Anytime Devolver Digital presents a new game, I’m keen for it. Seemingly impossible to miss, their publishing catalog is chock full of brilliant ideas that have captivated me and reignited my love for gaming. Mash that with my immense love for roguelites, and when BALL x PIT was announced, I couldn’t have been more hooked. The premise of brick-breaking is nothing new, and I’ve even played a brick-breaker roguelite this year in Rogue Bricks, but what BALL x PIT brings to the table is something truly compelling and worth sinking into.

In BALL x PIT‘s action phase, you’re placed at the bottom of a downwards-scrolling battlefield where enemies spawn in blocked rows. At your disposal are balls that shoot upwards, capable of bouncing off enemies or the walls on the side. You start with several “baby balls” and a larger ball imbued with a power, such as freezing, burning, or passing through blocks.

Each level up grants you a small boost to your stats, as well as an option to boost your projectiles. Once these are max level, you can fuse them or upgrade them further with a pickup. The combinations are vast in both quantity and quality, and blueprints unlock so frequently that each new run truly feels unique.

After a battle, BALL x PIT has you build up your town with resources gained during the run, chiefly coins, grain, wood, and stone. You’ll then place square tiles of the latter resources in your town’s plane and “shoot” your workers upwards to farm them further. You’ll also unlock buildings that provide passive stat boosts or new characters for subsequent runs. I typically put metagame/resource-farming on the backburner in my games, but BALL x PIT streamlines this aspect so well, and the premise of regularly unlocking characters makes it engaging and bountiful.

BALL x PIT is marketed as a “brick-breaking, ball-fusing, base-building survival roguelite”. This sounds like a mouthful, and games that are verbose with their genres tend to suffer from conflict or mismatched balance. That is simply not the case in BALL x PIT, as everything comes together into a gameplay loop that maintains the addictiveness of rogues, the skill ceiling of a competent action title, and the comprehensive progression of a base-builder. All the moving parts come together into a gratifying, “one more run” stretch that regularly rewards the player whilst pushing them to try new things in the next loop.

It’s going to be hard for me to nail down a game of the year in the stacked year of 2025, but BALL x PIT has shot straight to the top of my list. In the dozens of roguelites I’ve played recently, BALL x PIT is a clear standout thanks to its “every run matters” execution, its ability to push the player to their skillful peak, and the true ease of dropping in and checking off that rogue to-do list in the player’s head. I’ll be playing BALL x PIT for dozens of hours to come.

A PC review copy of BALL x PIT was provided courtesy of Devolver Digital for this review.

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BALL x PIT

$14.99

1

Score

1.0/10

Pros

• Perfect Gameplay Loop
• Masterful Difficulty Balance
• Metagame is Incredible
• Wide Variety of Playstyles
• TONS to Unlock