I've struggled with performance in my tower defense game as well, going to try out some of these optimizations! I've noticed using collision shapes on enemies is also very costly but necessary as enemies can get knocked back and need to collide with towers. Do you use collision on your enemies?

he swings his arms now too, before was naruto run

Thanks for putting this together! I'm an indie dev, would like to be added to the list :)

my wife loves bugs. bought a copy for her and myself