Prioritizing Experience Over Combat

During the construction of Apotropaic, I'm keen to keep in mind that the game is, in fact, a horror game, rather then an action adventure.

One of the games that inspired Apotropaic's creation was the Indie horror game Darkwood. I am of the opinion that in Darkwood, survival quickly escalates away from spooky ambience, and devolves into more of an action heavy defence game with assault rifles, sniper rifles and the like.

While I fully understand that it is important for a horror game to contain challenge, so as to make real the threat of death and lost progress, and increase tension and rational fear of the monster or threat of the game, I also keenly don't want the game to become overly concerned with gore, jump scares, or even just combat and the like. (I.e. Dead Space, Resident Evil's 4-6).

I also intend to avoid making the sections too dull or repetitive, so that the monster looses all threat via an overdose of exposure to it. (i.e. Soma)

One of the various solutions I've put forth in order to accomplish that is the randomization of nightly events that shake up what the player is experiencing.

I want to procedure for spawning certain events to be opaque to the player, so that they are encouraged to come up with red string theories about how things are linked and what things might mean.

Barring that, I am willing to accept a fully randomized approach for the vertical slice.

Essentially? My main goal here is to keep the player interested via variations in content, and also not to walk the line between overloading the player with action, and posing no credible threat, thus making exposureto the monsters/threat/ect start to feel repetitive or dull.