Ball X Pit Review

There are some games that you immediately know will ruin your life for a week. Five minutes before the Ball X Pit, I knew I was in danger.

In fact, you’ll probably be able to tell just by looking at the trailer whether you’re susceptible to the game’s charms. Does Breakout-inspired gameplay tickle the lump at the back of your brain? Do you feel yourself getting closer to the screen, mesmerized by the bouncing balls? Does the phrase “city building subsystem” make your pulse quicken? You may need to set aside some time.

The basic formula is devilishly cyclical. As you run, you shoot bouncing balls to break falling enemy blocks. A progression system inspired by Vampire Survivors allows you to collect experience orbs from fallen enemies and build an arsenal of balls (each with their own unique powers, from lightning to poison) and items that provide passive bonuses.

Defeat the final boss of the stage (or die trying) and you will return to your settlement. Here you can shoot bullets (technically, unlocked heroes) at your own stuff – because everything from harvesting crops to cutting down trees and constructing fresh buildings requires deflection. These buildings unlock fresh characters, bonuses and options for your runs.

Who could resist going for one more run and trying out some fresh toys? But then again, this run has earned you a ton of gold and a fresh plan, so it’s worth building something else before you log off. And once it’s built, it’s impossible not to test it This bonus, right? You can start to understand why this is a ride that’s difficult to get off.

In fact, the effectiveness of this loop is probably out of proportion to the depth that the Ball X Pit actually has. While you can build structures as you run – and the most fun is connecting balls to combine their powers or evolve into fresh forms – it’s never particularly complicated, and bouncing the ball itself is uncomplicated. There’s little opportunity for tricks or other clever strategies beyond the basics, and while you can fine-tune your city’s layout perfectly for maximum harvest and building synergy, there’s very little pressure to do so.

Instead, Ball X Pit opts for a kind of jovial excess. New characters offer increasingly strange and game-changing quirks, from reversing the flow of gravity to making the game turn-based. Some buildings radically change the progression system in ways so unexpected that I hate to spoil them – except to say that buildings that seem out of reach at first glance will soon become your bread and butter as you scale ridiculously overwhelming heights.

This excess can certainly look… messy. For example, the various characters are not well balanced with each other, and some are much funnier than others. (Cogitator, whose only power is that it automatically selects all leveling options instead of letting you create builds, might go down as my least favorite roguelike character ever).

But this lack of restraint also means that you just keep unlocking things that seem borderline illegal. Every time you feel a little tired, the game will throw some absurd fresh thing at you that will give the game a fresh, weird shape and you’ll be desperate to get back into the game.

This makes Ball X Pit a lot of fun for as long as these unlocks last – in my case it was around 20 hours, though that may have been a bit bloated by my incapable city planning. After this time, those really balled will be able to play through the quite extensive New Game+ mode, which will easily last another 20, if not more, although I think I’m probably ready to retire for now.

So it wasn’t quite the durability you’d expect from this genre, but it was all I could think about for a week and I feel very satisfied with the rollercoaster that Ball X Pit sent me on. One of my favorite things about roguelikes is that they create a very clear set of rules and then gleefully invite you to break them. This is a game that takes this philosophy to the extreme, and it’s great to discover how far it can go so that you can hit balls off the blocks for just one more run.