The nice thing about BALL x PIT is that everything you need to know about the game is in the title. There are balls, you’re in a pit, that’s the meat of it. And what BALL x PIT taught me is that’s really all you need to make an engaging video game.
BALL x PIT
Developer: Kenny Sun
Price: $15
Platform: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC
MonsterVine was supplied with a PlayStation 5 code for review
BALL x PIT doesn’t really concern itself with the particulars. There was a city, Ballbylon, and it fell in an annihilation event, creating a giant pit. Treasure hunters are gathering to get the treasure out of the pit. That’s really all you need to know.
There’s a lift that requires upgrades through the acquisition of gears to go lower into the pit, unlocking new levels. You acquire gears by beating stage bosses in the levels you already have access to with new characters.
There’s a space near the pit that you can carve out to place buildings and resource nodes, allowing you to acquire upgrades to stats and bring in new characters. You collect blueprints for new buildings by beating stage mini-bosses and bosses.
We’re not really treading new territory in the upgrade/unlock section of the game. What BALL x PIT does well is the actual gameplay itself. Y’all ever play Arkanoid? Brick Breaker? These bartop arcade games have been around for half a century, and it took roguelites to bring them back.
Players choose a character and a stage; each character comes with a special ball. This is where Kenny Sun shows that they’re the perfect person to make this game. The characters are all different and have distinct gameplay styles.
You enter a stage, it’s got walls on either side, and enemies take up slots in a grid-like fashion, coming towards the player character. If the enemies get too close, they’ll pop up a lil’ red exclamation point for a second before leaping and crushing your character, chipping off some health.
For standard play, the first character, The Warrior, you’re just shooting balls in a linear fashion towards the enemies. Balls hit them, you catch them, and throw ‘em right back to keep dealing damage. Truly, the creativity that went into making the characters and the special balls is what makes BALL x PIT worth playing.
The Cohabitants are a man and a woman who enter together, shooting balls in opposite directions. The Spendthrift who shoots balls all at the same time in a wide arc. The Juggler who lobs balls into the air where the player’s crosshair is located on the screen.
That doesn’t even scratch the surface either. Some characters only shoot special balls, no baby balls. There’s a character that adds gravity to the game, so you just drop balls on the enemies from the bottom of the screen to the top to deal damage. There’s a character that makes the game turn-based.
And that’s not even talking about the combinations of balls that you’ll end up having access to once playing the game. The balls start really basic, just afflicting bleed status, poison, fire, freeze, real basic RPG stuff. You can freeze the enemy, and that’ll stop them from moving for a second or two. You get the gist.
Upon beating some enemies, they’ll drop a fusion circle dealie. Fission allows you to upgrade one or more balls or passives. They literally refer to the items you pick up as passives, which is fine. Don’t coddle me, I get what it is.
Balls can be leveled up to level 3, and if you have multiple balls at level 3, you can fuse them. This turns a bleed ball and a freeze ball into a bleed x freeze ball. Again, it’s real simple stuff, but since you have a limited number of special balls, this lets you maintain a certain type of damage while essentially discarding the ball.
Specific combinations can also be achieved when the balls hit level 3 and you pick up a fusion reactor. You’re able to evolve the balls. Freeze x wind creates a blizzard ball. The combination of the horizontal and vertical lasers creates the holy laser. The iron ball with the egg sac creates the shotgun, you know, it’s all really easy to guess stuff.
I always found success in evolving the freeze ball. Having multiple sources of freeze in my arsenal proved really useful for keeping the enemies at bay. Likewise, I would also find success in area damage, bombs, or lasers, just making sure I was hitting multiple enemies at the same time. Bad for bosses, great for clears.
The passives can also change the game greatly. The baby rattle gives you 1.5x more baby balls, but your aim becomes scattered. There are passives that increase your critical hit chance for hitting enemies from the front, back, right, or left side. Collect them all to combine them into a single passive!
Another favorite is the effigies. Just lil’ stone soldiers that appear every so many lines and will push back a column of enemies as long as they live. The effigies really set up a push-and-pull dynamic with how levels work.
By clearing bosses, you unlock new difficulties for the level. Instead of normal, hard, etc, each difficulty is simply faster. With normal stages taking about 15 minutes to clear and dropping down to 12, 10, 9, etc, it’s so incremental it’s difficult to tell, but you are moving faster through the level.
The whole city-building aspect is meant to be quick and easy. Allowing you to build resource nodes that you can harvest for free once between rounds and eventually pay gold to harvest again. The town exists in real time, and eventually, you can build a building that’ll allow your people to collect resources even when the game is shut down.
While finding blueprints, you’ll come across mostly stat-building structures, simply increasing the stat-growth of a particular stat or increasing a stat by a set amount. However, the structures can change the way the game is played as well.
The bag maker gives you an extra special ball slot, and the antique shop allows you to choose a passive at the start of the stage. The matchmaker allows you to bring two characters into a run, combining their abilities. This is a really cool feature, but it makes the game too easy.
I struggled to play with a few characters, not because they’re poorly designed, but because I didn’t vibe with how they played, so I put them on the back burner. BALL x PIT tries to get you to play characters by randomly assigning extra gold % to specific characters every time you go to play a battle.
However, if you’re struggling, fear not. The final character you unlock plays the game for you. I thought this was really cool. I love setting up games to play for you; it appeals to the management sim junkie inside of me.
However, I realized it was just making the game too easy. Even on the harder difficulties, I was able to reach or clear the final boss, netting me tons of experience and other resources. Eventually, I decided to only play him with a few characters I didn’t like.
BALL x PIT lets you play at your own pace, which is a good thing. If you want him, he’s there. You can let the game play itself. Honestly, great for farming too, and not that I’m advocating this, but playing during meetings. Just let the bastard run and go back to people watching.
Kenny Sun has managed to modernize an old classic and create something entirely new that stands on its own. I am extremely impressed by BALL x PIT. My only disappointment came from how quickly I was able to clear the game. Though just when I thought my time with BALL x PIT was done, I unlocked New Game+.
BALL x PIT Is a Smashing Success
New Game+ is just a more difficult version of the main game; only levels require more gears to unlock. BALL x PIT knows what you want, man. And it’s just more balls and more pit. Unfortunately, there are no new blueprints or characters beyond that. It’s just more pit.
The Final Word
BALL x PIT manages to give players precisely what they’re looking for with a roguelike brick breaker. A continual progression system that keeps going, lots of ways to progress, and an enjoyable gameplay cycle.
MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
