I first laid eyes on Ball x Pit at a presentation given by its writer, Devolver Digital, in London again in January. I knew immediately that I needed to play it. I used to be moderately (or maybe, unreasonably) certain that I used to be going to like it. This will likely be certainly one of my video games of the yr, I stated to myself, for no good purpose.
I used to be proper, however not as a result of the sport is ideal. Actually, having now performed the completed article, I can say that it’s fairly removed from good; typically, it’s fairly annoying. I used to be proper as a result of Ball x Pit is such a good suggestion, assembled in such an unique means from so many different preexisting good concepts, and expressed with such readability and love by developer Kenny Solar, that you simply solely want to observe a couple of seconds of sport footage to get it.
As straightforward as it’s to understand, nevertheless, Ball x Pit’s bizarre style stew just isn’t really easy to set down in phrases. Let me have a go. It’s a little bit of Vampire Survivors, a little bit of Breakout or Peggle or Holedown, a smidgen of bullet-hell shmup, a soupçon of deck-building roguelite, a splash of Diablo, with a light-weight facet dish of city-building. It’s a sport about firing a stream of ricocheting balls at a descending wall of bricks, however the bricks are enemies who shoot again, and the balls are upgradeable and have particular properties like area-of-effect injury, and the hero who fires the balls whereas dancing across the slowly scrolling battlefield additionally has particular properties and is certainly one of a number of you may gather and degree up. The entire thing is dressed up in a tongue-in-cheek, grainy, PS1-era darkish fantasy about descending into an enormous pit the place town of Ballbylon as soon as stood seeking treasure and sources.
Identical to Vampire Survivors, Ball x Pit has a remorseless, attritional simplicity, underwritten by a even handed dose of randomness. It’s a sport the place you flip autofire on within the first 5 seconds of play and rarely flip it again off; the place you’re half lively participant within the carnage and half delighted spectator, watching the blizzard of little balls step by step batter the parade of block-bound enemies into oblivion.
It really works like this: You steer your hero across the battlefield with the left stick and intention the stream of balls with the best. If the brick unhealthy guys attain the underside of the display screen, or hit you with their projectiles, they hurt you. It’s vital to remain on the transfer, partly to dodge assaults and refine your firing angle, however extra as a result of it’s essential choose up the expertise gems and different objects that enemies litter the sector with as they expire. With every degree up, you select from a random draw of recent or upgraded balls and passive abilities.
You may maintain as much as 4 balls, with talents like lasers that injury each different enemy in a row after they hit, or start new child balls, or leech well being. However you may also mix balls by way of fusion pickups, which stacks their standing results, or via evolution, which creates fully new, extra highly effective balls. Every run begins you from scratch with that hero’s default ball (though base stats and character degree persist), so that you’re making a recent, half-random, half-intentional loadout every time.
Ball x Pit is simply extraordinarily moreish and enjoyable, combining intense motion with a sort of pleasurable passivity and a way of fixed, semi-automated development, and punctuating the motion with frequent micro-decisions that maintain issues fascinating. It might be higher balanced, nevertheless. Runs are lengthy, typically as much as 20 minutes to defeat the ultimate boss of every layer, and there’s solely a lot selection to be gleaned from the selection of hero and the draw of balls and abilities. Bosses are injury sponges with big well being swimming pools. The layers themselves aren’t randomized, and every must be defeated with a minimum of two totally different heroes to unlock the following. As a result of heroes degree independently, it’s arduous to keep away from selecting two favorites reasonably than exploring the whole lot the roster has to supply.
Runs are interspersed with a curious base-building minigame. On the lip of the pit, you step by step construct out a township with the sources you gather, and between every run you may harvest crops and full new buildings by firing and bouncing your heroes round as in the event that they have been balls. Buildings bestow everlasting buffs and unlock new characters. Early within the sport, with solely a handful of heroes, it is a painfully gradual and unreliable course of, and requires fixed rearrangement of your format for any sort of effectivity. It’s a pleasant thought, however it’s not that enjoyable in itself, and it’s questionable how additive it’s to the core motion.
Do I care? Not likely. The bottom-building is a gentle palate-cleanser that breaks up Ball x Pit’s irresistible white noise: the pitter-patter of balls grinding away on the advancing wall of bricks, the rhythmic chant of the bricks as they hymn their regular march, the glittery tinkle as I hoover up XP gems. Balls bounce, enemies advance, my numbers go up, their numbers go down. It’s mathematic but additionally messy, skillful however soothing. I can’t get sufficient of it.
Ball x Pit is out there now on Nintendo Change, PlayStation 5, Home windows PC, and Xbox Collection X. The sport was reviewed on Nintendo Change 2 utilizing a duplicate supplied to Polygon by the writer. You’ll find further details about Polygon’s ethics coverage right here.
