Ziggurat is a first-person shooter similar to Tower of Guns that borrows many elements from roguelike games. Game elements include permadeath, randomized environments and enemies, random pick-ups, weapons, items and skills. The game has a fantasy theme and the protagonist is an apprentice of the Greyborn citadel, established by the Daedalon brothers wizards, where aspiring wizards are trained. The tower-like Ziggurat consists of several floors that need to be completed with a single life. The game has permadeath but it is possible to save progress after completing a floor to continue another time. The game emphasizes fast-paced movement including sprinting, jumping and using platforms in the environment, fighting against large hordes in small rooms, but optionally auto-aiming can be enabled.
Each floor is generated with a random pattern and it consists of several floors linked together by corridors. To complete a level a guardian boss needs to be defeated, but it can only be summoned when a portal key has first been located elsewhere. A typical room spawns a large amount of minions that need to be defeated before the doors open again.
There are also other types of rooms that can be part of a floor, such as treasure rooms with powerful items, hazard rooms where environmental hazards need to be avoided, shrine rooms where health or mana can be offered to the gods in exchange for an additional effect or modifier, and lore rooms where ancient scrolls can be found, providing knowledge.
Each floor also has a secret room hidden behind a cracked wall. Inside one of two skills can be chosen and it also shows information about one of the developer's earlier games.
At the start the player chooses one of several characters with different statistics and modifiers, presented as different classes, but only one is available in the beginning as the others are unlocked gradually. The default weapon is a magic wand that shoots projectiles. Three additional types of weapons can be picked up, tied to three limited mana sources.
Each weapon has a regular attack, and a powerful attack that consumes more. Weapons include staffs, grenades, homing projectiles, charges that freeze opponents etc. They all use ranged attacks so the character needs to keep a distance, but still needs to move in to collect items left behind by defeated enemies before they vanish.
Unlike many roguelike games the game emphasizes combat skills to survive instead of relying on the randomness of provided items. By defeating enemies and for instance locating lore, experience is gained to level up. The character becomes stronger, but with each new level a selection between two random skills is offered so the player has a choice what skills or perks to use.
Defeated enemies also leave behind health, mana and other types of objects. After each game session additional weapons, items, characters, skills, game modes and difficulty levels are unlocked gradually, to use in a next one.
Ziggurat was released for the Xbox One on 1970 . It is classified as a first-person shooter.