The range of the gun you made depends of the barrel, Cardboad barrels have very short range, but they shoot more than one projectile at once, If you use cardboard guns you will have to get closer to the danger, but you will make more damage per shot, Also I wanted the game to be a challenge .So having a save feature and giving you an item that restore all the health was too much, I had an item that gived 10% but that was way to little, so I settle for a 50% health item before each boss fight, I will add a "Delete your game" option in case some one wants to retry.
As you said, is part of the balance of the game,