It feels like Kenny Sun sort of tossed everything together when making Ball x Pit. Vampire Survivors style weapon combinations and evolutions? Sure! Breakout clone elements of block-like enemies descending and in need of smashing? Right there. Piffle sorts of projectile firing in a steady, rapid-fire line for maximum damage? Yeah. Shoot’em up elements when it comes to boss projectiles and unit movement? Absolutely. The thing is that while we can see all the inspirations and it does seem like a lot, it al also does come together and work.
We begin Ball x Pit by returning to what was once Ballbylon. It used to be a thriving city and tower. However, a strange ball attacked it and turned it into a pit in the ground. An elevator ended up constructed at the wreckage, and adventurers are now taking it down to explore the depths, deal with the monsters there, and gradually rebuild New Ballbylon at its outskirts. It’s up to a player to continually run in and advance, acquiring the means of building up a new village and selection of characters who gradually get stronger and more capable of handling the horrors below. Each new ally can play a bit differently due to their innate moveset and RNG determines what upgrades you acquiring, ensuring each journey feels a little different.
Ball x Pit is a roguelike that combines elements and mechanics of Breakout block-busting games such as Piffle and titles such as Vampire Survivors and Peglin. Your character is essentially the paddle. They can fire a stream of balls upward at the enemies that drop down from the top of the screen. Rather than bounce them back, it’s instead like Piffle in that you have a set number and, once those are expended, you need to basically catch them to use them again. (These will eventually come back to you anyways, but there’s a slight delay.) An autofire option is possible. As you level up, you get new types of balls and passives can be selected with one per level. As a stage in an area goes on, the field widens, and a gauge on the side lets you know when you’re reaching the Boss. Once you do reach that major foe, you’ll actually start moving backwards while it advances. There are different biomes for each of the tiers you head into, with different foes at each level, so it can feel like you’re gradually building up skills and familiarity with each run.
There will also be drops that allow you to randomly level up X number of your equipped items, as well as evolve or fuse your balls. Part of the genius of it is while there are ball Evolutions in Ball x Pit like there are in Vampire Survivors with its weapons, there are also general fusions. This means if you get the right balls, such as say Bleed with Vampire, you get an evolved Vampire Lord that is stronger and combines the two traits for bleeding status for enemies and health restoration for your character. But even if you pair up types that don’t result in a good evolution, you can make room and get some sort of combination.
My only issue with Ball x Pit is that once you hit one of these major Bosses for an area, I feel like they can be damage sponges. They are also clever, to be clear! Hitting their weak spots usually involve bouncing the balls at certain angles while dodging attacks like bullet patterns. And since you’re moving backwards instead of advancing like in the rest of the level, it changes things up. But I got the impression early on that some bosses seemed especially HP-heavy as a means of also sort of “forcing” us to engage with the New Ballbylon rebuilding project, which offer certain perks to attacks, materials for building, and additional characters. Like even though I was skilled enough to reach the first area’s boss on the first try, It felt impossible to put a dent into that Skeleton King’s HP bar because I didn’t develop the town at all yet. I felt like it could be a bit of a bummer to reach a boss and then find that because I hadn’t gone through enough runs to build things up, I couldn’t last long enough to drop that health fast. Especially since the ball combination system means there is the potential to succeed with whatever random equipment is thrown at you.
Not that the New Ballbylon part is bad. It’s relatively simple. You place buildings and material gathering points. Between runs, you aim and fire your units (like balls) at the space so they bounce around, hitting things to gather things up. Placing certain buildings is also how you unlock new characters. And we do very obviously feel the effects of these areas by developing the town. There’s no penalization for not placing things optimally initially, since we can move parts around. And experimenting with layouts means you could work out ways to maximize hits when you do revisit the area between runs.
Ball x Pit is a novel game that combines many roguelike, block-busting, and city organization elements in a way that makes sense. It’s quite clever, and I felt like it was pretty fair too! Due to the way ball fusions work and the nature of characters, it’s pretty easy to feel empowered as you play. I did feel a bit disappointed to find actually taking down some bosses right away wasn’t exactly an easy prospect due to not having build up New Ballbylon enough ahead of time. It is both creative and satisfying though, and scratches the same sort of itch as Vampire Survivors.
Ball x Pit is available on the Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC. A demo is available.
Ball x Pit
Ball x Pit is a novel game that combines many roguelike, block-busting, and city organization elements in a way that makes sense.