I’ve been a fan of Kenny Sun’s games for about a decade now. It all began with the hypnotic platformer Circa Infinity on iOS, and I’ve since tried to play every single game he’s been involved with across genres. There have been unique and confusing puzzle games, platformers, and more over the years. Mr Sun’s Hatbox, in particular, was lovely and well worth your time on Nintendo Switch, but I feel like BALL x PIT is a bit too dangerous for my free time. I’ve not been as hooked to a game in 2025 aside from Hades II. In fact, I’m likely going to delete BALL x PIT when I send in this review because I can’t risk it eating more of my time.
BALL x PIT is set in Ballbylon, where a mysterious meteor that looks very similar to a katamari has destroyed the glorious city, spreading the treasures of the land into a massive pit. BALL x PIT blends in elements of Arkanoid, Vampire Survivors, and base building to be unlike anything I’ve played before. You play as one of many unique characters, each with their own starting ability and traits, with the aim of reaching the bottom of a pit full of monsters.
You keep firing balls (or can do it automatically) at said monsters, who are always working their way to the bottom of the screen. If any of these reach the bottom or you get a bit too close to them, you take damage. You work towards taking down hordes of these monsters that appear like bricks on the top of the screen, and eventually the midbosses that lead into a specific level’s final boss. Each of the levels’ final bosses have interesting gimmicks, with some even using large telegraphed AOE attacks and others nearly filling up the screen with projectiles targeted at you.
As you slowly learn the ins and outs of each level, you can find blueprints and even eventually defeat the boss to earn a gear. You use gears to unlock the next main level. Your aim is to defeat each level with a set number of characters to unlock the next one.
I mentioned Vampire Survivors, and as you take down monsters or enemies in the pit, they drop pellets that you collect to earn experience and level up. Each level up gives you a chance to gain a new ball ability or upgrade a previous one. The choices are random, and I appreciate how BALL x PIT saves you the trouble of looking up a wiki by giving a hint of what synergy is available for specific options on each level up with what you already have. Some monsters even have a chance to drop an item that lets you fuse or randomly level up some of the balls you have.
The sheer variety in balls, enemies, fusion possibilities, and traits is quite overwhelming on paper, but you will find yourself getting into a zen-like state when you’ve had a few runs in a level. Leveling up a character in each run gives them stat bonuses, but this is just a small part of the progression in BALL x PIT.
I’m not sure if I just got too comfortable with how they work, but I gravitated to always picking the vertical and horizontal laser balls and found the combo let me comfortably get through many of the stages with different characters.
Speaking of the characters, the default one starts with the Bleed ball, but every new character you unlock is a bit more over the top with abilities or quirks. As an example, you can unlock The Cogitator, who automatically chooses their upgrades. This happens on every level up or fusion, and it is quite funny. There’s also The Cohabitants, a couple you control together. This has a mirror effect with both of them launching a ball together, but the balls deal half damage since there are twice as many. One character I struggled with initially was The Shade, who fires from the back of the pit instead, but they have a 10% critical hit chance from the get-go.
Each character also has their own scaling and attributes, and you even unlock the ability to bring two characters into a run by combining their abilities after making a good amount of progress through the stages. BALL x PIT definitely throws a lot at players in mechanics and stats, but every menu has everything well-explained. This really feels like a roguelite made by people who enjoy playing and watching people play roguelites. They get it.
The other major gameplay element is the basebuilding. Each run has you earning materials and gold, and you use these to build specific buildings or fields to collect more materials, get permanent stat boosts, and also unlock new characters and upgrades. This isn’t straightforward, though. You can use the grid to build, but you need to play another Arkanoid-style game here when you “Harvest” or send your characters as balls who bounce off buildings to complete the construction. Even upgrading some of these will have you repeating the process of shooting your characters as balls to bounce off buildings to accomplish that.
I wasn’t sold on the basebuilding aspect initially, but it clicked after I realized my mistake in the layout. You can freely rearrange your base so you can optimize each harvest. Harvesting isn’t something you can do repeatedly. You will need to keep doing a run and coming back while some of the buildings and fields respawn in real time (not game time). The harvesting aspect requiring the Arkanoid-style mini-game is something I’m still a bit mixed on. Progression would go much faster without it. I think it needs to be included, but tweaked. Maybe upgrading buildings shouldn’t have you doing the same mini-game, but the initial construction having it would be good enough.
The combination of keeping track of your field, getting the layout right, and then going into the pit to try and defeat the boss of each level with different characters is what you will work towards in BALL x PIT. Thankfully, you don’t need to beat every level on every speed with every character to unlock the next one. BALL x PIT is very flexible here, and I appreciate that.
I think BALL x PIT also has one of the best implementations of the carrot and stick approach in a roguelite, but those who don’t care for basebuilding might bounce off (I couldn’t resist) rather quickly or tire of the layers upon layers of mini-games required to unlock the permanent progression.
Visually, BALL x PIT is mostly solid and consistent. I’m not a fan of how the character you control looks like a chibi model, though. It looks a bit out of place despite the actual character design looking good. Beyond that, the game’s aesthetic is gritty, and it generally looks very good. The bosses and enemy monsters all look great. I was surprised at the variety of designs even in the first two stages, but things got crazy from the fourth level.
Enemy gimmicks in each stage add another layer of difficulty and strategy to the action, but there are some readability issues where the combination of some bosses shooting out bullet hell style patterns of projectiles, your own projectiles and lasers, and the pellets or items to pick up start blending in together. I mainly had this happen in the ice level, but the fourth stage starts getting a bit too hectic quickly as well.
I had access to BALL x PIT on the original Nintendo Switch and Steam. It is getting a native Nintendo Switch 2 release with a free upgrade, but I had no performance issues at all playing the Switch version on Switch 2 via backward compatibility. It looks a bit soft, but runs perfectly. Playing on the original Switch is a different matter. I had frame rate drops even in the first level when there were a lot of particle effects, and I had the passive that causes enemies to explode. I even saw dips into the 40s often in the third biome during miniboss battles. None of this happens on Switch 2, where it runs perfectly and loads quicker.
I hope the Switch 2 version allows for mouse controls and that the Switch port in general has some options patched in to disable the CRT effect, Chromatic Aberration, and the Vignette. I get that it is part of the aesthetic, but I love the clean, unfiltered look of the game on Steam.
In its current state, BALL x PIT is dangerous for my free time. It feels laser-targeted to me in somehow combining bits from genres I enjoy into something incredible. The Nintendo Switch version has a few rough edges and the game itself could use some visual tweaks for better readability, but I absolutely adore the time I’ve put into BALL x PIT. I can’t wait to work at unlocking everything it has to offer, assuming I don’t delete it so I can be more productive.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch
Review copy provided by Devolver Digital
