BALL x PIT Review – Review
I think at one point or another pretty much everyone got sucked in by Vampire Survivors. For me it was the mobile version that dragged me back into its gameplay again and again. Late last year I was finally content with the hours I spent and the ceiling I’ve reached. But now, I keep dragging myself back into a deep dark pit, over and over again. BALL X PIT is one of the most engaging games that combines rogue-lite elements with Breakout and a dash of base building. Let me not drop the ball here, this game is astonishingly well made. This year has been an avalanche of excellent indie games, but BALL X PIT should not be overlooked because when the dust is settled, silk has been sung, and Greek gods have been vanquished, I’m quite sure that I’ll be going back into this pit again and again.
When the ancient city of Ballbylon fell, a deep dark pit was left in its wake. A group of adventurers has set up shop on the outskirts of the city. Using the mechanized remains of the city you venture deeper and deeper into the earth across a variety of worlds to gain resources and restore Ballbylon to its former glory. The gameplay sees you controlling your adventurer who shoots out a set of balls. Enemies scroll from the top of the screen to the bottom in rows. You can angle your shots to hit enemies with your balls. When the monsters reach the bottom of the screen, or you get too close in range, they deal damage to your adventurer. This battle of endurance culminates in three boss battles that attack with different patterns. Along the way you grab the experience that the enemies drop in order to unlock new balls or upgrade their potential. Occasionally a rare fusion element is dropped, allowing you to either fuse or evolve a set of balls together. For example, evolving the Burn Ball with the Freeze Ball creates Freezing Flame which enhances damage and stuns enemies for a longer period of time. But you could also combine the Freeze Ball with the Earthquake Ball for the Freeze x Earthquake Ball that stuns enemies and hits their surroundings as well. On top of that, once you have these unique combinations you may even be able to evolve them with other balls to enhance their deadly potential. This gameplay loop of Breakout, Space Invaders and Vampire Survivors gives BALL X PIT near endless potential.
Even more variety is added when you return to the surface and begin building a base on the outskirts of Ballbylon. At first I thought this was a mere side-mode I could ignore, but this proved to be essential in surviving my later runs. After every run you’re able to send out your explorers and use them to improve your base, by literally firing them off in the same way as you would your balls. For every bounce against a resource they harvest some of that type. These resources: grain, wood, and stone are needed to upgrade the structures. Structures need to be built, in the same way that you would harvest resources, by bouncing against them with your explorers. These buildings give permanent stat increases to your explorers, or can unlock new adventurers for you to play as. You can freely rearrange your base at any time to make sure that your single harvesting action can be as productive as you want. Due to the strange shapes of certain buildings you will need to tactically plan out what your best approach is with building and harvesting. Some buildings are hard to put together, but give ridiculous benefits. Such as increasing the area of attacks from certain balls down in the pit, or even allowing you to bring two different characters into a stage. I rarely find that the downtime in a rogue-like is as much fun to play with as the runs themselves, but BALL X PIT balances this beautifully.
Then there’s the characters. While the first group of adventurers you unlock are pretty standard, over time there are so many unique quirks and characters that fit so well into the world. I loved the Shade for example, who doesn’t fire off his balls in a straight line towards his enemies from the bottom, but shoots them from the top to the bottom. It makes certain bosses that have their weak spot behind them a joke, but fighting off single enemies that survive long enough to make their way down are much harder to defeat. Then there’s the Cohabitants, a duo that shoot two balls in a mirrored direction but only do half damage. What makes these characters so much fun is that they all have a specific learning curve, but that not one single build is the ideal way to play the game. In Vampire Survivors the chosen character mostly matters for the starting item to give you a goal to build towards. BALL X PIT feels much more elegant because of the way you can combine every single weapon you obtain at the very least once. There are bad rolls, sure, but you can still adapt to their strengths and try to find an evolution or fusion that enhances their playstyle. The game rewards experimentation so much and it goes hand in hand with the skills you develop playing with certain characters. On top of that, you can only proceed to a new stage if you clear the previous stage with a certain number of characters. For playing stages again with new characters you are rewarded with blueprints that can be used to expand the base.
It is a devilishly brilliant loop and the cherry on top is simple: stages are rarely longer than fifteen minutes. A run in certain roguelikes can feel exhausting, especially if you fail after having a lengthy ongoing attempt. BALL X PIT breaks up the endurance that most roguelikes have prided themselves on and it makes the experience so much better. So developers, please take notes: stages are not a bad thing and can make your game’s design so much better to ease into. I never felt punished for throwing a run, because I could get to harvest and build again in my base. BALL X PIT is an arcade-like experience at times and I kept returning to it again and again. In-between playing and reviewing other games, doing a quick fifteen minute run turned into an hour where I always felt like I was progressing. It’s easy to learn but hard to master, especially with the large group of characters to play as.
If there’s anything really lacking it is that BALL X PIT doesn’t have a story as such. While the puns and small bits of lore in the encyclopedia are fun, narratively there is very little to keep you engaged. I didn’t miss it, but I did think that is something that could have been expanded upon. Additionally, for a bullet-hell/breakout-like the music wasn’t that engaging to me. After so many runs for me it was just more comfortable to have a podcast or video running in the background while playing. Finally, I will say that it did take me a few hours to really get sucked into the loop of BALL X PIT. Understanding that balance between the base building, harvesting resources and how they related to my runs in the Pit was a bit complex at first. Though sticking with it felt more rewarding than anything I’d expected.
BALL X PIT is exemplary of what a great game should be. Combining simple to learn mechanics, with a lot of depth and variety into a strangely unique beast of a roguelike. Once it got its fangs into me, the game simply wouldn’t let me go. Above all what struck me the most is that it’s a game that looks almost effortless in its brilliance. Yet, the attention to detail and the sheer amount of customization feels unexhaustive. I have gone back into this pit again and again over the last few weeks and I am still not getting tired of it. You’re even able to challenge your friends on leaderboards with the fastest time that can keep you engaged for long after you’ve reached the bottom of this pit. BALL X PIT filled a hole, or a pit if you will, for me that I wasn’t aware I had. The only thing I can do is keep crawling back out, shouting that others should join in, before I’m dragged back into its depths again. I don’t think I’ll be leaving the BALL X PIT anytime soon.
