Anyone heard of Ziggurat (2014 FPS)?

Somehow slipped under the radar for me. It's on sale on Steam right now, so I'm looking at it. It brands itself as a fast-paced FPS roguelite in which you play some kind of mage alchemist, and from gameplay videos that seems fairly accurate. Reviews are mostly positive. Hmm, I don't have much to say, but knowing there are many Heretic/Hexen fans around here it seemed worth sharing, as it seems to share the atmosphere visually, if nothing else.

So I bought it, and gave it a go. So far, so good.

Environments look nice visually. Performance seems fine for the most part, assuming you're playing on a current day rig. I was at 60 FPS most of the time, but there was a dip in some particularly big room.

The option menu is pretty comprehensive: on top of your usual settings, you get a FOV slider, an option to turn off Quake-style viewbob, an option to not switch FOV when sprinting.

Not that you actually need to sprint all that much, the character runs pretty fast. Movement feels tight, decent air control. There's some jumping puzzles, and I'm whiny when it comes to jumping puzzles, but I haven't even failed one yet.

Initially you have one weapon, which has infinitely regenerating ammo, and apparently you can pick up to three additional weapons, which need ammo, which drops from enemy kills. Weapons are magic-themed, projectile-based, with a secondary fire which is generally a stronger version of the primary fire. I started with a staff firing purple stuff, got a staff firing green stuff, and grenades.

Enemies are projectile-based as well, and there's a good variety of both enemy types and attack patterns. I've fought lost souls with viking helmets, flying fishes, crossbow goblins, puking birds, plants throwing seeker missiles, animated armors leading their fireball shots, and more.

Despite the rooms being square-ish, this variety is enough to make fights enjoyable. You get some decent height changes, some stairs and platforms. Nothing huge, but it's there.

As you kill enemies they drop ammo, health and experience. Leveling up lets you pick a perk out of two random choices.

The drop system is perhaps my biggest pet peeve with the game so far, because drops vanish after a while. You have to stop fighting to grab everything before it disappears, and sometimes you get hit doing that.

You get a wallhack effect letting you see enemies through architecture in a room, which might be questionable in a standard FPS but I thought it's a good way to balance the unfairness that can come with random fights.

Your goal in each floor is to find a key letting you activate a boss arena, then defeating that boss lets you progress to the next floor. Fought two bosses so far, which were... OK I guess, nothing particularly noteworthy.

Pretty fun at this point. I suspect it will get repetitive. The patterns are already obvious; but the combat is solid enough I can see myself playing this for a long time in short bursts.

Watched my friend play some of this a little while back. Looked pretty cool, and like a suitably fun experience. Might tide some of us over until Hellraid finally gets a release. ;)

I bought it. It's nice, although it's pretty hard. I haven't cleared the first floor yet. I got to the boss once. I need to practice not getting hit.

Only in Steam? Other than that, I would buy it. Looked some of the videos, and I am already interested.

I bought it. It's pretty good so far. Made it to the 3rd floor. I suspect that more stuff changes the deeper you go in the dungeon.

Got bored after 12 hours, not enough content. Still a really good game. Haven't played since November, maybe there's much more content already.

Finished the game on my fourth run, there's five floors in total. Pretty fun. As the credits roll I think I can guess why it didn't get much attention, developers all have Spanish sounding names (much harder to do PR when English isn't your native tongue and you can't network locally). Looks like they have a history of making small games, and this is their first attempt at something larger. Hopefully they get their big break, it would be well deserved.

Running through it, you get the feeling they play games themselves and understand what it's all about. It's the little touches, like the unusual options, or not dying immediately when your feet touches lava, generally forgiving collision boxes, all enemies and projectiles evaporating when you defeat a boss (so you don't get killed right as you win).

Re:difficulty, I played on Normal so far. It gets pretty hairy in the later floors. Although the early game isn't that easy either. There's a lull in the middle, as enemy scaling doesn't quite catch up to your perks. It seems to me the trick is to pick perks related to health. The basic infinite staff is pretty good, so while mana is nice it's not strictly necessary. The perk giving up health back for breaking stuff is particularly useful, you can destroy books, barrels, tombstones and get HP from that. By floor 4 my health would often go from max to bottom and back to max in the end in the course of a fight.

Apparently there's secret rooms. I'm too dumb to find any. In one room I could blow out candles by going next to them, but didn't see if this opened up anything.

Man, I didn't expect to like this as much as I do.

Got bored after 12 hours, not enough content. Still a really good game. Haven't played since November, maybe there's much more content already.

Yeah, I have a feeling this is about how long it's going to last for me as well. Then it'll be one quick playthrough every few months or so. I think I saw most enemies by the time I got to the fourth floor, and all bosses except for the final guy are palette-swapped, bigger versions of normal enemies.

Yeah its awesome. 12 hours in a game is more than enough for me. I managed to get 12 hours out of what people call a 3 hour game before.

Never heard of it,but the gameplay somehow looks like the same from "Hexen"

Nomad said:

Watched my friend play some of this a little while back. Looked pretty cool, and like a suitably fun experience. Might tide some of us over until Hellraid finally gets a release. ;)

I dunno about Ziggurat but I'm certainly waiting for Hellraid to get released.

it gets a lot more fun once you start unlocking some more stuff. and even if you die a lot, you still unlock a few items everytime you die, so it gets a bit easier every time. one thing i don't see mentioned is how much shit you can unlock in the game, like new perks, weapons (like the Serpent Staff, which is every bit as identical as the Hexen weapon, basically), items, and characters. i think there's like 8-9 characters in the game, and they all have specific gimmicks that make them different to play, and all of them have a different kind of wand attack, too.

it's pretty fun, and is still pretty playable on a slightly shittier video card, although you probably won't get a smooth framerate. i feel it was worth the full-price i spent on it.

I bought Euro Truck Simulator 2 and am currently delivering Xmas presents around Europe...

Lol Steam sale does this to me every year...