Ball x Pit

Incredibly Ballsy.

If there is one game this year that truly surprised me, it would be Ball x Pit. This is a game I went into completely blind and was astonished at what I saw. It wasn’t what I was expecting, not even in the slightest. While that initial shock has now worn off, my love of what my eyes were seeing is still as strong as ever. Ball x Pit is likely one of the best indie games I’ve played in years, causing an addiction that few games have been able to provide. In fact, every single person I have recommended this game to has shared that same sentiment.

Published by Devolver Digital and developed by Kenny Sun, Ball x Pit is an addictive mix of numerous genres, some used in predictable ways, and then others as bizarre as you can and cannot imagine. It’s a mixture of Vampire Survivors, Puzzle Bobble, Arkanoid, Space Invaders, and even manages to add in some town-building as a way to illustrate your progress in this Frankenstein of a roguelite. This game is so much of what I love about videogames in a way that I never thought could work when its mechanics are bashed together like a pair of mismatched action figures.

As a once thriving city is wiped off the face of the earth, treasure seeking individuals start to work through the ruins and attempt to seek out fortune deep within the pit. However, dark creatures and monsters fill up each layer of this massive pit that sees you rebuilding the city high atop its edge. The layers you'll visit vary from frozen wastelands, dry deserts, to mushroom forests and beyond.

This premise is as much story as the game provides, and frankly, it could have even said less. There is no dialogue or voice work, or anything other than its premise, and that aids in keeping you engaged run after run as there is no unnecessary filler in a game that doesn't need it, and nothing to really distract you from either building your town or attempting one more run. And let's be honest, you'll say “One more run..” about 9 times until you realize it's 2 AM.

You start as a common and unremarkable knight, devoid of any special skills, and are plunked down into a vertical rectangle lane. Creatures, monsters, and the like then start descending down, similar to the likes of Space Invaders. As bosses advance, the field grows, increasing the number of threats that can emerge. Eventually, you’ll have a show down with that stage’s boss and chaos will take over. 

When it comes to your general attacks, you bounce little balls at your foes like Arkanoid or Breakout, or the countless clones that appeared over the decades. Thankfully, you don't need to worry about blocking the balls from reaching the bottom of the screen, and you're encouraged to ricochet them off any surface as well. While that may sound bland and uninspired, it's how additive everything else is that makes this a game you'll never want to put down.

Despite any strategy you can surmise, the enemies will attack you if they get too close to you or reach the bottom of the screen. You'll use the bouncing balls you project to destroy them in succession. However, this is where the Vampire Survivors mechanics come into play. Each time you collect a variety of gems, that come in various sizes and colors, you'll earn experience. When you level up, you can choose between three passive or offensive skills, or use gold to refresh your offerings, hoping the RNG gods treat you well. These skills can then be used to attack, defend, or buff your current kit. From fire, frost, lightning, dark, or a set of various laser configurations, you have a lot to work with. Hell, you can even unlock maggots.

As you start to fire off more intense skills, or increase the speed and power of your base balls, how fast they attack, the direction they attack, and how rapid-fire you can maintain your offense, you'll start to develop a build to increase your chances of working through the two sub-bosses before the boss of the level appears, dropping a gear that allows you to dive deeper to the next location.

It is these builds that truly make Ball x Pit a joyous celebration of chaos as you not only can apply various laser directions, burn enemies alive, or apply ghost effects to your balls to have them pass through enemies, not to mention statuesque allies to call into battle, but you can also upgrade them in the thick of it by collecting fusion pickups. These swirling rainbow items randomly apply a set of upgrades, and can often upgrade an item multiple times at once, making them more effective. And, once each item has reached a certain level you can then fuse them together, creating countless combinations that work in unison. Those horizontal lasers and your fire skill? Well, now those lasers set enemies on fire, or freeze, or dark, or holy light, or any other elemental effect you can find. While the combinations are not endless, it sure feels like it.

It is these fusions that are wildly fun, and as you discover more, they appear as silhouettes until you accept their unholy union. I've had builds where enemies explode upon death en masse, lasers that attack diagonally, vertically, and horizontally, while emitting aoe blasts that decimate entire columns and rows in a single blast. I've had balls that rapidly refill my health upon a kill, to earthquakes so intense that entire regiments of enemies are cleared off the screen before they can even move. Each run feels unique, and that also comes from the fact that each subsequent character you unlock has a unique toolset and comes fit with some of the abilities you'll earn, giving them an edge right off the bat. And, once you build the matchmaker building, you can pair up allies to make even deeper effects. 

Across the 16 characters, you are likely to find a few favorites. And, it's good to do so as you need gears to advance deeper down the pit, and each character can only earn one gear per level, forcing you to find alternatives to complete a level with and earn that much-needed gear. Characters like The Cogitator start with those aforementioned lasers, so they were a good choice at first. However, once I unlocked the The Embedded, whose shots can go through each enemy, they made short work of the new levels that had trounced my other allies. Some work better than others and I never did get on with The Shade, because, as an assassin, their attacks start at the back, making it a huge risk since you really need to focus on the enemies in front of you. Other characters, like the The Cohabitants come in pairs firing off mirrored shots at half power. 

Now, unlocking these characters and building your town work in unison as you'll find blueprints across each of the 8 stages. Some boost your stats, like The Diplomany Hall that increases your Leadership stat, to the Miliatary Academy that can boost your strength scaling, to those that are represented as housing to unlock a new character. You'll also get trophies to build that boost various stats like the Snow Trophy that gives you a AOE boost for those that beat the snow biome. Each building has a purpose and can be upgraded to benefit your stats further. 

Building your town requires resources, so collecting wheat, wood, and stone, as well as gold, serves this goal. You can plant crops, raise forests, to stone piles that can be harvested for some. Eventually, you can set up manual buildings that aid in collecting these resources faster. And, each character has traits that aid in this as well. It all works together.

Now, building the town and these buildings is another story. You don't simply assign works or click on a building to apply those resources. Nope, you aim your workers in a direction and they bounce off your would-be construction zones. So yes, you ping pong them off your buildings to fill up a meter to construct these new facilities. This forces you to build your town in a way where rebounds and bounces are in rapid succession to build these facilities quickly. Sure, you can eventually burn through gold for more harvesting attempts, but that gets costly.

This causes each run to be either one of convenience, or one of resource gathering. You'll enter into each layer hoping to find new blueprints, more resources, or collect as much gold as you can to excavate the surrounding area around the town to increase its size. The loop is wildly addictive as when everything is going your way, it is a slot machine effect of sounds, amazing music, and visual effects that play like fireworks. Yes, the game can be challenging, and new layers will initially trounce you, but you always feel like progression is being made. Even a quickly failed run meant I could bounce my workers off the side of a building and into my wheat fields, collecting enough resources to upgrade or build my new venture.

While I wouldn't call these accessibility options, you can set both auto-fire on as well as slow the game down or speed it up with three available settings. This can really come in clutch when you need to strategize quickly and are swarmed on all sides, or letting the speed increase and watching your lasers, bombs, fire, or whirlwinds and blizzards wreak havoc all around you. 

Bosses are also a pleasant and tense experience, especially on your first go around. They are bullet hell beasties with a thick health bar and plenty of mobs they can summon in. From a giant snake, to a skeleton king, to even a mob of enemies that disperse around the field, dodging your attacks, there are a lot of wildly fun encounters here to take on. 

On the left side of the screen is your experience bar. What is so engaging about it is that each character has their own design that tells you a bit about them in the process. It's a smart visual storytelling gimmick that gives a simple meter some personality. The old couple, the Cohabitants has their meter representing their home, full of their several kids, by having the top of it decked out in teddy bears. It's very cool, and a nice touch that gives the game even more personality.

Part of what makes Ball x Pit so endearing is the visual presentation surrounding its heavily pixelated aesthetics. The characters look charming, the base building is part Puzzle Bubble and part Tetris as you can maneuver and rotate them around to blockade your village to serve the ping pong nature of its construction. Everything from the pit layer menu to the dozens of enemy types, to the spectacular arrangement of skills all firing off makes Ball x Pit a visual feast, and yet remarkably retro. 

Ball x Pit is without question the surprise hit of the year, a title that came so far out of left field and is so wacky that of course Devolver Digital is its publisher. Their golden touch yet again has found a game so fun, so addictive, that it is easily a contender for my personal Game of the Year. When a game is on your mind every hour of day, even when you are focused on an entirely different game, then you've certainly done something right. Ball x Pit is an experience that shouldn't work, a collective of so much design, so many genres, that it should collapse under the weight of all its ideas, but it stands tall as a confident example that if something can be fun, you'll find a way to make it fun, and Kenny Sun has made one of the most fun and addictive games I've ever played. An absolute masterpiece.

Developer - Kenny Sun.
Publisher - Devolver Digital. Released - October 15th, 2025. Available On - Xbox Series X/S, PS5, Nintendo Switch, PC, GeForce Now. Rated - (T) - Blood, Violence. Platform Reviewed - Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S.
Review Access - Review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.