You may have observed me chipping away at the Ziggurat for the last few years, so this post has been a long time coming: the game is feature complete and rules complete, but I need fresh eyeballs.
What is it?
For anyone who’s missed the long version: Ziggurat is a solo adventure game that blends the dice-rolling skill checks of a solo RPG with the tactical card play of an LCG. You follow a structured quest arc (some short, some longer) punctuated by random encounters and a host of strange denizens that haunt the path. You play an eternal hero, a single soul reborn across the ages, drawn one last time to an enigmatic ziggurat to face a destiny you never chose.
The prose is unashamedly last century’s sword-and-sorcery pulp, with a penchant for improbable encounters on stranger worlds. If you’ve a soft spot for Vance’s Dying Earth and Cugel, Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Moorcock’s Elric and Hawkmoon, or Wolfe’s Severian, you’ll have the vibe.
What I’m after
A small handful of enthusiastic guinea pigs.
Ziggurat doesn’t run on standard dungeon-crawler machinery. The core mechanisms are a bit different, which is why clear rules matter, and why blind feedback is so valuable. What makes sense to me may not land for others.
What you’d get
A physical prototype, posted to you from The Game Crafter. Fair warning: shipping takes roughly four weeks to arrive, so this is a commitment that plays out over a couple of months, not a weekend.
What I’m asking for
This is a blind playtest, and that word matters. I need you to open the box and learn the game entirely on your own. I want you to endure the pain and suffering of struggling through the rulebook and the tutorial exactly as a stranger who bought the game would.
I’ll interview you about what was confusing; where the rules tripped you up, what the tutorial failed to explain, what you had to re-read three times. Once we’ve done that interview, the phase glove comes off. I’ll answer anything and everything to get you up to speed for the second, thrilling phase: dying, often.
Then I’d be grateful if you would embark upon one short quest and one long quest of your choosing, and report back:
- Rules clarity — anything ambiguous, contradictory, or just dumb.
- Balance — too hard, too easy, or about right? The porridge rating.
- Fun — the big one. What got you on your feet? What made you decide it was time to change the cat litter? I need back-end of the bus bluntness.
Sound like you?
Reply here or drop me a direct message with a line on:
- How often you reckon you can play; this could play out over weeks, so steady beats fast.
- Your rough location (for postage).
- That you’re up for the blind-learning bit… it’s the part some people find frustrating, so go in eyes open.
Thank you, genuinely. After years of tinkering, handing it over to bona fide dungeon plungers is equal parts terrifying and exciting.