Ball x Pit Review – IGN

I have a new, all-out obsession, and that obsession is ball pits. I didn't set out to replace all my free time with roguelite gameplay in Breakout, but its reliance on strategy (butterfly kisses with lucky kisses) and tantalizing upgrade paths in and out of the game captured the primal lizard part of my brain to the detriment of all other civilization activities. I am obsessed. In fact, Ball x Pit is the only video game I've played since I first played it a few weeks ago. I couldn't get away from the satisfying loop of running a level, upgrading my orbs, upgrading my city to unlock more orbs, and then jumping back in again. It's a disease, a disease that has no cure – and, honestly… I'm not even sure I want to be cured from the madness that controls me. I've been recommending it to everyone, and so far, those who have taken my advice inevitably say the same thing to me: “You've ruined my life, you disease.” It's awesome. Join us. We all jump here.

From a distance, Ball x Pit looks like one of those crappy games you see on TikTok or Reels. You know the ones: “We're playing a game and the comments say part 17 is fake”, or something like that. At first glance, it does look like some kind of endless runner that tries to hook you with in-game time gems or whatever predatory crap is popular these days. But most importantly, it is no Simply is one of those games because it has absolutely no microtransactions and actually respects your time because it sucks all the time away from it. It provides satisfying upgrades in each level, then gives you the opportunity to build a more permanent force in your base. Nothing cheap or mean. It makes you feel powerful rather than cheated, and even though each level has elements of RNG, it requires you to make the most of every opportunity rather than relying on luck or random chance. When you pass a level, it feels like you earned it.

The actual gameplay is ostensibly simple, too: your character or characters advance around a playing field, launching bouncing balls at waves of enemies. Balls are weaponized, enemies are crushed under onslaught, and eventually you'll encounter level-specific bosses. This is a basic loop, but the key word here is “basic”. Because, friends, Ball x Pit is a lot more complicated. First, there are different kinds of balls to launch. For example, your starting character “Warrior” starts with a special ball that creates the “Bleed” status effect, which stacks to cause extra damage on consecutive hits. You can also pick up gems to level up as you defeat enemies, and you can then choose which orbs and other power-ups to use on a specific run.

There are special balls with status effects or area-of-effect damage, balls that spawn more “baby balls” (weird), and tons of other options. Then there are buffs, passive effects, defense boosts, and even allies that will advance with you, dealing damage and even health. Some power-ups are much better than others. The Earthquake Orb, for example, does damage around the enemy it hits, and like most AOE orbs, becomes incredibly powerful when fully upgraded. Others, like “Poor Onion,” are kind of awful. Part of the fun is figuring out which upgrades are most effective in any given level, and discovering what happens when you combine certain orbs with fusions and evolutions to further mix or modify their powers.

Fusion can simply save you a slot by mixing two effects onto a single ball, but specific combinations instead have the chance to evolve into a new power. For example, fusing a horizontal laser with a vertical laser creates my personal favorite, the Holy Laser. It shoots vertical beams of pure death flames and Hitting horizontally while also dealing AOE damage is both useful and regular.

Fusion Orb both amplifies the damage you do and gives you room to add more damage, which is cool. It's hard to keep track of all the possibilities, but the in-game encyclopedia can show you the combinations you've unlocked. I've been playing for over 30 hours now and I still have some undiscovered fusions that I find very exciting.

Honestly, any configuration of laser ball will do a ton of damage, searing rows and columns, sometimes adding stackable status effects like radiation, while also dealing normal heat laser damage. When you go all out and the RNG gods are in your favor, it's a beautiful carnage. Lasers, explosions, and effects go off constantly, and damage counters fill the screen as entire rows of enemies evaporate into experience gems, along with gold coins you'll spend back in town between runs.

The town is the other half of Ball x Pit and is very important to the growth of the characters. In addition to getting permanent stat boosts by playing as them, constructing certain buildings and character houses will also provide buffs and bonuses that you'll absolutely need to pass later levels. While it's very important, the city-building aspect of Ball x Pit is extremely clunky – in fact, it's probably the worst part of what I consider to be a perfectly good game.

When you complete a level, whether you succeeded or not, you'll be thrown back to the town interface, where you'll build structures based on the blueprints you collected in the field. You can also build resource blocks: forests for wood, fields for wheat, rocks for… well, rocks. In addition to gold, these resources are needed to build and upgrade new structures. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to gather resources besides harvesting, including during runs and in passive buildings like quarries, but manual gathering is the most fun.

During the harvest phase, you use your unlocked characters as balls, aiming from the bottom of the board and letting them tear apart, Beyblade-style, in the direction of what you want to hit. They then bounce off walls and buildings, collecting resources from resource blocks and upgrading any buildings you mark as needing improvement. The process is fun, but also fairly tedious, as you can move buildings around to optimize their placement before harvesting, but there's not really a convenient way to do this.

What I usually end up doing is moving everything to one side of the map and then dragging all the pieces and pieces back again to where I want them to be at that particular moment. Ball x Pit seems to realize how cumbersome city building can be, as moving tiles incurs no penalty or resource cost. What I'd like to see is some kind of option to wipe the slate clean without having to manually delete each building, or maybe a fixed pen where I can temporarily drop structures while reconfiguring the layout.

And you'll be reconfiguring the layout frequently. Building upgrades require your character to bounce off a building multiple times, and if that building is in an odd spot, good luck staying on track during the harvest phase to consistently hit it enough times without having to reorganize half the town. I often end up moving the building in question closer to the launch area, which means moving everything else out of the way… and then reorganizing it again when all is said and done. I don't like it at all.

This is super disappointing because you can't really ignore this, as city layout is crucial to how powerful you are in the levels themselves. Some buildings provide buffs that make the effects of other nearby buildings stronger, so their location is crucial to your continued success. This need for careful planning is at odds with the reality of constant shuffling as you harvest, build, and upgrade.

However, building-specific issues aside, I really like how your town structure contributes directly to the action itself. The better your city is, the better your character is, and the more blueprints you find, the more options you have in new runs. Moving everything can be a hassle, but the results are meaningful and sometimes can be surprising in ultimately positive ways.

Double down on strategy

Early on, you unlock a building that lets you bring two characters into combat instead of just one, adding another layer of complexity and experimentation to each run. At first, this almost feels like cheating, but without it it's functionally impossible to get very far. I'm still figuring out which combinations work well and which combinations are complete garbage. Since you can still gain gold and experience even on a failed run, I don't even mind when I pick a completely useless combo because I'm still making some progress. There were also times when I thought I'd figured out some god-level combo, but three-quarters of the way through the level, I realized I'd made a terrible mistake.

The worst was when I paired a warrior with a whipper for a new game+ run of the first level. The ball fired by the Whipper bounces off the bottom of the screen instead of the top, and the Warrior doesn't have any special attributes other than being your starting character. The first level boss, Skeleton King, needs to hit the back of his skull to cause damage. The RNG gods gave me some decent fusions, but all of them ended up bouncing harmlessly between his two arms in front, rendering me almost completely useless. An errant ball would occasionally slide off the wall, causing a small amount of damage, but I ended up failing on purpose just to exit the level.

As frustrating as this is, it's emblematic of what I love about Ball x Pit: it requires strategy in almost every aspect. Of course, the orbs and upgrades provided to you are all dependent on the RNG, but you can also choose which orbs to use and which ones to fuse and evolve. I was able to identify good and bad combinations of characters based on their attributes, and make mental notes as I progressed through each level which pairings would meet my specific needs. For example, Juggler throws balls at enemies – pairing him with Shadow, whose balls shoot out from the back of the field, then follows a heavy AOE upgrade path, allowing me to basically clear any row of enemies on the board while still taking a ton of damage from the ball bouncing behind.

The combination of strategy and knowing how best to level up any given combination of characters at a specific level is what keeps me coming back over and over until I'm bleary-eyed and exhausted. When everything lines up and you're mowing down enemies across an entire field, you get a huge sense of power as the screen completely fills up with lasers and explosions and baby balls scattering in every direction. From an outside perspective, grinding your upgrades, coupled with careful building placement and frequent stat upgrades from buff buildings, makes ball x pit feel easier over time. But it does something rare: instead of making you feel light, it makes you feel powerful.

When I finally finished the main story and watched the 20 hours or so of credits, I immediately fired up New Game+. I never do that. But to me, this completely inconsequential story is only a small part of what Ball x Pit is. The real fun here comes from building up your powers and combos and seeing what's unlocked during your run. There are moments when the music is nearly drowned out by the sound of explosions and laser blasts, or when I'm rewarded with gold for clearing a field of enemies and then do it two, three, or even five more times in a given level. It tickles something deep in my lizard brain. Hard work pays off, but the right mix of upgrades plus a bit of luck will bring even greater rewards.