Ball x Pit Review

Addictive is an Understatement

So many things I read about Ball x Pit said to be careful. If you value your time, stay away from this game, they said. If you want to finish playing other games, don’t start this one, they said. It’ll suck in your soul and spit it out as a thousand brick-breaking balls, they said. They were all right. As far as roguelites go, this is one of the most addictive ones I’ve played since Hades (I haven’t started Hades 2, yet), and that says a lot because I’m currently playing Megabonk, as well. 

On its surface, Ball x Pit sounds overambitious. The Steam description itself is nutty: “a brick-breaking, ball-fusing, base-building survival roguelite.” But somehow, Kenny Sun and his friends (the developers) have managed to make all the aspects of this game feel so critical to its success. The various gameplay features flow into and complement one another. 

A New Kind of Ball

The premise is that the grand city of Ballbylon (love it) has fallen and left a huge pit where treasure hunters go to do their thing. The desolate land near the elevator pit is where you’ll be building a new city, where each building upgrades your stats and balls, unlocks characters, provides buffs, or helps to collect resources.

Unlike in most city-builders, resource collection doesn’t happen automatically once you place a building, nor do you send workers out to fields to gather them (well, you kinda do). Instead, Ball x Pit makes you shoot your unlocked characters into the city pinball style as they bounce off of buildings, resources, and walls. It’s a unique, on-brand feature that the game pulls off incredibly well. Since the characters are bouncing off various obstacles, the city planning aspect of the gameplay is even more important. Optimizing the placement of resources and buildings means collecting the most resources possible with each shot.

Big Beautiful Balls

But, city building can only go so far without a constant supply of gold, which is where the bulk of the gameplay comes in: brick-breaking mayhem. As the elevator descends into the depths with the character you’ve chosen for that run, you’ll shoot all kinds of powered-up balls at block-shaped enemies that change with each level. Just like in the eponymous 1999 game Brick Breaker, you need to find the seams between enemies so your balls can bounce as many times as possible before either hitting the back of the stage and returning to you or being caught and immediately fired again.

As you progress through Ball x Pit, you unlock a variety of characters with a range of skills, making each run unique in the types of balls and passives you choose and how you move around the stage. For example, one character’s ability shoots through enemies until the balls hit a wall. Pair that with a passive powerup that increases crit chance when hitting enemies in the back, and you’ve got a deadly combo. Each character also has specific stats, making them heavy hitters, fast movers, or AOE magicians, which also modifies the power-ups you would choose during a run. There’s no right or wrong way to play. Pick the character that gives a cash bonus for that run, and as you beat levels with different characters, your stats will grow thanks to buildings that give buffs when multiple characters finish the same levels.

As with any roguelite, the more runs you do, the more you unlock, and the more powerful you get. The gameplay loop of brick-breaking and unlocking more ball power combinations → upgrading/organizing city and unlocking more buffs/resources → pinballing characters to collect resources and construct buildings → brick-breaking, never got old. There were always new blueprints to unlock that gave more buffs, gears to obtain that led me deeper into the pit, and balls to unlock. The seemingly disparate but expertly designed and integrated gameplay systems ensured I was meaningfully rewarded every time I played. 

Harmony of Balls

Endgame of Balls

Even once I completed the main part of the game, there were new challenges that forced me to think carefully about the upgrades I wanted and which characters I was going to take with me into the pit. Luckily, a character unlocks toward the end of the game that essentially plays the game for you. Combine that with a building power that allows you to take two characters into a run, and I was able to grind some characters and resources without needing to touch my Switch. 

Overall, Ball x Pit kept me incredibly entertained for the approximately 25 hours I spent playing it. It’s a perfect companion for the Switch, since playing it on the go or just for a couple of minutes made it much easier to get a quick run in. Sure, the game may have run a bit smoother, and textures may have been smoothed out a bit on the PS5, but the game played great. Although if I had a PS Portal, I would have definitely played it on that. Alas, I do not (not yet, at least).

The Verdict