No convention ticket needed

Welcome to Propagating Preview. The series where we preview some of the upcoming games we’re most looking forward to.

---

In the mix of this year’s summer showcases, there’s been just about every genre of video game represented in some form or fashion. What I didn’t expect to see was the demo for a new Brick Breaker Rogue-lite from publisher Devolver Digital titled Ball X Pit (pronounced Ball Pit). Indie developer Kenny Sun has taken the Brick Breaker formula and added the Rogue-lite twist I didn’t know it needed.

Ballbylon has fallen and it’s up to you and your tribe of unique heroes to dive deep into the depths of The Pit to collect treasure, resources, and most importantly, destroy enemies one (or many) balls at a time.

If you never played a Brick Breaker game before, the main goal is to bounce balls that break row after row of bricks until there is nothing left.  The genre has a satisfying hook that incentivizes you to aim each ball in a spot that will get caught bouncing between bricks and break as many as possible in a single shot.  In 1976 Atari made the first in the genre with a game called Breakout. Now, almost 50 years later, the once-revolutionary game has a new twist, and it’s all I can think about.

Sow Far, Sow good

The last time a game hooked me this quickly was last year’s Game Of The Year: Balatro. Like Balatro, Ball X Pit hits all the same boxes that any good Rogue-lite should. It takes a genre or idea and adds a twist that makes each run feel unique and worth coming back to. For Ball X Pit, it’s a Brick Breaker, infused with one part Rogue-lite, and one part Base-builder.

As a Brick Breaker, Ball X Pits’ “bricks” are monsters squeezed into squares that form row after row of enemies waiting to pounce on you or shoot a barrage of arrows that can be either broken or dodged. Every monster has a certain amount of health that gets depleted with every hit of a ball or other status effect that your balls may inflict.

At the start of a run, you will choose which floor of The Pit to take on and a character to play as. Each character is slightly different from one another and all start with a different ball. Regardless of which character you select, each character shoots both special balls and baby balls.

The special balls are upgradeable unique balls with their own skills that can even combine for some fun combos. The baby balls are the passive balls that you can gain more of or shoot faster with upgrades. The baby balls fire in between each special ball for consistent damage that scales with your character’s level and stats that persist from run to run.

The special balls are where the X in Ball X Pit comes into play. Each special ball has its own unique ability that when upgraded does more damage or shoots more often. But rather than upgrading, you also get the chance to combine two special balls to form something new.  

For example, the spike ball inflicts bleed on each enemy it hits and when upgraded can cause more bleed and damage over time. But if you were to combine the spike ball with the vampire ball, which takes enemy health and gives it to you, the Vampire Lord ball will cause enemies to bleed while giving you their health at the same time. This frees up one of your four slots of unique balls to get another unique ball which can again be upgraded or combined over and over.

In addition to upgrading and making new balls, each run you can hold up to four items that alter things such as speed, damage taken or reduced, and other passive effects. The combination of items and balls you upgrade is crucial, especially when paired with the correct character.

As a Rogue-lite, Ball X Pit will have different levels of the pit to explore each with their own unique boss fight that reset every time you win or lose. What doesn’t reset is each characters level you play as and their overall stats. Each character has stats that scale differently from one another and will benefit from your base and what items you collect each run.

Some characters will benefit more from builds that focus on passive damage and some will benefit more from being able to shoot 900BPM (Balls Per Minute). The trick is you never know what you will be able to build into at the start of a run so being flexible and leveling up each character to benefit from as many things as possible is crucial as each pit run gets harder and as you ramp up the speed of each run.

Finally, as a Base-Builder, Ball X Pit gives you a reason to keep going into the pit to collect resources. The deeper you take runs the more resources you get to upgrade and build new structures atop the pit which in turn make your characters stronger for subsequent runs. Some of the buildings give characters more health or passive damage while other buildings are just plots of land that give you even more resources upon harvesting.

As much as I would have loved this game without its base building, it adds a replayability layer that most rogue-lites don’t have. Seeing your base after a successful or even failed run is a nice reminder of what you are playing for and as you make new buildings and grow your base size, Ball X Pit turns already fun and addicting brick-breaking gameplay into a rewarding rogue worthy of every free minute you might have this year.

The combination of these three gameplay structures blends incredibly well and the cycle in which they feed off each other is something almost every game would kill for. I want to be as strong as possible in each run and to do that I need a stronger character and to do that I need a bigger base which I can build by going deep into as many runs as possible.

Root Rot

After 6 hours of the Ball X Pit demo, there is a lot to love and very little to dislike. I can see the overall vision the full release will bring and can see myself spending countless hours beating every level with every character at every speed and difficulty.

But if I had to be nit-picky about just one thing in Ball X Pit, I felt that a handful of the perk options in each run felt very similar to one another. A few perks gave simple fire rate increases or movement speed up. While a few of the perks played off where you and your balls were on the map. While there is nothing wrong with any of these, a little more variety would go a long way for me.

Clearly, the demo does not have the full suite of what perks will be available in each run, but from what’s available I would’ve liked I little more spice. Some items that really up the high-risk reward factor would be cool to see and inevitably lose plenty of runs too.

Germination

Ball X Pit does not currently have a release date but is slated for this year for Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Switch. From what I have played in this demo, the foundation for something great is certainly there. It has a great hook, the gameplay is addicting, and in the 6+ hours I played I encountered no bugs or glaring issues.

As soon as Ball X Pit eventually does launch, I will certainly be there on day one descending into the chaos the pit has to offer. When I think about the games that I’m most looking forward to in the next year or so, it doesn’t hurt to have something as fun as Ball X Pit sneaking in between the large AAA games rounding out this and the beginning of next year.