Owlboy's bestiary is small but each enemy teaches a specific lesson, and several of them can be turned into tools rather than fought.
Lumpy, bat-winged blobs that come in colour-coded variants and are the game's most common threat. They arrive both alone and in swarms - the Giant Gawk boss is the swarm version. The anniversary update explicitly encourages throwing Alphonse into a group of Gawks to stun them, which is a much cheaper answer than shooting the pack one at a time.
Wolf-like creatures that breathe fire. They can be turned to stone with water, which is one of the first real "your environment is a weapon" moments in the game and a good indicator of how the rest of it plays.
These hate light and attack if you stay in the dark, which inverts the usual rule that darkness is safe. Stun burrowing bugs with Space and then let your partner finish them - the classic companion-and-player co-op loop the game is built on.
Blind gnomes are harmless if you approach them without a light. The cannibal frogmen in the caves are the opposite problem - they are numerous and they eat you. Lava Lizards have a bulletproof head, so the trick is to aim at the rear rather than waste every shot on the front.
The November 2026 patch retuned enemy AI and boss encounters, so timings that you learned from older guides may feel different. Boss intros are now skippable for most fights, which is a good way to re-check the early bosses without sitting through the same animation for the fourth time.