Two Massive Genres Collide
It’s Vampire Survivors meets Breakout.
For some of you out there, that sentence will be all you need to dive head first into BALL x PIT. However, it is also much more than that, with roguelite elements, an ingenious battle system, and even a city builder thrown in for good measure. There is a lot to love about BALL x PIT.
The world of Ballbylon has fallen; a huge meteor has levelled it and opened up a massive abyss in its place. With a lift now built down to the maw, it is up to you to travel down the levels, collect the loot and rebuild Ballbylon.
Don’t read too much into the story, that’s pretty much the entire plot in two sentences.
Phase 1 of BALL x PIT
Your time in BALL x PIT will be split into two distinct phases. Firstly, you will be travelling down the lift to attempt to complete a run through a variety of levels. There will be numerous bosses to defeat, thousands of enemies to take down, blueprints to find and gears to unlock to add new areas for the lift to reach.
Each character you pick starts off humbly enough; a few generic balls and usually a more powerful ball to be used as ammunition. Being in a similar vein to Vampire Survivors, these balls fire automatically, and you needn’t worry about stopping them draining behind you either. You can catch them on the way back to fire again more quickly, but they will return to you after a very short period should they go behind you.
Enemies will slowly march down the screen and drop gems that need to be hoovered up to level up. Each level you can choose from a set of upgrades: either a new ball, a passive ability or an upgrade to your existing arsenal, up to level three.
Get any two of your balls to level three and things start to get exciting. Grab a fusion power-up – dropped periodically – and you can see endless possibilities. The fusion power-up will offer you three options: Fission, which can instantly upgrade any of your abilities; Fusion, which allows you to combine two fully-levelled balls into one; or Evolution which takes two compatible balls and brings them together into something brand new.
Fusion and Evolution sound similar on paper, but act quite differently. Fusion takes the two balls into one without any new abilities. Still a powerful act in its own right, if only to free a slot in your limited inventory. But Evolution takes the two balls, gives them a completely new lease of life, and starts them back at level 1 to be upgraded all over again.
Can you evolve two balls that have already been evolved? Absolutely you can, and this becomes a necessity in the harder levels.
A Fusion of Art
I also really like the artwork that goes into these fusions and evolutions. Fused balls have a bit of a pallet swap, whilst evolved balls become something new entirely.
Similar too for the character portraits. There’s almost something unsettling about them – you never see their eyes, and they look almost gothic in nature. Special shoutout to The Cohabitants; a dual character that fires in two different directions and is definitely inspired by the American Gothic painting, only making it more gothic.
There are eight levels in total, each one using a different theme. How there is a snowy and desert area underground isn’t really elaborated on, so we’ll not dwell on it.
Each area has unique enemies that feel just about varied enough. You are still going to be battling against wave after wave of square-based enemies, but the design, and more importantly how they fight back, feel unique to each area. Fail to defeat them before they reach the bottom of the screen and basic enemies will fly at you causing damage. Bosses however, will keep hitting you until they are dispatched.
Gears of Ball
To unlock new levels, you need gears, and gears can only be unlocked by completing a run on a level, something that takes around 15 minutes on a first completion. However, to unlock a new level, you need a minimum of two gears, with the latter levels requiring five. Only characters that have yet to complete the level in question can earn a gear, so you will need to be levelling up five characters by the end to see everything.
And of course, being a roguelite, more often than not, your first, second, third etc. runs on a new level will not yield a gear. It’s my gripe with roguelikes/lites in general, this sense of repetition, but it feels especially cheap here as you reach those later levels only to have to power level an unused character.
As with any roguelite, stats will reset after a run, but there are ways to increase your baseline stats, away from the overall level of your character. Each of your attributes has a grading, that will normally be E to start with. Improving this grading can be done by levelling up your town, and specifically the buildings associated with this. And that leads us to the second major phase of BALL x PIT.
Phase 2 of BALL x PIT
You will be tasked with rebuilding Ballbylon (the name of this world may be my least favourite thing about BALL x PIT, it doesn’t roll off the tongue well at all). Using the blueprints you have found during your runs, you can build new structures, or at least get the ball rolling on them at least. I’m not apologising for that.
In order for a structure to be built, there is another step that involves something a bit different.
The city you create will be grid-based, and you can add fields of wheat, trees and stone that will also yield resources. But in order to harvest and finalise the buildings you will need to send your unlocked characters off into said grid, in a similar fashion to how you do in the other portion. Pick a starting point and an angle to bounce off at and watch them go. Every hit on a resource can harvest it, and every hit on a building being constructed can help push it over the edge.
Proper management of your city will therefore be crucial. Everything can be moved around at will to help keep things in the vicinity that needs to be harvested or constructed. There will be guides written in the future about the optimal city layout. Not by me, but I will be waiting impatiently for them to arrive.
An Addictive Mashup
If that first sentence sold you on the prospect of BALL x PIT but you’ve still stayed until the end, then thank you. But what are you waiting for?
BALL x PIT is a mash-up of Vampire Survivors and Breakout, and it is just as addictive. Runs are short and explosive, and you can feel the improvements in between them, all lending itself to giving it one last try, again and again. Add to that the experimental Fission/Fusion/Evolution system that can get really creative with all the possible combinations and you have a simple idea executed to almost perfection.
Important Links
Devolver Digital’s Next Hit is Here – BALL x PIT is a Day One Game Pass Drop! – https://www.thexboxhub.com/devolver-digitals-next-hit-is-here-ball-x-pit-is-a-day-one-game-pass-drop/
BALL x PIT is a Brick-Breaking Roguelite Bouncing onto Xbox, PS, Switch and PC | October Game Pass Release Confirmed – https://www.thexboxhub.com/ball-x-pit-is-a-brick-breaking-base-building-roguelite-bouncing-onto-xbox-switch-and-pc-later-in-2025/
Download BALL x PIT from the Xbox Store (through Game Pass if you want) – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/ball-x-pit/9mwxf3srd7qn
