BALL x PIT is a delicious challenge

BALL x PIT was a recent announcement from Kenny Sun and Devolver Digital that took only a few minutes to completely hook me in. The demo available during Steam Next Fest worked to perfection with the latest Proton 9.0-4.

It's a challenging brick-breaking game that pulls in the basic element ball element from Arkanoid / Breakout with a roguelite spin, that also adds in a small base-building feature along with progression systems similar to Vampire Survivors and other survivor-like games. The result is something truly delicious that I can guarantee when it releases I'm going to lose a lot of hours to it. There's something ridiculously satisfying about breaking through all those enemy blocks when you've really powered up.

The story is that Ballbylon has fallen. Some meteoric event caused its annihilation, and now they're just a deep dark pit left. So now you're seeking treasure, diving ever deeper into the put across various locations.

Unlike traditional Breakout, things are always moving. You can move your character in any direction, with enemy blocks constantly scrolling down vertically at you. It's your just to throw all your balls at them to hit them, catch them on the rebound and then throw them again. As you kill enemies you collect XP orbs to level up, and then pick a power-up to make your balls even stronger.

After each run you get to build up a tiny little base, and send people out to collect resources from it, to allow you to build more. During a run you'll also find blueprints to unlock more types of buildings too.

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It's quite brilliant. Tough though, it took me longer than it should have to start making proper progress in it. The speed enemies come down is quite rapid and so it's easy to get overwhelmed. The key is that even when an XP orb is right next to an enemy — grab it. There's enough time to zip in, grab the XP orb and back away before they actually attack. Once you get that down and start gaining level-ups quicker, it becomes easier when you're slowly starting to get overpowered. Easier said than done, when enemies start firing ranged attacks too, you're constantly zipping sideways to get around it all while you try to keep enemies away from the bottom.

BALL x PIT has hooked me into needing one more run constantly.