Berzerk is a one or two-player game.[1] Darran Jones of Retro Gamer retrospectively described its genre as both a maze and shooter.[2] The goal of Berzerk is to shoot as many robots as possible and escape a maze-like room.[3][4] At the start of each room, the Humanoid appears in the middle of one of the four edges and can escape through the exits on a different side of the area.[5]
The rooms are littered with robots that move slowly and occasionally shoot at the player. The robots can fire in eight directions.[4] The player shoots in one of the eight directions the joystick is moved towards. The joystick also controls the Humanoid Intruder's movement. The player cannot move while firing.[3] Bonus points are awarded when the robots in all of the rooms are destroyed.[3] A smiley face known as "Evil Otto" will eventually come into the room from where the Humanoid entered and cannot be destroyed. Evil Otto can move through walls and follows the Humanoid Intruder while trying to defeat it.[3] Being shot by the robots, touching a maze wall, or coming into contact with either Evil Otto or a robot will result in the player losing a life.[4]
DIP switches are available in the arcade machine for the operator to adjust some gameplay elements. This provides options to allow the player to receive an extra life at 5,000 points, 10,000 points or not at all.[6] By 1981, two models of Berzerk existed. The first featured three different colored robots, with the yellow robots that do not shoot bullets, red robots that shoot one shot at a time, and white robots that shoot two shots at a time. The next model featured all the previous robots, as well as purple robots that shoot three or five shots at a time, yellow robots that shoot four shots at a time, and a white robot that shoots one very fast shot.[7]