Maybe something like a fear meter? Being chased by ghouls drains it while the pickups like the figurine, doujin, and alcohol refill it? If it drops low enough you have to do one of those wiggle break outs where you spam a and d and if you break out before dying it refills half the meter. It'd force escaping rather than just running straight through cause you'd actually have to ditch ghouls than just outrun them perma, or maybe while you have low fear ghouls hear or something and open the locker and you get a scene or something (like uhh dead by daylight locker kills if i had to equate it to something) And if you wanted to force a sort of scripted extended chase you could put pickups in the way to refill the fear or smth.
Also yeah, I love giving feedback both completely unhelpful and useless and some a genuine attempt at trying to push games in a direction I think people would enjoy and I think people would just enjoy.. more with this. More scenes, more levels, more enemies, etc etc. Your art is provedly fantastic all it needs now is a place to be put imo