I first saw Ball x Pit during a Devolver Digital presentation in London this January. From that instant I wanted to play it — irrationally certain, for no good reason, that it would end up among my games of the year.
That hunch proved true, not because the game is flawless — far from it — but because Ball x Pit is a brilliantly conceived mash-up of familiar mechanics, assembled with clear intent and a lot of care by developer Kenny Sun. A few seconds of footage communicate the concept perfectly: it’s immediately graspable and deeply compelling.
Describing its genre is awkward: imagine Vampire Survivors married to Breakout/Peggle/Holedown, spiked with bullet‑hell shmup elements, a touch of deck‑building roguelite, some Diablo-like loot progression, and a sprinkle of city-building. You fire a torrent of ricocheting balls at a descending wall of brick-like enemies who fire back. The balls have upgrade paths and special effects — area damage, life leech, spawning children, and more — while the character that fires them is a collectible, levelable avatar with unique traits. The whole aesthetic leans into a grainy, tongue-in-cheek PS1-style dark fantasy about descending into the pit where the ruined city of Ballbylon once stood to scavenge treasure and resources.
Like Vampire Survivors, Ball x Pit trades complexity for a satisfying, almost mechanical relentlessness, tempered by luck. You typically flip autofire on within the first few moments and leave it that way; you’re part tactician, part spectator, watching a storm of tiny spheres slowly disassemble the march of brick enemies.
Gameplay is straightforward: move the hero with the left stick and aim the ball stream with the right. Let enemies reach the bottom of the playfield or connect with their projectiles and you take damage. Staying mobile helps you dodge, refine angles, and — critically — scoop up experience gems and other pickups enemies drop. Leveling offers a random selection of new balls or passive upgrades, so each run is a fresh, half-randomized build.
You can carry up to four balls at once. Some pierce rows of foes, others spawn offspring, some siphon health — and you can fuse balls via pickups to stack effects or trigger evolutions that produce wholly new, more powerful variants. Runs reset your starting ball but not every progression metric: characters retain their base stats and levels, so over time you unlock persistent benefits while crafting new loadouts run to run.
Image: Kenny Sun/Devolver DigitalBall x Pit is compulsively enjoyable: it blends frenetic activity with a soothing, incremental progression loop, punctuated by frequent small choices that keep runs engaging. That said, the game could use tighter balance. Sessions often stretch to around twenty minutes to topple a layer’s boss, and the available variety can feel limited once you’ve identified the handful of strongest character-and-ball synergies. Bosses often read like high‑health damage sponges, layers are fixed rather than procedurally shuffled, and progression gates require you to clear stages with at least two different heroes to advance. Because characters level independently, players tend to gravitate toward a couple of favorites instead of sampling the full roster.
Between runs there’s a base-building minigame at the pit’s rim: you use gathered resources to expand a settlement, then complete constructions by bouncing your heroes around the town like living projectiles. Buildings grant permanent bonuses and unlock new characters. It’s an interesting connective idea, but early on it feels slow and fiddly — layout optimization and repetitive interactions make it a mild chore rather than a compelling diversion.
Does that detract from the experience? Not significantly. The settlement systems act as a light palate cleanser between runs, breaking up the hypnotic cascade of balls and bricks — the continual ping of spheres, the enemy march, the satisfying chiming as you collect XP. The core loop is elegant and addictive: numbers rise, threats fall, and the whole thing feels both mathematical and pleasantly chaotic. I keep coming back for more.
Availability: Ball x Pit is available now on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2 using a copy provided to Polygon by the publisher. Additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy is available on their site.
Source: Polygon
