Ball x Pit is an exceptional, bottomless roguelite rabbit hole

On its face, Ball x Pit falls into the same “it’s a roguelite, but X” category that so many games share. There’s a reason why “poker, but a roguelite” (Balatro), “slot machine simulator, but a roguelite” (CloverPit), and most recently “beat-em-up, but a roguelite” (Absolum) are so beloved. It’s a formula that works, and Ball x Pit’s version of that tried and true success story, “Breakout, but it’s a roguelite,” is a worthy inclusion in the roguelite pantheon.

Ball x Pit starts very simply. After a brief cutscene where a “meteor” slams the fabled city Ballbylon [Editor’s note: heh] into the earth, you ride an elevator into the pit to rebuild. When you spawn into the first level, you’ll take control of an ability-less character and begin your adventure.

With a click of the mouse or press of a button, you’ll launch out a ball into the narrow “hallway” – a stylized field, with two firm walls on either side, filled with enemies resting in square, brick homes – ahead of you. The ball itself has some special properties – this particular ball makes enemies bleed – and when it slams into foes that descend down the hallway Space Invaders-style, it’ll deal damage.

When enemies take enough damage they die and drop XP. If enemies reach the end of the map, they’ll jump and attack you, dealing damage. Defeat enough enemies, and you’ll summon a mini-boss, then another wave, and another boss. With each great enemy, the hallway gets larger, making room for more foes and more complex shots. Progress far enough and you’ll discover the level’s boss as the map stretches as wide as it can.

Different enemies have different health levels – the same way different bricks do in Breakout or any other brick breaker game. But tried and true tactics don’t always work. In Breakout, everyone knows that the real way to win is to sneak a ball behind the bricks so it ricochets against the back wall over and over again. But in Ball x Pit the enemies are constantly advancing , so having your ball stuck at the top of the level – even if it’s dealing a lot of damage – could leave you defenseless. But strategies can and should vary depending on a number of different choices you make each run.

See, as you level up, you’ll choose from a variety of different special balls to use. All of these can be fired alongside “baby balls,” which deal a small amount of damage and have no inherent properties. You can also collect passive items. These special balls can poison, burn, electrify, and even steal life from the legions of enemies ahead. When these powered-up balls are paired with passive items, you can create builds that focus on unleashing legions of baby balls, or spawning stone allies that march up the field. You can even turn enemies into zombies that turn around and attack their former allies, or spawn dynamite in the place of an enemy every few waves.

The decisions you make on an individual level can scale to become even more complex, as you’ll occasionally find items that allow you to “evolve” two balls by combining them together into entirely new balls. A ball of wind that passes through a group of enemies can combine with a poison ball to create a large poison cloud. A ball that shoots a laser horizontally can pair with another ball that shoots a laser vertically, creating a holy hand grenade-looking ball that fires a laser in all four directions when it hits an enemy.

Even when balls don’t have a special combo, you can fuse almost any two balls together, saving room in your inventory (which is handy, since at the start you can only have four special balls per run), and creating one ball with the properties of its parents. The horizontal laser ball and the icky egg sack that spawns baby balls may not evolve, but you can fuse them together to create an orb that spawns a host of baby balls that fire horizontal lasers as they collide with enemies.