Ziggurat
Dungeon-Crawling First Person Shooting at its finest! Fast-paced combat! Dozens of perks, spells and enemies! Level ups! Random Dungeons! Traps! Badass bosses! Carrots! Ziggurat is the best combination of First Person Shooter and Rogue-LITE you have ever seen. Become a neophyte sorcerer, and get ready for your rite of passage: Enter the labyrinth and face dangerous challenges to prove your worth and become a powerful wizard! The game focuses on fast-paced first person shooting, with an old-school vibe, and updated handling and game mechanics. Dungeon crawling and RPG/Roguelike elements are added into the mix, resulting in a fun, challenging and varied game, with lots of content to discover. Fight almighty bosses, get through rooms filled with traps, and treasures that may help you in your journey… Each game is a whole new experience!
Steam User 17
Awesome rogue-like FPS where you play as a wizard. Everything is random generated so prepare for surprise combat battle royal. Many different types of weapons, enemies and traps. You will encounter many type of rooms some of them will have monsters, secret power ups and challenges. On each run you power up your character selecting one of random skills as you level up you gain more useful abilities. Gameplay is fluid and visuals holds good. Soundtrack is more on ambient side but it sets the atmosphere just right.
Over 10 years still playing to this day...
Steam User 4
It's fun! Graphics are pretty good for how old it is. Lots of enemies with different kinds of attacks. I like it
Steam User 2
challenging, but very fun. i wasn't sure if i'd like ziggurat since i'm not usually into these sort of games revolving around magic, but ziggurat literally just feels like an fps boomer shooter game with magic instead of bullets.
awesome stuff, highly recommend.
Steam User 2
It's fun! Graphics are pretty good for how old it is. Lots of enemies with different kinds of attacks and ways to counter them. Boss fights are pretty engaging. Many different characters to select from, with various perks to help out in your runs. Combat & perk systems are pretty good.
Steam User 2
Hidden gem, but snag this off of a sale. Old game but plays like a modern fps/rpg game and has elements akin to binding of isaac due to the incremental upgrades you get when you level up. Very fun, if I get bored I'll play it. 9/10.
Steam User 2
Ziggurat is a Rogue-like FPS with a magical theme, inspired by Doom and Heretic. It's kinda simple, and there isn't a ton of variety when it comes to the enemies and layouts of the rooms, but it's still pretty fun, and there are many characters and perks to unlock.
As a Rogue-like, luck plays a significant part in this game: For example, some runs will end on the first floor because you got unlucky and landed on a room with double-spawning enemies while you were pretty under-powered, while other runs will be successful because you got lucky and got pretty good perks. So... keep that in mind.
Also, every time you die you unlock perks for them to appear in each run, which is neat.
If you enjoy Rogue-likes and/or FPS games, then I do recommend you give Ziggurat a try, but only on sale with a 50%+ discount. This game also has a sequel if you want to check it out:
Steam User 1
If I had a nickel for every $15 game that I played in Spring 2025 that has a sequel worth $25, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot…
Jokes aside, Ziggurat 2 looks better, but Ziggurat still makes a decent case for being a budget option, starting with a pretty solid progression system. In each run, you select level-up perks to manage your personal stats and three special weapons that use different reserves of mana. Upon failing or completing a run, you unlock more characters, weapons, and level-up perks to experiment with in future runs.
Aesthetically, it hasn’t aged too much, and it’s lit very well, but it is pretty generic, with your typical lava mines, temple dungeons, and courtyards. The enemy variety is also underwhelming, with a lizard thing, a plant thing, a witch thing, a mushroom thing, a few skeletons, way too many faceless armored creatures, and living carrots just to evoke the otherwise-lacking magician theme. The interstitial graphics feel like they could be used for a mobile game, and I don’t remember a single bit of lore from any of the scrolls I picked up.
The difficulty is pretty high. You can’t run around wands blazing in normal mode, as you need to preserve your mana and health while watching for projectiles. It helps to keep moving and stick to high ground, but the damage adding up can really sneak up on you. I struggled on normal, and even switching to easy felt only bearable, and I only hit my stride when I unlocked the first character, who is very good with the default weapon. I made it to the final boss once, but was completely outmatched. Then I had a run where I stacked experience gain and enemy drop rate increases with the extra level-up perk option, propelling me to level 29. This gave me big mana pools and pre-fight recovery bonuses, along with post-hit invincibility and the Trader perk that allows any mana type to refill any weapon. I blasted the boss away without even dodging any attacks. This feels like an appropriate “easy” run, but it was helped a lot by good RNG.
Calling back to my opening sentence, there’s not really any point in comparing Ziggurat to 911 Operator, since the games have pretty much nothing to do with each other. That said, I did find it interesting how both felt like solid concepts that falter a bit due to repetitive content and under-immersion. I don’t want to reduce the difference in opinion to third-party price points, though I do admit it factored into my decision. Still, the trickle of unlocks, procedural generation, and more hands-on gameplay do make Ziggurat more replayable, which I feel is the more important distinction.
I wish that I felt a bit more enthusiastic about Ziggurat. It starts slow, it’s not a fave, and I think some players will experience the same initial difficulties and misgivings as I did, but while it’s not current nor especially innovative, it’s solid enough at its core. Not a strong recommend, but competent and a bit fun.