BALL x PIT (Switch)
BALL x PIT has often been described as a block-breaking game akin to Breakout but with the run-based upgrades of a rogue-like, but that doesn’t quite feel wholly accurate. Also sometimes described as a bullet hell strangely enough, what it truly feels like is a twin-stick shooter rogue-like with the trappings of a block breaker. Your shots are balls that ricochet and enemies often take the shape of blocks, but rather than the focus being on keeping the balls in play while breaking down the opposition, you need to keep a character alive who can move freely around the play field, firing those balls like ammunition to whittle down the slowly approaching horde.
BALL x PIT begins with the city of Ballbylon being crushed by a meteor, the survivors trying to rebuild their city on the edge of the massive pit left behind. Utilizing a lift, they can delve down into the deep crater, finding that the land below can be surprisingly diverse. From a sunny desert to fungal forests and snowy shores, the pit holds many fiends who try to repel you as you gather the gold and blueprints needed to help build a new Ballbylon. There isn’t much of a story being told and things get more abstract and unnatural the deeper you plunge into the pit, the goal often being just progress itself and working your way to building a larger town back on the surface.
During a round of BALL x PIT, you’ll pick a character and plunge into one of the layers to try and fight your way to that area’s boss. The action takes place in a vertical corridor of sorts, the walls usually pretty close save for when they need to expand to accommodate a particularly large foe. Every enemy in the pit is vulnerable to the balls you can launch, players having two types of attacks. One will be the regular balls, these larger and stronger attacks coming in a few different varieties based on who you’re playing as and what upgrades you pick along the way, while the other attacks are much smaller spheres called baby balls that deal less damage but are often quite numerous. While you can choose to fire your shots manually if you do want to line up your attacks just so, setting them to automatic fire comes with almost no concerns, because when you do launch your balls towards the waves of incoming enemies, you’ll be able to ricochet them off foes or walls so they can hit multiple targets. The balls do not need to be caught, if they hit the bottom of the screen they’ll return to you, but you can catch them to fire them more quickly, survival instead mostly about enemy positioning.
Most foes try to make their way slowly to the bottom of the screen, and once they reach it, they’ll automatically attack you no matter where you are. Getting too close to a baddie before then can also give them a chance to strike you, and there are some foes that have a few tricks to make them more dangerous. Whether it’s as simple as firing simple projectiles occasionally or something with a more unique effect like helping shove other foes forward more quickly, there will be some active threats you’ll want to take care of first, but beyond the boss fights that cap off each area, a great deal of enemies will passively push forward and dodging isn’t too vital. The boss fights do better fit the idea of a bullet hell in that their attacks or even their bodies can often fill a great deal of the screen, slipping through them more dodging than is usually required in the adventure, but it is an appreciated shift since many runs can feel like they’re not too difficult otherwise. There might be some foes that can only be hurt from balls hitting at the right angle to make things tougher, but during a lot of regular play, it can feel like whether or not you can repel the incoming horde is tied not so much to your dodging and aiming, but to your upgrades instead.
The most important type of upgrade will undoubtedly be the kind you receive mid-run. Defeating foes and collecting the gems they drop will gradually level your character up, an upgrade screen popping up with somewhat random helpful options. Usually you’ll see three options and eventually you can unlock ways to reroll them or even banish upgrades you don’t want to see that run, but what can set runs of BALL x PIT apart beyond where you’re fighting will be the upgrade routes you choose to take. You can acquire items that increase your abilities such as making shots cause more damage when they hit foes from a certain angle, passives that will make balls pass through foes instead of bouncing around, and even effigies that will occasionally appear to dish out damage themselves or assist you in some way like healing. You can also acquire brand new balls as well though, these often being the real damage dealers during a run and they come in many varieties. Balls that can set foes on fire, balls that inflict poison, balls that cause earthquakes or emit electricity every time they make contact with a foe, balls that heal you a bit when they hit and ones that emit lasers, there is definitely a good range of effective and interesting balls to acquire even if all upgrades and power-ups are lost if you die or finish the run. Balls and passives can even be upgraded to become more potent, and once they reach their full level, you can start grabbing the somewhat rare Fusion Reactors that can either combine the aspects of two different balls into one powerful one or even form brand new types of balls like magma spewing ones or ones that unleash mosquitos on contact. Gradually working your way up to strong fusions and finding the synergies between passives and attacking options ends up the most interesting part of BALL x PIT, because while most enemies don’t pose too much a threat, the need to work yourself up to handle either huge numbers of them or the fiends that actually put up a fight does require a good sense for choosing upgrades that complement each other.
Between runs though, you’ll be thrown back to the surface where you can work on rebuilding Ballbylon. Using the gold you’ve gathered below, you’ll need to invest in construction both of helpful buildings and resource tiles. Wheat, wood, and stone are used in projects so you’ll need to designate spots where they can be harvested, but even once you can afford useful buildings that can boost your characters’ strengths, make runs more rewarding, or even unlock new characters, you’ll have to launch your workers out into your town like they were balls. They ricochet about the available space, harvesting resources they make contact with and building structures they bounce off of, and since you can only do one construction session between runs, you need to try and figure out a good layout for your city so they can ricochet optimally and get the most work done. Structures can be rearranged, the available space can be expanded, but while this is a neat way to contextualize upgrades and boosts that do persist between runs in the pit, this form of progression also leads to some of BALL x PIT’s worse moments. There can absolutely be times you plunge down into a new area in the pit and find you simply don’t have the power necessary yet to succeed, and since regular play can be a bit plain at times, it’s not particularly exciting to throw yourself to your doom a few times to get the resources needed to expand the town. Certain characters do have unique edges when attempting a run, The Cohabitants fire two streams of balls to cover more area, The Shade’s shots appear from the back of the battlefield to hit enemies from behind instead, and The Juggler can lob her shots into play to hit enemies that may be hiding behind others, but rebuilding Ballbylon ends up a barrier to advancement rather than losses feeling like they’re a result of your upgrade choices or poor choices in where to fire your shots. You can, at least, speed up regular play in BALL x PIT, winning runs that could have been 30 minutes boiled down to less than 20 and naturally even shorter should you fail, so you can push through the periods your town isn’t providing the boosts you need, but the regular action isn’t the most engaging when you’re left doing it purely for resource gathering rather than trying to make your way deeper into the pit.
THE VERDICT: BALL x PIT can be fairly plain at times, launching your balls at the incoming waves of enemies not too involved but the upgrade system gives you something more layered and exciting to engage with. Seeing the payoff to your choices and fusions as well as setting up rewarding ricochets keeps the regular action enjoyable enough before the bosses actually demand a bit more action from the player, but the town building, despite it having some interesting strategizing in figuring out prosperous layouts, holds back the adventure a fair bit. Having to accrue the necessary strength to be able to continue to new layers helps show that the typical run can be a bit basic, and while unique character abilities can help you overcome power differentials, BALL x PIT feels like it doesn’t value player skill enough to make for an engrossing rogue-like.
And so, I give BALL x PIT for Nintendo Switch…
An OKAY rating. BALL x PIT allows for a more passive play style with its auto-fire option, lack of need to really catch the balls at all, and many enemies not even posing a threat until they’ve reached the bottom of the screen, and that’s likely why it can feel a bit too simple when you have to do multiple runs just to build the city up. The upgrades help to obfuscate things, giving you the thrill of making powerful fusions or upping how many baby balls you can have in play to make for a truly chaotic play field, but it’s not too hard to see that most opposition is saved for the boss encounters so if you can’t even reach them because the town is lagging behind your progress through the pit, you are left with runs where your strategic investments in upgrades feel like they were time poorly spent. There are still enough unique elements in BALL x PIT to help shake things up so it won’t completely stagnate, the different characters especially helpful in providing a new way to play to help diversify your runs, and since unlocking new areas does require you to beat sections of the pit with different heroes, you won’t just settle into one style of play either. Upgrades being mostly random also helps to encourage you to find new synergies and uncover interesting new ways of repelling the incoming hordes, even if most of your participation in an attack ends after pointing a ball in a direction and letting it bounce around. There is one character, The Tactician, who makes play turn-based where you do need to be very careful aiming because you only get so many shots before an enemy will be in range of you that can provide a more thoughtful albeit slower play experience, but at present, the strength scaling is probably what takes the wind out of BALL x PIT’s sails the most. Because you can’t overcome certain stat differentials despite your best efforts it leads to periods that let you simmer a bit too long in less productive play and realize that its moment to moment action isn’t providing all that much. BALL x PIT at least has the breadth of options to push back against some of its repetitive elements, and returning to it now and then is probably the wiser approach than trying to make your way to the pit’s bottom in any short amount of time.
BALL x PIT will click more with certain players because it’s rather easy to mistake addictive play for enjoyable play. You can pop in quickly and work up to a decent power level where you see various special effects go off and baby balls ricochet all around the screen, almost putting BALL x PIT close to pachinko as well with its hard to fully place genre mix. It doesn’t totally lean on flashiness to draw you back though, unique characters and ball types helping to set apart even losing runs, but Ballbylon does have a bit of an uneven relationship with the more interactive side of the game, BALL x PIT entertaining but not as much as you like when the game actually gives you room to sit back and see just what you’re doing each run.