Ball x Pit review – this year’s answer to Balatro

A clever new indie game manages to mix the ancient bat and ball gameplay of Breakout and Arkanoid with a very modern, and hugely entertaining, roguelite approach.

It’s hard to picture it now, but in February last year, almost nobody had heard of Balatro, before it went on to become one of 2024’s most celebrated new games. For the now ubiquitous Vampire Survivors, that date would have been December 2021. In the years that followed, it’s spawned clones, tribute games, and a host of similar also-rans, but there was a time when it was just a name on a release schedule.

It’s almost impossible to know which games will reach that stratospheric status. It’s child’s play spotting the ones that won’t, but just occasionally something appears that’s so different from its peers – and arrives with a level of polish and refinement that makes it stands out from other titles – that you suspect it could be absolutely massive. The unassumingly named BALL x PIT is one of those.

With an amusingly brief backstory about how ‘Ballbylon’ has fallen, you’re thrust into a set of mechanics that’re at least partly familiar. The mainstay of BALL x PIT’s gameplay is Breakout, the 1976 Atari classic whose ultra simplistic gameplay is better remembered today via Taito’s Arkanoid titles from a decade later. In both, you use a rectangular bat to knock a ball into a bunch of bricks, which disappear on impact… which is also what happens in BALL x PIT.

The twist here is that instead of just bricks, you’re bouncing balls off enemies that arrive on various shapes of tile. They gradually descend the rectangular field towards you, as you use its side and back walls to create more bounces for each ball, with every strike on an enemy doing damage. It’s a simple set-up but it turns out to be only the beginning in terms of the game’s complexity.

As you play, you unlock new balls that come with a variety of properties. Some poison or set light to enemies, doing damage over time. Others are extra heavy, while some pass through enemies to bounce around at the back of the field, doing enormous damage as they ricochet around its enclosed area.

You’ll also unlock new avatars – who level up as you complete the game’s roguelite runs – each of whom comes with a starter power ball, and their own skill. The beauty of BALL x PIT is the way all these modifiers interact with one another. Not only do your character’s skills stack with those of the balls you unlock, but you can also combine the balls themselves using fusions.

To start with, you’re allowed a maximum of four specialised balls and four passive buffs, but you can merge those to form hybrids, multiplying their powers and freeing up space to collect new ones. That means you can have balls that are burn x poison, or earthquake x egg sac, the latter of which bursts into many smaller parts, each of which causes earth-shaking area of effect damage.

To add to the mayhem, you can re-combine existing combinations, further stacking their effects and creating spectacularly powerful and chaotic damage dealers. You’ll also find some innocuous seeming powers totally change the dynamics of the game. Vampiric Sword, for example, injures you slightly with each ball you launch, but heals you with every enemy death. With certain characters, and provided you’re frugal with your ammunition, it makes levels incredibly easy – until you get to the singular big boss at the end that is.

You’ll also discover that your character’s abilities can have dramatic multiplying effects on some of the powers you pick up. The Shade launches balls from the back of the field. If you combine his skill with Upturned Hatchet, a passive skill that more than doubles the damage when balls hit enemies from behind, you’ve created an awesome powerhouse of destruction.

Almost unbelievably, that’s only half the game. The other part occurs outside the pit, in the landmass around its opening, which, like the pit, is rendered in charming faux 16-bit style. There you can unlock new characters, and farm resources and power-ups by constructing buildings. They each have their own upgrade paths and are often affected by juxtaposition with other structures.

Harvesting their resources uses a similar principle to your work in the pit. That means you fire a phalanx of unlocked characters at your growing town, and each bounce they make off the different structures and resource generators harvests new building materials and gold, which you can use to build more, adding further harvesting opportunities for the next round.

It’s an enormously addictive, virtuous circle of resource generation and construction that has immediately noticeable knock-on effects on the Breakout style interactions in the pit. One feeds the other, and because the characters and buildings you unlock often have serious ramifications and stacking effects with the buffs and balls you’re already using, the game’s challenge is one that continually evolves in the 25+ hours it takes to see the very bottom of the pit.

Right from the start, BALL x PIT feels rigorously playtested, its constant assistance from ‘quality of life’ tweaks feeling like instant wish fulfilment. That starts with autofire (which you only much later need to turn off to work with certain power-ups), and then the ability to speed up time in two increments, making the game almost a blur at its fastest speed. It feels as though everything you could conceivably need has been foreseen and provided.

It may well be a fool’s errand trying to predict which games will reach classic status, but this one has all the hallmarks. From its constantly shifting challenge, to the way its two separate but symbiotic systems work together, to the singular power-ups or characters that totally change the way you play. BALL x PIT supplies a series of delightful and thought-provoking surprises that only get more extreme as you progress.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC
Price: £13.49
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Developer: Kenny Sun
Release Date: 15th October 2025
Age Rating: 12

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