Thank you so much! I'll be honest when we first tested the game I had a similar thought but it really does pick up at a certain point!
As for your question, they're running passed the same objects! You can see things you ran into appear as rubble on the Shadow's screen as you run. We agree on the music front! Unfortunately didn't have time for the jam, since most of our sounds were made in-house so I just decided to go hard on the subtle ambience. We'll absolutely consider that for the future.
Thank you so much for playing and for the great feedback :)