I think the game is okay. I found it while looking for new games to try sorting by rating score. I was surprised by my experience -- it didn't feel like it approached 5 stars but for what tools the player is given it plays better than expected.
The web-based engine seems to be part of the constraint, and my memory of talking with JS folks who made games recalls they were typically top-down isometric adventures (think old Diablo games / Vampire Survivors), procedurally generated side-scrollers (think Flappy Bird), or puzzles.
As for puzzles they've fallen out of my mainstay of entertainment but when I was younger I did main a game made exclusively of puzzles called
Puzzle Pirates by Three Rings Design. Beyond my belief, despite the game having been released in 2003 it still sees players today and has a Steam release. The
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(25 ATM) were (are) deeply intricate, some evolutions of puzzles in games made before this one.
As for suggesting puzzle mechanics appropriate to ValKaree I ought to play a newer version first before I give more pointed critique, and I'm currently not in the rush to do that. I appreciate that you took the time to read my heavy critique and didn't react harshly, which I tremendously respect because subconsciously I'm like a criticism cannon. It's definitely not what I consider a 5 star (4.5) experience as reviews average now, feels closer to 3.5 (approaching 4) rank. The fetish isn't my cup of tea but I will admit that you do present many opportunities to see animations and provide a good level of playback control even without enemies themselves granting more than 1 anim solo or with a partner.
You can gain some inspiration from the link above but be warned, I was intimidated by the intricacy of the puzzles 20 years ago first finding them and looking back I'd be horrified to recreate their depth myself, though JS lang could definitely handle it. An educated guess on which one to plagiarize from there would be
Rumble against bosses like other girls, which can be treated as an alternative of PopCap's
Dynomite. It makes sense Val would not try to kill girls she wants to save, and/or she has big muscles so why not use them? Queue standing portraits of both fighters throwing attacks and reacting to getting hit, with girl's damage becoming worse like Doom Guy's portrait. A simpler surrogate is a typical boxing game with targets on the character's body appearing randomly and X time to react, which can be made complex by making the player
choose from more than one button input and highlight the correct part of the screen. Simpler but effective. Or even literally Punchout, with simpler inputs but more sprite variety and positioning. The Punchout style can also accommodate gunfire like many popular 2000s-era Newgrounds target shooting games did.
The puzzles I have seen featured as side tasks in other action games are far simpler -- literally any spy game these days rips off pipe completion for "hacking" tasks. So let me freestyle a puzzle: what I thought the "syringe" puzzle I heard of could have been before I found it and realized it was a fetch series...
A note (or scraps / multiple pages strewn about) has instructions for a concoction. Typically in games with this form of puzzle the reagents are combined in a certain order, but further realistic complexity can involve choices for how much of a reagent should be added and how long it should be heated for (possibly heated even between chemical addition steps), even with reagents being reused in different amounts later. Some simple arithmetic (PEMDAS, but likely only the MDAS of it) and you got yourself a firm and entertaining puzzle carried solely by the interact (Press Up on gamepad), and field entry (type in number) or multiple choice (choose reagent / amount / time) mechanics. If not replacing the potion now you can use this for making an explosive concoction to break something or kill something with.
Best of luck. The game isn't what I consider 5 stars nor is the necro fetish my kind of hype but I respect the attention to criticism and will be more merciful as I understand the constraints of the game engine and development cycle period. In the future there's always another game you can make. This is more complex JS than most people would deal with. Skyrim used Macromedia Flash for elements of Skyrim's UI. Flash in 2011! For a major game!