Zarguuf's Big Berry Heist by bradur
Zarguuf the wizard is hungry for some berries - especially big ones! Luckily the neighboring goblin settlement provides ample chance of berry harvest.
With a variety of spells in your arsenal you must harvest berries, dodge crossbow bolts and move through goblin villages. According to legend each goblin village contains a magical Big Berry. Reach the Big Berry to advance!
Keys
| Key(s) | Action | | --------------------|:--------------------:| | Arrows / WASD | Move | | Spacebar | Spell: Shield | | Numbers 1-3 | Prepare spells 1-3 | | Left click | Cast prepared spell | | Right click | Cancel preparation | | Q | Pause game |
Screenshots



| Link | https://github.com/Juutis/LD52 |
| Link | https://juutis.github.io/LD52/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/zarguufs-big-berry-heist |
Ratings
| Overall | 229th | 3.75⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 100th | 3.925⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 271th | 3.5⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 623th | 3.3⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 272th | 3.9⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 174th | 3.675⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 200th | 3.421⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 410th | 3.45⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 74🗳️ | 26🗨️ |
I did find myself accidentally pressing "Q" instead of "1" often, causing the game to pause, and for me to have to click Continue, but maybe I just need to get better at pressing the right key!
Cool concept and really liked how you introduces the game in a linear way, teaching me as I went along!
I feel like there could be an easier key bindings for the spells, but that was also part of the challenge for me.
Also, the tutorial was well designed. It was easy for me to understand. Nice job.
Is it possible to kill the goblins, or only to stun/delay them? 5 minutes in, I had just too many of them following me around, and I couldn't progress much further. It looked like you can damage them by pulling objects onto them (which btw I think would be super satisfying if it was one-shotting them), but the pull mechanic seemed a bit too finnicky for me to try it for too long. It seems like objects can only be pulled in 2 directions along a fixed axis - if this was upgraded to something as few as 4 or 6 directions, it could make it a lot more fun to play.
But all in all a very solid entry, it has plenty of content and it runs very smoothly, and the take on the theme feels fresh, it's not just an other plant-and-collect farmer sim. Well done!
I did have a bug where the pull spell wouldn't work on a cart that was blocking a path. I died by being overrun as a result. But on reviving at the checkpoint, the spell did work on the cart. This may just be my subpar eyesight, but I had trouble seeing when arrows were flying my way, so I honestly was just spamming the spacebar key at times. Again, may just be me, but perhaps a slight adjustment to the projectiles or a sound effect could help.

I did a scouting mission too, guess I'm not supposed to be here?

And after going around the whole base, I found myself stuck on the other side. Walking the whole trip back didn't seem like a good idea.

After few glitchy teleports, I got myself out from there.

I think it was basically throwing too much stuff at you too fast. Didn't really get to properly use all the spells. I pretty much completely neglected the shield after the tutorial level since just dodging was more reliable to me. And the spells going off cooldown didn't have enough of an indication. Especially happened when I was pulling berries and the biggie on a crowded space. I so many times kept missing my pulls and also messing up whether I had the spell prepared or not. I think it could use leave the last used spell to be ready without the need to arm it again. Should make it smoother.
It looked and sounded good. The only thing that mainly irritated me was how the "cursor" kept jittering while moving. Also this teleport (at least) "bouncing off" looked a bit weird at times. And it hitting the walls was somewhat annoying when trying to quickly move and right before teleport something appeared slightly in the way. So it could be a bit more forgiving when going near corners.

Oh cool, found another shortcut to shave off few seconds...

Good job! 👍
https://youtu.be/y8T3gOofqfw
https://youtu.be/pRcxmYjIbb4
But since walls are no issue, why settle for going around the scenic route...
https://youtu.be/PaBpf-idZ3E

The game is very fun!
Congrats!
I also found the jittering cursor to be a bit annoying in the beginning, but I quickly got used to it, so it stopped bothering me rather quickly. I also think it would've been nice to have a stronger indicator of when my spells would be ready again. Especially for the bomb the cooldown was quite long and it would've been cool to "just know" when it's ready again in the middle of a fight. Otherwise, really nice entry to the jam!