficult per se. Again, this is only my personal opinion and does not represent reality as a whole
I do think the first map should be a bit easier still... I will try to rebalance a bit. I think it feels harder because there's less "free" spaces, or easy to deduce spaces. My problem is that reducing enemies doesn't always mean easier, because ultimately that's how you get the XP needed. I do think less higher tier monsters and more 1-2-3's will make it more manageable for beginners