I like this game a lot. It's my go-to for something that's quick, fast-paced, doesn't require a lot of thinking, and lets you sling some spells. About the game itself, there isn't a whole lot to say. You start as a basic wizard with a wand (1 attack) and the occasional spell or piece of a equipment until you have a total of 4 attacks. Most attacks use their own pool of mana, enemies killed drop mana pots. You go through and shoot things that come at you, room by room. Some limited choices throughout the game regarding permanent buffs, etc. You unlock different wizards by completing game tasks across many playthroughs. Not a ton of depth, no real plot line, and only 5 levels and a boss - but really doesn't need more than that. Quick wizard shooter that does a good job at the type of game that it is.

It was entertaining for a few hours. The combat is a fairly simple: run in circles and spam your projectile weapons. It has a few little trap rooms that can be tricky jump / timing challenges. Some hidden rooms that always give you the same thing, and tells you a little bit about the game studios past, failed attempts. It made me lol and scratch my head the first few times as I wondered why they were telling me this information, in game. The map layouts are pretty boring little square boxes in an unsymmetrical grid pattern, that you enter one at a time. The doors lock, and then you proceed to run in circles and spam your "gun" basically. The room layout and type of battle can change slightly, for example you might have to destroy these floating obelisks that keep spawning creatures, or just run through the room and kill one group of spawned creatures, or have all these little evil carrot minions that are constantly spawning and chasing you around until you kill the main doods that are summoning them. But in essence, every battle is the same: run in circles spamming your weapons. Then each of the levels ends with a boss fight, which are a bit more challenging, but the strategy is the same: run in circles spamming your weapon. I think there are 5 levels, and after you finish the 5th, it ends. It did take me a few hours of "failed" attempts before finally finishing the 5th level. After about 5 hours, assuming you complete the 5th level, you will have seen everything the game has to offer, which is why this is more of a game you want to buy on sale. I like the basic idea of this game: FPS roguelike, and in some respects they got it right, but it just feels like it could have been so much more if the game studio had spent a bit more time on it.

I truly do like this game. The graphics for it I will call it cute, and doesn't need to be flashy to make it look great. I found the permadeath, although annoying at times, to really add to the game and to give it a lot of replayability. Also having many unlockable characters, you unlock them by completing certain challenges such as dealing enough damage with your spells and weapons, to killing a certain number of creatures. You don't need to be hitting headshots, actually I didn't notice a difference when hitting headshots or not, in the game to kill enemies, but some enemies can be difficult to deal with until you get used to them. One of the things I did enjoy about Ziggurat are the different mechanics that can affect the room. Not all rooms will have them, they seem few are far apart, although not a bad thing I do feel they could have added a few more in through the game. But some of the mechanics can be decreased cost of staff by 50% everything else is 100% increase, unable to fire unless you are in the air, extra experience but no drops, and several others. There are a few things that can be destroyed, such as barrels and certain pillars, to book stacks. Although they don't always have items that come off of them, sometimes potions or mana crystals will drop. As level up, you can pick 2 perks, which can be increased based on a perk you can get, and those can affect everything from health, to mana, to extra experience from the crystals, extra healing from potions, gain hp/mana at the start of combat and much more. Perks are random at level up, which I rather enjoyed, it can add to the difficulty if you don't get certain perks that you are used to. For me, my bane is when the game doesn't give me Health regen perks early on. Died several times because of it. But I do enjoy the randomness of the perks at level up. There are also 4 weapon types, your standard wand, a spell, staff and alchemy weapon. All of them have their uses and can really change the flow of battle depending if you have them, and have the mana to use them. Only the wand (starter weapon) has unlimited ammo but needs to recharge. The entire game is procedurally generated, but you will run into rooms that you have definitely seen before. Not a bad thing, there is a good variety, and a lot of it makes sense. Although the game is fairly short, it's main strength is replayability. When you are selecting your character it will state on the character card if you have completed the game with that character and what difficulty. Somewhat nice to see. There is a bestiary where you can go and look at the various monsters, but you need to unlock them by killing them in the game. Bosses only need 1, while others need to kill multiple (dozens even) to unlock. There are 2 playable characters to start, and I don't see much difference between them other than 1 male and 1 female. I unlocked the third character before I completed the game, but sadly only been able to beat the game with her(?) sadly. Working on the other 2. Permadeath is fun and annoying. When you die you lose all progress and perks and restart at level 1 on floor 1. When you complete a Floor you can save and quit or continue. You can also Save whenever you like. You don't need to complete every room on the floor, sometimes you can get lucky and find the summoning rune to summon the boss in the boss room and you can find them early on. But I do recommend completing the level for the experience. The tutorial is limited to a hotkey snapshot that will show up on the left side of your screen when you start a new game (since I haven't done a save and load I can't say if it reshows when loading a previous game). Which I found to be really good in this game. I think my only concern, which after getting used to didn't bother me much, is the ability to strafe while sprinting. But there is a perk to increase your movement speed after getting hit, and a very short invulnerability. There is a daily challenge that you can do once per day, although I haven't it yet, when I selected it to see what it was about, you compete to get the highest score. Sounds like fun, will have to do that sometime in the very near future. I truly do recommend this game, it runs quite smooth and I only ran into fps drops when there were a lot of enemies and lots of things happening (mostly just my hardware its not that great), but the game was still quite playable during these drops. I do recommend this game.

As a huge fan of Heretic and Hexen, two of the games I played most on DWANGO back in the day, I am always excited to see a First Person Medieval/Magic shooter game. When you add in the roguelike elements of unlocks, procedural generated levels, and permadeath you have won my heart forever. In Ziggurat's every level and every play through will be different. You start with access to two of the 16 characters. Each character has their own personal "stats." You complete in game challenges to unlock the other 14. The game's combat mechanic is based around moving fast, Unreal Tournament fast, and using one of four weapon types. You start with a basic wand, that is slightly different for every character. You find along the way spells, staves, and alchemy devices (10 different per category). You will also find/unlock and can use one of 17 amulets that give benefits like increased XP gain and poison clouds. As you level you will be able to unlock perks. These perks can be active or passive which you get to select to customize your character to your play style and they greatly increase survivability. There are multitudes of different enemies and room types. Some rooms may even randomly have benefits or curses. If you love fast paced shooters, roguelikes, RPG elements, or a combination there of you will enjoy Ziggurat.

Ziggurat is very good surprise among First Person Rogue-like games. In this game we play a sorcerer who is sent to explore the dreadful Ziggurat. As usual with Rogue-like games, the environment is randomly generated and the game is very hard. You're supposed to die. It's just a matter of time. Ziggurat's gameplay feels a lot like fast FPS like Quake or DOOM. It is very fun and the game looks pretty good for an 3D indie title. The artstyle is a bit too cartoony though. It's a well executed game that deserves to be played a lot.