When I was a kid, I would constantly try to borrow my dad’s phone to play Breakout. This was back in the era when phones looked like bricks rather than sleek and intricately designed supercomputers. I remember spending hours just fiddling around, bouncing a ball on a paddle as I tried to break every brick in the line to the best of my ability. It’s a memory that has only recently resurfaced in my mind, due to the release of BALL x PIT.
BALL x PIT is a roguelite from Devolver Digital and developer Kenny Sun, which offers a new take on the Breakout formula. You are able to play as multiple characters as you bounce balls to destroy enemies, upgrade your ammunition, and build your colony between runs. This combination of concepts, from Breakout to farming simulators to rougelites, shouldn’t work. However, BALL x PIT is a shockingly addictive game that has consumed my time in ways that few titles have recently.
Rebuild Ballbylon
BALL x PIT‘s story is more of an excuse to set up the gameplay, rather than one that’ll lead to a meaningful narrative journey. A giant meteor has destroyed the city of Ballbylon, leaving a huge pit in its wake. As a result, multiple treasure hunters have arrived at this pit to dive in, gather as much loot as possible, and build “New Ballbylon.” Again, the story doesn’t really progress that much, and there aren’t any twists and turns to expect. Once you get past the opening cutscene, you quickly have to grapple with BALL x PIT‘s gameplay mechanics.
The gameplay of BALL x PIT is exactly what you’d expect. It can essentially be described as Breakout on steroids, infusing the roguelite genre into the formula of one of the oldest arcade games. You start with one treasure hunter and a lift that takes you down into one of the many biomes you can traverse throughout your journey. Eight stages are available, each of which is unlocked by completing it multiple times. These include the Bone x Yard, the Snowy x Shores, and more.
Once you pick your character, you descend into the titular pit. At first, you’re taught the ropes: you can either tap the trigger to fire bullets/balls, or enable autofire. I personally enabled autofire because, as you will quickly realize, you’re going to be firing a lot of bullets at a time. The goal is to try and defeat as many enemies as possible in your path as you approach two mini-bosses, before having to fight a final boss of the area. However, if you get too close to an enemy, they will damage you. If they damage you enough, you will run out of health, and you’re forced to restart your run from the beginning.
Of course, since this is a roguelite similar to the likes of Hades II, death doesn’t mean a complete loss of progress. With each run, you gain statistical upgrades for whichever character you played as during that run. Further, you can also gather buildings in your run, which you can build throughout New Ballbylon. This is where the farming simulator elements of BALL x PIT come into play.
In this phase of gameplay, you’re trying to harvest resources, like stone and wood, to build more buildings. Subsequent buildings can be used to provide further upgrades to characters, such as faster movement speed and higher statistics. Further, these can also be used to unlock more characters to use in subsequent runs. The characters you can unlock in BALL x PIT all control completely differently and feel fantastic to control.
For instance, one of my favorite characters to play as is The Cohabitants. This duo, instead of firing a single line of projectiles, instead fires two rows of bullets. This is extremely efficient for covering a wide range of space to defeat any enemies in your path, whether you want to deal with them directly or via the ricochet. Another favorite is The Cogitator, who removes your ability to pick upgrades on your own. Instead, the character picks his own upgrades, though he somehow manages to pick the exact right upgrade for each run.
Each of the upgrades you can find in BALL x PIT all feels satisfying to experiment with. Sme of my favorites were the vertical and horizontal lasers, the lightning ball, which causes area-of-effect damage, and the upgrade, which causes enemies to explode when they’re killed, forcing them to do damage to other enemies around them. You can also evolve each upgrade, combining them with other upgrades to create something new, or fuse them to merge the statistics of two abilities into one mix between the duo.
As mentioned previously, BALL x PIT throws together a lot of different mechanics, features, and concepts into one huge melting pot of a game. In theory, this should make for a mess of a game. Instead, BALL x PIT is easily some of the most fun I’ve had with a roguelite in a while.
“Brick” Breaking Never Felt So Good
BALL x PIT is alarmingly addictive to play. The moment the gameplay clicks, it truly just feels right in all ways. I spent a lot of time fiddling around with different builds, characters, and strategies in order to navigate each run as efficiently as possible. There are a few problems, for sure, but these are negligible compared to just how fun the overall experience is.
For starters, when you enable autofire, the “gunplay” feels just right. Moving around the arena and finding the right angles to destroy each monster in your path is a true challenge, especially depending on which character you go with. For example, one of the hardest characters to figure out is The Shade, who fires bullets from the back of the arena rather than the front. When you hit that zen state of firing ammunition, the screen almost looks like an extremely elaborate shoot-em-up, and it’s somehow both extremely overwhelming yet very thrilling.
That’s one of the best parts about BALL x PIT‘s gameplay formula: how it forces you to constantly adapt to different situations on the fly. After the tutorial, the game drops all the training wheels for you and expects you to adjust to each concept it introduces to you. You have to get very quickly good at gathering resources so you can build more buildings. You have to pick the right character to go through each run, and further, you need to make sure you have the right upgrades to make it past whatever boss stands in your way.
The evolution feature is one of the best examples of this. The level of synergy you can generate with the merging of two power-ups into one is incredible. One of my favorite examples of this was with the two laser upgrades. I kept wondering what would happen if you evolved both power-ups, and what would emerge as a result of combining the horizontal and vertical lasers. Later, I found out the answer: it creates a ball that fires lasers in a plus-sized direction. When I realized that the developers thought about this merger, it was hard not to fall in love with BALL x PIT.
I will say that I was a bit concerned about how repetitive the game would feel. Each biome only gets more difficult to fight through as you continue, and there are no difficulty adjusters, so you could spend hours at a time trying to complete the same level to no avail. However, by the time I found myself struggling, something usually clicked in my playstyle, which gave me the strength to blitz past each battle.
Plus, the nice presentation and music certainly help to make the routine more manageable. The pixel art style, alongside the mix of electronic and traditional instruments in the soundtrack, creates an identity that makes the game what it is. Overall, I had an absolute blast with BALL x PIT, and I can’t recommend it enough.
One of The Best Entries in the Genre
In the last few years, the roguelite genre has been taken in new and exciting directions. Whether it’s with the Hades franchise and Vampire Survivors, or with less traditional entries like Balatro and Inscryption, it’s easier than ever to get into the constantly evolving scene. Yet somehow, with all these unique games in the genre, BALL x PIT stands apart as one of the most fun roguelites to date.
BALL x PIT takes the Breakout formula and combines it with roguelites, farming simulators, and shoot-em-ups to make a game that feels unlike anything I’ve ever played before. This combination of concepts shouldn’t work whatsoever, but thanks to the satisfying gameplay loop, great variety of content, and limitless opportunities for building unique strategies and builds, it works perfectly.
While the game can often feel a bit repetitive, the great soundtrack and visual presentation help to make a title that has an identity unlike anything else in the genre. Furthermore, if you end up playing BALL x PIT on the Nintendo Switch 2, you will have a game that will consume all aspects of your life to such an extent that the words “Just one more run” will become an essential part of your daily vocabulary.
I can’t recommend BALL x PIT enough. Regardless of whether you’re a fan of roguelite games or not, this is easily one of the best examples of everything that makes this genre great. Plus, with the $14.99 price point and heaping piles of content, you will be playing this game for a long, long time. Personally, I can’t wait to jump back into the game and take just one more dive into the pit.
Disclaimer: BALL x PIT was reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2.
