Funny enough, we've had complaints that hard mode is TOO EASY, but we wanted to force the darkness as at this point, if you're playing Hard mode, you should already know where you're going and what you're doing. We were actually looking at making it slightly more difficult.
The hippo is present as there's no other restriction to sprinting (if it was just 2 enemies and sprint allowed, its WAY too easy - this was tested in our play testing).
Definitely a challenge to meet all difficulty needs for players as everyone has a different skill level, but we'll see what we can do about the lighting! :)