Oh honestly I didn't even think about footsteps oddly enough. It seems like an obvious one now that you mention it haha, plus I feel like the quiet section would have a nice atmosphere with the footstep sounds. Yeah we made the mistake of running the tests on a higher-end pc, but the minute I tested the game on my laptop I noticed the frame drops. I'll be giving that a few tweaks once I can for sure.
Thank you for playing Vale and thank you for your input!