Some Game Design Thoughts

1) Tiles with different visual materials to indicate unique properties or categories of properties. (e.g., properties like enhancement/reduction of types of attacks, defense, or effects).

• Pros: Once developed, it's highly reusable to create a variety of environments/levels; can give more purpose to choice of weapons/power-ups; adds another layer of depth/complexity that the player has to consider
  

• Cons: (Not sure what it would look like, whether simple or highly detailed, but) the visual indicators on the tiles may restrict art direction

• Note: I have no detailed examples in mind; however, in other games the types tend to be elemental types (e.g., fire, water, grass, etc.)
  

2) This is somewhat related to the above idea; how about "Easter Eggs" (i.e., hidden weapons/items/triggers) that are only activated after walking on the tile. (This means it can be beneficial or disadvantageous to explore/traverse the environment. Remember Minesweeper?)

• Pros: Allows manipulation of the game atmosphere depending on the layout design of the environment; adds another layer of detail that the player has to consider

• Cons: No visual cues may be frustrating for players, so some form of approximate visual cue may be necessary.
  

3) A parry system (see Street Fighter: Third Strike to know what I mean). It can have both advantages and drawbacks. E.g., it can provide some % reduction in damage, knockback, or effects (or maybe provide some enhancement vs reduction); but it may have repercussions like requiring the player to fire off a shot in order to activate it (where the parry takes effect during the initiation of the shot), or it may result in a brief side-effect like slow-down.

• Pros: adds another layer of depth/complexity that the player has to contend with

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On use of colors for tiles, I think colors like Cyan and Orange (which are in Momo's previous art concept) looks better than plain Blue; Blue to me just doesn't look as vibrant. I'm not sure how this may have repercussions for the color of weapon particles though.