Most of the innovation we see these days is not in big budget gaming, but instead in the small indie titles that are becoming more and more prolific on every platform. You’ve probably heard of Vampire Survivors at this point, an auto-shooter that captured the gaming world by storm a couple of years ago. It had a new and interesting gameplay loop that made it fun to simply walk around and unlock new levels and characters, and that’s what we’re always hoping for as gamers – a game that catches us off guard with delightful and unexpected gameplay. It’s the constant search for that elusive ‘fun factor’ that makes gaming so great.
Ball X Pit from indy developer Kenny Sun and publisher Devolver Digital is the newest game to find a gameplay loop that is both fun and innovative. Unlike Vampire Survivors though, there’s a lot of strategy and planning involved in the game, creating a more challenging experience that you’re going to struggle to stop playing. There are a ton of unlockables here and a significant amount of replay value too, so you’re not likely to get bored anytime soon.
In Ball X Pit (and no, the title doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue) you play as a warrior exploring the pit that was left behind when Balltopia was destroyed. Now, this isn’t exactly the most complex plot but basically, the hole left when the kingdom was destroyed is a pit filled with monsters and wealth. You’ve come to explore and rebuild the kingdom and that’s about the extent of the story. That’s all just setup for the mechanics of the game though and gameplay is everything in Ball X Pit.
Starting with the Warrior, you’ll enter the first stage of the Pit, The Bone X Yard. The game is a fusion of Arkanoid/Breakout style gameplay, roguelike, and strategy. You are moving up a constant pathway and enemies are moving down the screen towards you. You can fire manually or automatically (trust us, use automatic) and each playable character has a different starting special ball and most fire “baby balls”, smaller balls that do less damage and have no special abilities. You fire the balls towards the top of the screen and they bounce off anything they hit, ricocheting from target to target and walls. However, there is a key feature that is entirely unlike Arkanoid and eliminates most of the frustration of typical ball-bouncing games. You don’t have to actually catch the balls! They can go right past you while you’re focused on wiping out the enemy and will automatically return to you. Catching them is still beneficial because the fire rate increases rapidly if you’re catching your fired shots, but you can play the game without catching balls other than by accident, reducing one of the major difficulties with this style of gameplay. By the time you get around halfway through the game, you’ll find out what the “X” in the title means as well, but we’re not telling!
Enemies move slowly down the screen, dropping randomly at the top and marching inexorably towards your character. You have a visible targeting line that helps you to aim the balls you are firing at the enemy and you can use the right stick to target your fire while your left stick controls character movement. Get too close to an enemy and a red exclamation mark shows up. Stand there longer and they’ll jump on you, smashing into you for damage. Constantly having to move to avoid both enemies and enemy fire makes it hard to catch your returning balls, but as the enemies continue to drop, they get bigger and more powerful, requiring more shots and dodging enemy fire of various types.
Sounds interesting, right? It’s a unique approach to a historically popular genre and we haven’t even gotten into the complexities yet. Fire patterns are the key here, as you simply don’t have the power to outright shoot enemies like you might in a game like Space Invaders. Instead you’ll have to rely on the balls you fire to do additional damage, requiring on-the-fly planning. Each bounce against an enemy does damage and with special balls, may apply any number of additional status effects. But until you’ve become stronger, your fire rate just doesn’t cut it and in each level, enemies become more powerful. Finding areas to bounce your balls into that will ricochet into enemies over and over is the most effective way to overcome this, as the enemies will take multiplied damage as long as the balls continue bouncing around in an enclosed area. It takes a bit of practice but you can often clear half a screen or so of enemies with a handful of well-placed shots.
In addition to the tactical aspects of aiming, the real key here is the roguelike appearance of special balls. As you kill enemies, they drop gems. Picking up those gems will raise the experience bar on the right and each time it maxes out you get to select one of 3 potential upgrades. While you start out with one special ball, you have six slots available to put other special balls and powerups into. Each special ball you add this way adds an additional ball you fire as well, upping your damage counts and the number of different ricochets you can perform. The Warrior starts out with a spiked ball that inflicts bleed damage, but other characters start with burning special balls, ghostly balls that shoot through enemies, insect balls that split off baby balls when hitting the enemy, ice balls that freeze enemies, and plenty more.
Occasionally when you kill enemies, a swirling rainbow fireball will be left behind as well. Collect it and you get a random upgrade. Sometimes that’s anywhere from 1-5 boosts to special ball or item levels, sometimes it’s a fusion, and sometimes an evolution. Fusions allow you to combine two of your special balls, making them more powerful but reducing the number of balls being fired by one. It’s a good tradeoff however, and you’re definitely going to want to fuse some of your balls. Evolutions combine two special balls into an even more powerful special ball, but unlike fusions, additional special abilities are added. These are the key balls to survive some of the later portions of the game, but even so, you’ll have to decide whether it’s more beneficial to randomly level up everything, pick a specifc combo you know works, or evolve to get a new ability you need. Whew!
But wait, there’s more! In addition to balls, you also get a variety of other upgradeable items. These include moving statues of various types that block enemies, heal you, and provide other effects, additional weapons that bolster the abilities of special balls, or multiply damage or the number of baby balls available. Many of these can also be evolved to create even more powerful buffs for your attacks, but each one takes up one of your six slots as well, so you’ll have to decide whether the buffs are worth the loss of firepower.
There are bosses in Ball X Pit too. Each stage has three sections. The initial section is a tight fight against weaker enemies. Once you make it to the first checkpoint, the entire board expands horizontally and a mini-boss appears. Those bosses take more damage and additional enemies continue to approach while you fight, allowing for ricochets but also making it hard to survive if the fight takes too long. The second checkpoint does the same, making the board even bigger and dropping a more powerful mini-boss. Final bosses are the most powerful, but if you manage to make it that far in a stage, you’ll probably survive the boss once you learn your character’s hitbox boundaries. Bosses have a variety of attacks, the order of which changes from playthrough to playthrough, and once they are defeated, the stage ends.
This brings us to the other portion of gameplay, base building. While you play in the main levels of the game, you are also picking up gold and resources. Occasionally you will find one of the blueprints hidden in a level as well. When you return to the base area, you have a variety of options available. If you have the resources, you can build fields for harvest, allowing you to harvest wheat, wood, and stone to build with. These replenish over time, only allowing you to obtain limited resources unless you continue to play through stages. Buildings that you have plans for allow you to expand the selection of playable characters, permanently improve character stats, and expedite resource production.
In addition to building, you’ll have to arrange your base as well. You start with a single open area, but you can spend gold to expand as you gain more and more blueprints. You have to choose where to expand though and this is where harvesting comes into play. Each character you unlock is also used in base building to harvest resources and build buildings. Just like the main game, you’ll have to aim and bounce your characters off of buildings and resources to build or harvest them. The more characters you have, the more you can harvest, but they move in set paths once launched and missing means you don’t get all of the resources you need or complete the buildings you need to progress. Characters bounce off resources the same way they bounce off walls and if your placement is wrong you don’t get what you need or finish your builds. You can jump directly back into a level to die immediately and gain another harvest without replenishing resources, but it’s a bit time-consuming even if there are no penalties.
That’s the majority of the gameplay loop for Ball X Pit. It sounds weird and tedious when you break it down, but actual gameplay is way more fun than you’d think. Base building is even fun and unless you’re a 4X fan, that can be the downfall of a game like this one. Every time you think it’s getting too hard, making it just a bit further opens up new options that make levels playable again, and add refreshing new options to play. As you get further, base management and design becomes more and more important too, streamlining your progress as you refine your base, further increasing planning, but massively bolstering your power as well.
Visually, this could be a game that stepped out of the 16 bit era. While it’s clearly not a 16 bit game, the pixel design aesthetic is excellent and character animations are simple in the best way (which means a lot of painstaking work behind the scenes). Each level is noticeably different from the last with a wide variety of enemies drawing you back in just as the last levels start to become stale. The GUI is easy to navigate as well and is clear and well-designed. The animated sprites are particularly cool with new and exciting effects really distinguishing each stage and the slow evolution of the build screen really accentuating your progress in an entirely different way. Occasionally the popup side menu for the build screen doesn’t work quite right and there’s a weird artifact in the bottom left corner of the screen on the Switch version but these are negligible issues and this is a great looking game where everything is well thought out and enjoyable.
The audio in Ball X Pit is quite good too. The tracks are solid but a bit repetitive because you replay levels so frequently and if you’re stuck on a stage that can get a bit irritating but the compositions themselves are quite good. The ball bouncing sounds are particularly impressive as the massive numbers of balls all sound surprisingly clear and unique effects have unique matching sounds, a particularly impressive feat which only gets crazier as the game plays on. Sound effects are equally crisp on the build screen with excellent and equally distinctive sounds that add to the immersion level of the game, an impressive feat for a game that’s so light on story. The only downside is the soldiers who start stomping in unison as they get near the bottom of the screen. A horde of angry soldiers in lockstep rhythm adds a lot of stress to an already challenging game and make it harder to focus on survival as they start attacking non-stop and destroy you. This sound effect is fine when it’s a single enemy or a few, but when the whole screen fills it gets a bit intense. Playing with the sound down or off seemed to make this a lot easier when things got hairy, but then you miss out on all the other cool sounds.
There really aren’t many flaws with Ball X Pit. The gameplay is fun and innovative. The level design is solid. The base building is entertaining. Sure, the build menu won’t work quite right occasionally, there is a tiny flaw on the pixel art for the Switch, and some of us tend to put way more pressure than we should on the right stick as the action ramps up, but honestly, this is one hell of a game. It’s tough to find fault with something this fun, especially when it also comes at the low price point of $15.
It’s not even a discussion at this point. Unless you absolutely hate the style of the game or are terrified of finding a new obsession, Ball X Pit is an actual must-buy game and should be at the top of everyone’s list for games this year. While it’s not quite the masterpiece that is Clair Obscur Expedition 33, it’s definitely a surprise contender for one of the top games of the year and arguably one of the most fun action titles we’ve played in a very long time, which is definitely reflected by the sales figures in the few days since the game has dropped. At a bargain-basement price, this is a no brainer – go out and buy Ball X Pit today. Just don’t blame us when you can’t stop playing!
This review is based on a digital copy of Ball X Pit provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well in both. Ball X Pit is also available for Xbox, PS5, and PC on Steam and is coming soon for Switch 2.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.