Thanks for playing the game!
I was definitely going for the retro / sega feel (Mostly because that is the extent of my pixel art skills haha), And I did think of that but there are some moments with the monster where the ambient sound is important so i simply ran out of time before I could make those two things work together!
And haha yes! I did my best to balance the upgrades with how much money the player can get! And HE doesn't actually check for the lantern! He works on proximity as well as detects if HE is in your flashlight beam :p though I never got the balancing of his proximity and speed quite right before I had to submit the game! Thank you for the kind words!