Thank you for playing! ESA is definitely a big inspiration, specially in the way it makes the station seems so alive. Compared to lets say metroid where most things just seem there to be a challenge.
I'll definitely stick with the more detailed audio, because indeed, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me to have somewhat abstract graphics with abstract sounds.
I'll have to take a look at the first boss RNG again. I also found that he does the homing lasers way too often.