For as long as I can remember, I’ve had trouble falling asleep. When I lie down, my mind inevitably starts racing a thousand miles an hour, thinking about anything and everything.
However, these past few nights, my pre-sleep thoughts had a singular focus. I thought about possibilities like: “What if I merged a bullet that heals my character with one that splits into smaller bullets with the same effect, what if I added a passive that fires a baby bullet every time I’m healed?” Then I take my PlayStation Portal and do just that until I doze off. This is the hold Ball x Pit got on me.
Kenny Sun and a small group of collaborators have put together a fascinating brick-breaking roguelite. Ball x Pit is a mix of twin-stick shoot-’em-up action, base-building, and a dozen other things that keep calling me back for one more run…and another, and another.
After a cataclysmic event destroys the city of Ballbylon and leaves a massive pit, hunters descend into the depths in search of treasure. For our purposes, this means playing levels to collect resources to build structures in New Ballbylon. These buildings unlock perks, such as new characters, that make future runs easier. The sick chaos of the levels and the calmer aspect of city building feed into each other intelligently and combine for a satisfying loop.
Base building in Ball x Pit
(Kenny Sun/Devolver Digital)
That’s not the only important interaction here. Like any good roguelite, Ball x Pit it’s about finding synergies for maximum impact. It’s right there in the title, with the “x” denoting a relationship between two things (it’s derived from the term shipping in fandom parlance).
In the pit, you fight monsters by — surprise! – by shooting them. In addition to the classic “baby balls”, each character has a unique ability and a special starting ball. In the vein of Vampire SurvivorsYou will unlock more special balls and passive abilities when you collect enough gems to level up. One bullet has a chance to freeze enemies and another is slower but deals significantly more damage. There are dozens more.
The real fun comes when you start merging these bullets and their effects, freeing up space for another weapon. It’s even better when you’re able to turn a pair of balls into something new. It is possible to merge evolved balls, or even evolve them again. There is a strategic aspect to this, as you won’t want to fuse bullets that can almost cancel each other out, like fusing an area-of-effect bullet with one that disappears on impact, or end up with too few bullets in the face of danger.
Once I unlocked the option to take two characters on a run and combine their passive abilities, that’s when things got excessive. The possibilities became very exciting at this point, and I ended up playing Ball x Pit As a result, I went past my ideal bedtime.
However, it takes a while to get there. Progress is slow at first. Repetition can get a bit cumbersome because you have to complete each step several times before moving on to the next one. Additionally, I wish there was a little more to the game narratively than a basic setup and some character descriptions.
But there’s so much to consider in every race, and that’s what keeps me coming back. Each of the nine levels takes place in a different biome, with its own dangers, enemies and bosses. Some late-game characters shake up the game by changing their playstyle in surprising ways, but I don’t want to spoil them. Aside from the absolute chaos and dopamine hits of slicing up enemies, discovering deadly combinations between characters, special bullets – especially evolutions – and passives are where much of the joy of this game comes from.
Every time you merge or evolve a pair of balls, rather than having to click an “OK” button to get back into the action, the prompt says “Whoa.” It’s on the nose, but it’s funny. And I’ll be damned if I didn’t say that out loud several times when I saw what a new, advanced ball could do.
Ball x Pit is available now SteamPS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch for $15. It is available through Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. A Nintendo Switch 2 version will arrive later this fall with a free upgrade to the Switch version.
