Copyright independent
The daftly named Ball x Pit grabs that auto-battler concept by the scruff of the neck and smashes it with some verve into the ancient classic Breakout. That 1976 Atari hit was itself based on the company’s seminal Pong and trivia fans know that Steve Jobs had a role in creating the Breakout arcade machine. But the original brick-breaking game design would feel too simple five decades on. So this intense reimagining incorporates not just the wild power fantasy of Vampire Survivors – multiple weapons firing off at once, different characters, etc – but the levelling up and multiplier effects seen in card games such as Balatro. The premise builds on the Breakout template with an advancing “wall” of enemies that marches down a vertical tunnel to face your gun-toting character at the bottom of a pit. The weapon automatically fires a barrage of small balls that bounce crazily off walls and enemies. As in Breakout, aiming straight ahead achieves little. The virtuoso strategy depends on directing the projectiles at an angle behind the advancing foes to set up a frantic loop of rebounds that quickly bulldozes the wall. Vanquished enemies drop power-up points that let you choose a bumper range of special abilities, from burn to poison to lightning. Certain milestones, such as mini-bosses, let you fuse two powers together to unleash even more devastating effects. Maybe your lightning shots now inflict bleed or freeze balls make the wall more vulnerable to attacks. My favourite has to be the one that sets off an explosion every time an enemy dies, often inflicting a satisfying chain reaction. Of course, much as in Vampire Survivors, as quickly as you become a killing machine – with your myriad “plain” balls and auxiliary abilities all firing at once – so your enemies’ threat grows in tandem They’ll swarm at you in greater numbers, wear shields on the front or sides so attacking gets harder, and sap your health if they get close. Like all roguelikes, death is inevitable in Ball x Pit but, as per the genre’s blueprint, each run almost always delivers a boost to your stats that makes the subsequent attempts more likely to succeed. Between runs, a home town component becomes equally important for levelling up. You harvest resources – using a bouncing strategy akin to the main game – to construct up to 70 buildings that grant bonuses such as extra characters and enhancing buffs. This meta-game of tinkering constantly with the layout of the town – excruciatingly dubbed New Ballbylon – may be crucial to bolstering your power curve but it never stops feeling a tad clumsy and Byzantine. Many players may relish it but the down time rearranging tiles in the town had me itching to bounce back to the main event. Ball x Pit somewhat mitigates the repetition inherent in roguelikes with its gratifyingly random sessions that seldom play out alike. Varying level design (ice, sand, etc) coupled with the distinctive capabilities of the character roster inject further novelty that makes the prospect of just one more run always appealing. Each descent into the pit begins with an almost pathetic damage output but as you gradually gather a chaotic constellation of powers, the screen begins to resemble a pinball table on overdrive, an intoxicating display of destruction orchestrated by you. It’s anything but a straight shooter, it’s a memorably sideways take on a classic.
