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A game’s trailers can play an enormous part in its ultimate success. First screenshots can get us instantly hooked on an artstyle, but there’s nothing quite like seeing something in motion for the first time.
The excellent Ball x Pit instantly appealed to me the moment I saw it, huge fan of roguelites, light base building, and bullet hell/breakout action that I am. I was thoroughly invested, though, after I watched the launch trailer.
The voice actor’s growing, cartoonish enthusiasm as they described the amount of balls, the formidable fusions and evolutions they can go through, was pitch-perfectly done. The narrator’s voice now plays in my head among all the crystal-grabbing, arrow-dodging, and general technicolor cavalcade that is a Ball x Pit run. Now that’s knowing your audience.
I did buy Ball x Pit, and can only hope that the decision does indeed help to fund more Ball x Pit. Balatro proudly declares itself to be “hypnotic” in its appeal, and something very similar is happening here. Interestingly, there isn’t a conventional high score to chase, nor are ludicrous numbers in the millions climbing ever higher on the outskirts of the screen.
Visually, though, there’s a huge similarity between the two games, even though their overriding gameplay loops are very different. Balatro, famously, is all about accumulating improbable and impractical combinations of unfair joker cards (along with planet cards, spectral cards, and other varieties) in poker fashion.
Ball x Pit, instead, takes a more action-heavy stance, tasking the player with selecting one of 16 different characters (only one is available at the beginning) and blasting through an onslaught of enemies that steadily approaches from the top of the screen. Each member of the cast plays a bit differently, but whoever you choose, everything descends into ricocheting ridiculousness very quickly indeed.
Like Vampire Survivors, you have to pick up small gems to gain XP, and the first few level ups are very quick indeed. You’ll gain a few stat points and, far more fun, a new power, such as an item or different type of ball to add to your limited special ball slots. The pace steadily ramps up, your powers diversify and get stronger, and before you know it, freezing earthquake balls, vampire balls, and wind balls (to name just a very few) are flying everywhere.
Those are just your shots; some enemy types are more than capable of firing slews of their own projectiles right back at you. The ones that just charge down the screen to bash you if they get enough (or if they reach the bottom) are bad enough, so I particularly dislike the projectile types.
That's How We Roll In Ballbylon
The base-building elements in between runs add another delicious spice, in that each playable character in your roster pulls double duty. They collect resources and contribute to building construction as they ricochet past. There aren’t any enemies in this section, but the team has found a way to make the most passive and easy-going action in the game utterly chaotic as well. Just in case you thought you could relax for a moment, which you can’t.
There are those rare games that just tick every box for a specific player’s tastes. As a horror fan and enthusiast of all things a little creepy and macabre, the vibe of the game’s first stage, the Boneyard, told me that I was onto a winner from the start. Then there’s the fact that the entire loop revolves around hectic “switch your brain off and blast enemies apart” action, but with a considerable layer of strategy that you’ll need to engage with to see everything on offer. That’s so very, very me.
At its heart, though, Ball x Pit is a roguelite with an utterly engaging loop, and its stages are just about the right length. In this way, it never feels like too much of a burden to be defeated by the ever-approaching mass of enemies and have to restart. This quickfire nature means that it’s fun to explore different tactics and builds.
Most of the time, I didn’t do this remotely strategically, because the allure of seeing the result of a new fusion or evolution meant that I snapped it up instantly without even considering what I was trading and what I was getting. I just want to fill my Encyclopedia and see as many ludicrous combinations of effects on my screen at once. Some of the evolutions in particular are incredible.
Ball x Pit just provides us with a screen full of monsters and a thousand colorful ways to obliterate them, and I couldn’t love it any more for that.
For some reason, I absolutely fell in love with Stone Effigy, watching the noble little warrior slowly march upwards to battle. I named every instance of him Norman, and though I found him quite impractical and short-lived, it was nice to have a friend. Thanks Norman, you were too heroic for the grim world of Ball x Pit.
Now, 2025 has seen some utterly fantastic games. With Hollow Knight Silksong, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and Ghost of Yotei as just some of the highlights, we’ve been spoiled like the well-dressed people given Ferrero Rocher chocolates at the ambassador’s party in that old commercial.
Ball x Pit, true enough, isn’t an experience quite on that scale. In the roguelite genre, too, the much-anticipated Hades 2 has pretty well hogged all the limelight, fantastic glory-sponge that it is. Even so, I think I find Ball x Pit’s action even more satisfying than that of Supergiant’s latest effort.
When you’ve got shots ricocheting off the top wall and thinning the enemy ranks above, while your more conventional blasts cut down the front ranks and some laser shots are going off around the middle ranks, it’s just poetry in motion.
