As the dust settles you notice an overwhelming absence. Your home, the Kingdom of BALLbylon, gone. Your family and neighbours, vanished. Even the great and terrible meteor whose catastrophic descent you witnessed has disappeared. All that remains is… the PIT. A cylindrical absence which now occupies your previous residence and taunts you down its infinite depths, to your inevitable demise. You have nothing left to lose anyway.
It’s time to break some bricks.
It’s with this heavy atmosphere that BALL×PIT begins, decked out with gloomy pixel art portraits and the muted tones of society’s remnants. The colour palette alone informs you of humanity’s newfound despair.
In stark contrast to this dour township is the core concept of BALL×PIT itself, a brick-breaking survivors-like. Miserable as your ‘heroes’ appear, it’s awfully hard to picture them maintaining a poker-face while firing high-velocity magical marbles at mythical monsters.
At least the funds these adventurers collect from their skirmishes to the PIT facilitate the construction efforts in their decimated kingdom. Though this is hardly selfless. Accommodation simply invites new wayward souls to the ailing community, while other buildings aim to improve your chances on the next descent. Stable ground does nothing for the sinking feeling of dread.
So if everything up top is so miserable, why is BALL×PIT so mesmerising to play?
There’s a party in the PIT, and you’re invited
The overall atmosphere so far might have you expecting your first descent to be a hopeless trudge through dark caves and endless tunnels. Fear not, each layer of the PIT is a unique biome, lively with thematically appropriate denizens. With each level so vibrant in its colours and designs, it feels as if the arenas themselves are mocking humanity.
Populating these lengthy lanes are various groups of little weirdos, who aren’t so much scary as they are wacky and having a lovely time. You can really tell that these creatures didn’t just lose their homes and livelihoods to a meteor.
The shapes and sizes they come in may be common to all floors, but the mechanical variety is what really sets them apart. I’ve talked about tutorialisation many times before, and here we have yet another great example. Each floor has a thematic mechanic which the enemies are built around, that also slowly reinforces the best practices for overall survival in other levels.
The wintry area for instance will see some enemies carrying invulnerable shields of ice on a certain side of their body. This forces the player to plan shots more directionally, and to avoid being overwhelmed by a phalanx of monsters.
Take the desert level too, which introduces enemies with foreshadowed beam attacks. It’s easy enough to step out of the way of one or two of these, but by the end you could be dealing with twenty or more. and you realise the importance of tracking both your BALLS‘ location, as well as your character and cursor’s.
This gradual introduction of new mechanics continually recontextualises how you play, and increases the challenge in interesting yet still approachable ways. But enough about that.
Let’s talk about BALLS
With the deluge of shambling creatures approaching, what else can you do but launch every spherical item you have on hand? This certainly deviates from Arkanoid’s meditative hand-crafted levels, instead going for an unending spew of both enemies and projectiles, but it works.
You just need to give it some time. Originally I didn’t get it, but I now realise that’s because certain systems needed to develop. This is particularly true for the unanticipated stars of the show, the BALL fusing and evolution systems.
During the course of a run you acquire new BALLS and level them up through a survivors-like exp-gathering mechanic. After reaching their final level you may fuse or evolve them. This is the ideal time to put on your chef hat, as this is where you really start turning meek ingredients into mighty meals.
Fusion is simply fusing the effects of two balls into one. One shoots a beam, the other lights a blaze? Easy, the beam’s attack now also inflicts the burning status from the other. You’ve potentially made a stronger BALL, and you’ve vacated a slot. How sleek.
Evolution on the other hand is the combination of two BALLS into a new far stronger BALL with an appropriate effect. Mix the enemy-phasing Wind and chilling Freeze together, you get Blizzard, which freezes all enemies it passes by. Cool!
In the kitchen, not every ingredient goes together, and the same is true here. It’s up to you to learn which BALLS are compatible with one another, and to steer yourself towards a game-breaking build.
For a truly game-breaking build you’ll need to master both.
While a BALL may only be fused once, it can be evolved first. With foresight and planning it’s not difficult to combine the effects of four balls into one. Consider these effects from one of my own runs:
- Flicker, made of Light and Dark, which deals a small amount of damage to every enemy on screen every 1.4 seconds
- Succubus, made of Charm and Vampire, which has a 4% chance on hit to charm an enemy for 9 seconds, causing them to move upwards and attack enemies for you, as well as granting 1 health when you hit a charmed enemy.
The best tip I can give you for creating an enjoyably destructive build is to pay attention to triggers. When fusing balls, the simplest route taken is to make X’s effect proc whenever Y’s trigger occurs. In my above example, it triggered Succubus charm effect on every enemy hit by Flicker’s trigger.
It didn’t matter that the chance was only 4%, every enemy was hit multiple times per second. It’s more love than the world has ever experienced, and it was glorious to watch. The grand payoff to properly learning a roguelike’s system in my eyes is reaching a point where your screen becomes nearly indecipherable, like this:
Wait so, who’s taking the BALL into the PIT?
It seems odd to give the characters their own solitary chapter, but it’s hard not to when they change the playstyle so drastically from one to the next. BALL×PIT is particularly good at the slow-release of new gameplay elements to keep things fresh, and I believe its unlocked protagonists are all the evidence I need.
At a surface level each character begins with a unique stat block and starting BALL. Though almost immediately you will unlock someone whose specific quirk adds an unexpected layer of challenge which recontextualises how you survive.
A simple example is The Embedded, whose BALLS pierce through all enemies until they hit a wall. A simple change, but for his entire run you will now be considering whether you want to:
- Hit a long line of enemies, but potentially get your BALL stuck at the back of the horde
- Identify a small air pocket by a wall in which your ricochets will annihilate all those around it
- Intentionally aim for walls early on to restore your BALLS typical bounces
That’s just the thought processes for an early character. Let your mind wander on the possibilities of a run in which your shots are instead lobbed directly to your cursor’s location. Or, they are fired from the rear of the screen rather than the front. There are even characters which play the game on your behalf, or convert the entire system to turn-based combat!
X marks the spot
So, where do these poor unfortunate souls live? It’s time to introduce you to the surprisingly deep city building mini-game which concreted my opinions on this lovely addictive game.
In between your delves into the depths, you take on the role of urban planner extraordinaire as you rebuild a township which pales in comparison to what you’ve lost. You construct forests, fields, and boulders, from which your weary characters can spend their off-days extracting resources. There’s no public holidays or maternity leave in the PIT.
These resources can then be used in the construction of blueprints which were found on past runs. Homesteads to attract new characters, training facilities to increase your base stats and scaling. Even powerful boons such as passive resource harvesting, a free one-time revive, or bringing a second character along on an expedition.
These effects are so strong that obviously some time should be spent here. Honestly I needed no convincing, I would play this minigame as its own solitary piece if I could. A city builder is simply the facade which hides an oddly satisfying pinball/pachinko board designer.
After completing a run, your team assembles at the entrance to town. Like so many times before, you line up your shot and fire them away, then sit back and enjoy watching your digital ant farm at work. It’s so calming to watch as your gruff crew frantically runs around bouncing off walls, chopping down trees, and trying to construct your new buildings before the timer goes off. It’s a simple joy, but one that I relished coming back to after each run.
Simply put,
BALL×PIT is an indie gem that goes against the obvious interpretation of a brick-breaking roguelike, and is far better for it. There is plenty of replayability built in, but not at the expense of shorter-term novelty and as such it is rewarding whether you choose to play it for 20 hours or 200. I still find myself coming back either to attempt another self-imposed challenge run with odd character combinations, or trying to create incredibly scuffed BALL combinations.
It’s a solid recommendation from me, and if any of you play it and make weird town designs I want to see them. For a while I tried making ovaries, because I noticed my town was already weirdly close to it, but alas I was unsuccessful. Perhaps you can finish what I halfheartedly started.
Trials Of Kharzoid
By the way, a little side note. I was originally more bummed that this didn’t follow the more traditional Arkanoid style, when I stumbled across Trials Of Kharzoid on Itch. A beautifully made modern NES game combining Arkanoid with Metroidvania elements. It was too difficult for me personally, which is honestly pretty standard for that era of game design, but I still wanted to give a little shoutout as I love console-revival titles like this and still think it’s incredibly well made despite how terrible I am at it.
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