im not sure how easy this is to implement, but can you make it so that you can blow a raspberry or something to make the guards turn around bc its kinda hard to make noise on purpose other than walking into a tree or smashing a window, which are the only ways i know how to create noise
also, have you considered adding some kind of shop? maybe a vending machine can be randomly generated in the levels that sells things like a deployable box to hide behind or a firecracker that goes off after 5 seconds that can be used as a distraction, but if you cant drop it in time, it explodes in your hand and you get knocked out. again, this is probably some crazy stuff to code, and im just rambling :P, do what you want
Thanks for the suggestions! Ramblings and brainstorming like yours has helped and been implemented before, and I really like hearing peoples ideas! The vending machine and deployable box was new and interesting, gettin' the gears in my head crankin'. :)
About making noise, you can walk into almost any of the objects to make a sound that guards react to. They'll look a random direction and then turn 180 to continue patrolling, so it's possible to steer them a little bit.