Kenny Sun’s newest release is a stylish twist on an Atari classic—and it truly delivers.
Ball x Pit (from here on out, I’ll use Ball Pit as the name, because that “x” is more than I can comfortably handle) (Editor’s Note: not if I can prevent it!) is Devolver Digital’s latest roguelite. Still, it’s also Kenny Sun’s newest project—someone I’ve followed, off and on, for quite a while.
Kenny Sun’s games seem rooted in genuine enthusiasm. At one point, his curiosity centered on triangles, and it produced some genuinely memorable titles. These days, it looks like he’s hooked on Breakout—resulting in a game that manages to be both wonderfully complex and refreshingly easy to understand. At least, that’s how it feels to me.
Breakout is the classic Atari game that reshapes Pong into a PvE adventure. You control a bouncing ball, using it to smash through rows and columns of blocks to rack up points. Ball x Pit keeps the same core idea, while bringing it into modern play. You pick a hero and move through a channel on the screen, while bands of blocky enemies appear above and press downward toward you. You then fire off volleys of balls to thin their numbers over time, and if any make it to the bottom, you take damage. That’s the premise, stripped to its simplest form.
In its most straightforward sense—as far as I’m concerned, anyway—it can feel like you’ve been locked inside a typesetter’s playful nightmare. The next wave of blocky “type” advances toward you, and you have to clear every one before they push you off the screen, while somewhere in my mind I’m pretty sure misprinted pages are piling up. Even if that’s not exactly your takeaway, there’s still a charming sense of pressure in the idea of smashing everything to pieces before it swallows you. It’s a thrilling starting point for the systems that come later.
That’s also where Ball x Pit starts to show its depth. As you defeat enemies by lining up shots and sending balls across the screen (and yes, you can handle much of it automatically—you just need to point the angled reticule and guide your character), you collect XP gems dropped by those you’ve vanquished. Every so often, you’ll level up and then choose a fresh skill or perk.
More often than not, the upgrades you unlock come in different ball varieties—things like elemental balls, or vampire balls that sap health from the enemies you defeat. Others fire off horizontal or vertical laser beams when they hit; the variety is interesting no matter what you end up using. Sometimes, though, you’ll see perks or even more unexpected mechanics. One of my go-to perks, for example, makes every defeated enemy explode, dealing damage to nearby threats. Another boosts critical damage when your attacks land from a particular direction. There’s also one that summons a small stone buddy that occasionally trudges along the track toward your foes, causing a bit of extra damage. And of course, others act like turrets. You get the idea.
All of that is great, but there’s a catch: you only get four slots for power types, and as you level up, those slots fill fast. This is where the game’s systems start to climb to dizzying heights. When defeated enemies fall, they drop small, rotating orbs you can pick up—either to level multiple existing powers at the same time or to combine them in different ways.
This doesn’t just let you craft exciting new effects—like laser beams that cause bleeding damage or earthquakes that come with lightning—it also frees up slots, since combining two powers creates a single, distinct ability. As a result, you can keep gaining new skills again and again. By the time each run wraps up—after levels arranged with their own theme and with multiple mini-bosses plus a mega-boss at the end—you’ll be unleashing outright chaos with every move.
And even with all of that going on, it’s still Breakout. So yes: even while you’re juggling vampire balls and heavy iron balls that travel more slowly but deal extra damage, along with whatever your mutations have cooked up, you can still lean on the familiar Breakout foundation. Fire your attacks so they bounce off the channel walls and land behind enemies, letting you smash the back end of the advancing crowd while also striking its front.
As the intensity ramps up and the results start to land, and the screen keeps dazzling…
and flickering, it feels like watching the crowd at a stadium show. You can turn on upgrades that help strengthen assaults like this, yet you may still hit problems, since your ammunition keeps snapping off course and hasn’t found its way back to you for reuse.
Add in the different level settings—sand, ice, and the like; the fungal stage is especially rough—and then bring in the variety of heroes you can unlock, each nudging you toward a different playstyle. My favorite is a character who handles all of your leveling choices automatically. It’s almost as if a bit of Marvel Snap’s Agatha Harkness has wandered into the game. My second pick is the twins: they have half the strength but twice the firepower, and the enemies they target are the mirror image of one another. (My least favorite may end up winning me over after a few more days: they strike from the back of the lineup while advancing from the front. Oh, they’re tough to get the hang of.)
Now, taking a moment to breathe—this is quite a lot of Ball x Pit. It’s a workshop for dealing damage, and, as is common with roguelite RPGs, also a place for self-examination: who am I trying to become during this run? But there’s more. It includes what you do between those runs. When you’re back at base, perched on the pit, you can spend the supplies you gathered during runs to develop a small town—planting crops and setting down any buildings you’ve unlocked. Those structures can grant your characters stat boosts, and they may even unlock additional characters. That town then needs to be maintained by sending out small farmer types who function much like the weapons you use during runs—bouncing off walls, collecting grain and rocks, and putting up structures as they go. It’s Breakout, no matter how you look at it.
This game is a delight. It’s another standout from Kenny Sun, and this time he has a team backing him up. It can get a bit grindy at points, particularly when you’re unlocking new run locations, but the grind doesn’t feel like a burden if you’re the kind of player who likes testing different builds and exploring new power upgrades. It delivers the kind of detailed, daydream-friendly entertainment that sticks with you. Go ahead and jump in, I say.
A copy of Ball x Pit was provided for this review by Devolver Digital.